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The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

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Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#51

Post by TwoNineFive »

I have an old Kindle that I don't really use anymore, a Kobo Aura 2, and I recently bought an Onyx Boox Note Pro.

The Boox is awesome. It was expensive, but I think it was worth it. It's a huge 10" paperwhite tablet that runs custom Android. You would not want to lay in bed with it because of it's size and weight, but you can read large PDFs that are difficult to view on smaller screens (mostly due to obnoxious margins and font choices).

Because it's Android I can install browsers and other apps that I might want. I mostly just use it as a boring reader though.

The Onyx software isn't perfect, but it's pretty good considering. They are innovating, which is more than I can say for Amazon or Rakuten/Kobo.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#52

Post by TwoNineFive »

sand500 wrote: post #19

There are a couple full android based e-ink tablets but apparently none of them are that great?

I have a 10" Boox Note Pro. It's expensive but pretty good. Android based. Hopefully Amazon will get some more competition here in the future and they might be forced to innovate.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#53

Post by TwoNineFive »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #42

I recently got a Dasung Not-eReader... and it's amazing! It's a quality android tablet with a high speed e-ink display. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/not-ereader-first-e-ink-m...

Yikes based on Android 6!

It looks cool and the idea of an eink monitor is appealing. I have a Onyx Boox Note Pro that I bought a few months ago that can apparently do something like this but I've not actually tried it.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#54

Post by nindalf »

It doesn’t need to be so much more. It does one thing and does it well. Doing more things would distract me from the book I’m trying to read. I have a 2013 kindle on which I’ve read nearly 20 books this year.

I have a few complaints - I wish the device wasn’t so slow or that the e-ink display didn’t take so long to update. I wish the keyboard had autocorrect because I’ve come to rely on that quite a bit. I wish it would use a USB-C cable so I could carry around fewer chargers.

But otherwise, I’m pretty happy.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#55

Post by manojlds »

jhbadger wrote: post #14
lukifer wrote: post #5

I'm more of a fan of the Nook and Kobo series (ability to sideload DRM-less ePubs is non-negotiable). But I like the less-is-more approach for e-readers; if anything, I'd prefer they had even more spartan/minimalist UIs, mimicking the "zero UI" affordances of a physical book as much as possible. I'm just being finicky, but I still find the e-ink screen flash a little distracting from the flow of reading (even in newe…

Epubs and Mobis are for all purposes identical and can converted back and forth with ease (they are both just HTML containers), and you can certainly sideload DRM-free Mobis on Kindle, so I don't see that as a major problem. What is a problem is the very poor handling of PDFs on Kindles.

Amazon whispersync automatically converts PDFs that you send as well.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#56

Post by thrower123 »

The older generation of Kindles were nearly perfect devices. I have the last model that was not touchscreen and had the physical paddle buttons on both sides to turn pages, so you can easily read with either hand. It doesn't have a ton of storage, but you can fit hundreds of text-only .mobis in a GB. The battery lasts for weeks, with the wifi turned off.

I'm not so impressed with the newer models. Switching to a touchscreen instead of the physical buttons is a huge regression. If mine ever dies I'll have to fix it or find a refurb.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#57

Post by hrnnnnnn »

anon4242 wrote: post #44
graaben wrote: post #40

I got my Kindle in 2012 and it still runs like a brand new device. I think Amazon's issue will eventually be that, unlike the iPhone, no one needs to upgrade their kindle more than once per decade or so. Of course if the newer models had dramatically better features or apps I would be tempted to upgrade.

I also got my Kindle around then and have never felt the need to upgrade. It works like a charm and I can read for weeks without recharging. I have hundreds of books on it and have never needed to remove any for lack of space. The only thing that tempts me to upgrade is the new water-proof version so I finally can comfortably read while in the bath...

I used to take my paperwhite regularly to the swimming pool so I could read in the hot tub.

I used a zip lock bag to waterproof it. The touchscreen worked perfectly through the thin plastic.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#58

Post by thaumasiotes »

jaak wrote: post #46
hombre_fatal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why assume everyone knows an acronym instead of spending the extra 1000ms to type it out once for us?

I'm going to have to call you out on this. You can't criticize a person for not taking the time to type out text-to-speech and then yourself use "1000ms" - because if I Google "1000ms" it returns 2236.94 Miles per hour!

That's just a bug in Google, pretending "ms" is actually "m/s".

If TTS is fair game in the context of e-readers, ms is fair game... literally everywhere.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#60

Post by cgb223 »

nindalf wrote: post #54

It doesn’t need to be so much more. It does one thing and does it well. Doing more things would distract me from the book I’m trying to read. I have a 2013 kindle on which I’ve read nearly 20 books this year. I have a few complaints - I wish the device wasn’t so slow or that the e-ink display didn’t take so long to update. I wish the keyboard had autocorrect because I’ve come to rely on that quite a bit. I wish it wo…

> I wish the device wasn’t so slow or that the e-ink display didn’t take so long to update.

I’ve had this complaint with the kindle for 12 years

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