The Ideal Electronic Dictionary

[Chikubi]

Well then it should come with a protective sleeve... err... ok maybe free screen protector?
But I do think palmtop-ish is easier to handle when using stylus pen.

[Gundaetiapo]

Come to think of it, is there any online (or pocket) dictionary that has sound samples for its entries?

[clay]

Gundaetiapo wrote:
Come to think of it, is there any online (or pocket) dictionary that has sound samples for its entries?

Pretty much all Ectaco dictionaries have synthesized sounds, but honestly, the dictionaries are worse than bad.

[caroline]

Having just acquired an ex word (that I'm still struggling to use), I think that the furigana - I miss terribly - are certainly the "must have" in a dictionary!

the kanji pad is also a must; the compounds show by themselves, and it's possible to enter more than one kanji : that's really great.

Sample sentences for words and glossaries by theme I find useful too... though it would be good to define the useful (or enjoyable) themes : I indeed vote for haikus, and samples sentences from litterature.
but don't miss too much the pronunciation in japanese, though I find the french and english ones quite funny!

but I feel I don't really know I to use the thing, as I'm struggling with a japanese manual, so a sure requisite would be a good manual!

[ianix]

I would like to have the kanji pad and also the main screen a touch pad as well so that after the meaning is displayed on the screen and then there's a word in the sample sentence that I don't understand, I can easily jump from one word to another just by clicking the word on the screen. It takes too much time pressing buttons (yes, seconds count)

[whiterabbit]

caroline wrote:
Having just acquired an ex word (that I'm still struggling to use), I think that the furigana - I miss terribly - are certainly the "must have" in a dictionary!

the kanji pad is also a must; the compounds show by themselves, and it's possible to enter more than one kanji : that's really great.

Sample sentences for words and glossaries by theme I find useful too... though it would be good to define the useful (or enjoyable) themes : I indeed vote for haikus, and samples sentences from litterature.
but don't miss too much the pronunciation in japanese, though I find the french and english ones quite funny!

but I feel I don't really know I to use the thing, as I'm struggling with a japanese manual, so a sure requisite would be a good manual!

Caroline, Did you download the English Quick Reference we have for the Casio in our free download section over at http://www.whiterabbitpress.com?

[Kamekichi]

If it had integrated Remembering the Kanji flash cards, like a portable Reviewing the Kanji, I'd buy it. I'm halfway through Remembering The Kanji right now. That would be so cool to be able to write a kanji or type in a keyword and get the Heisig equivalent on a portable. I already have Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten for the DS and it works pretty good except for no Heisig and no jump function.

[atreya]

Hmmm, I guess I am new here. Has anyone looked at this one? http://www.japaneselanguagetools.com/complete.html

[Bucko]

A massive bank of example sentences with a seach function that lets you search for both strings of text and indepenent words in a sentence.

[Christine Tham]

For those who are interested, I have written an article describing my experiences using (mainly) EPWING dictionaries on a number of platforms:

My article on electronic dictionaries

My favourite at the moment is EBPocket/EBWin on Windows Mobile/Windows, but the Sharp Zaurus is the best all rounder as a Japanese learning tool (particularly after I loaded about 2GB worth of additional EPWING dictionaries to it).

[Wakannai]

mmm, tablet PC.

[atreya]

Christine Tham wrote:
For those who are interested, I have written an article describing my experiences using (mainly) EPWING dictionaries on a number of platforms:

My article on electronic dictionaries

My favourite at the moment is EBPocket/EBWin on Windows Mobile/Windows, but the Sharp Zaurus is the best all rounder as a Japanese learning tool (particularly after I loaded about 2GB worth of additional EPWING dictionaries to it).

Nice article, I have posted a question there since I didn't want to go offtopic here.

[brendalaicm83]

I'm currently looking for a japanese electronic dictionary. however, after some survey i did online, many non native japanese speakers recommend a PDA instead of an electronic dictionary. it will be the best if we can have a PDA specially made for learning japanese with all the other PDA features.

[asfalios]

Personally, I would like to see the following:

a.Super Daijirin
b.kenkyusha J-E, E-J
c.High quality hand written interface for kanji search
d.A kanji dictionary with ALL kanji characters (including obsolete and old kanji, name kanji included)
e.Ko-go (classical japanese dictionary, for those interested in classical japanese literature)
f.backlighting
g.Oxford E-E dictionary

ko-go is often omitted from electronic dictionaries.

Cheers

[Duality]

I'm a total newbie so you may want to take this with a grain of salt (perhaps a pile of salt come to think of it...) but I just really want to put in a good word for stroke order.

As somebody learning this is infinitely useful to me and it seems to matter so much. During my learning experiences so far I've been relying fairly heavily on animated stroke order, even for hiragana and katakana.

Anyway I don't want to say too much because I'm inexperienced but should I actually be successful in my studies I could see myself buying an electronic dictionary and this is one major feature I'd look for.

I also wanted to say I think this is a great idea and I don't know why people haven't made them for native English speakers before!