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I like e-readers now

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Re: I like e-readers now

#71

Post by AshamedCaptain »

detritus wrote: post #36
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #22

> I had a rather frustrating time setting up the damn device – it’s annoying to have to connect to wifi, make a Kobo account, make an Overdrive account, and search for books with a terrible response time to text input, and it’s especially annoying when you enter the wrong wifi password multiple times and end up restarting the device because you’re so convinced you have the right password before finally realizing your…

> The Kobo is an excellent reading device, but it is a very poor internet browsing device. Sounds like a feature to me - perfect!

Apparently these days you can release a half-baked product and get away with it by saying "the obvious lack of features is so that you can have a focused, distraction-free experience!" or something similar.

Re: I like e-readers now

#72

Post by fullstop »

dont__panic wrote: post #58
maltalex wrote: post #16

As someone who's reading a lot of technical material, I'm on the fence about e-readers. On the one hand, many technical books are thick and heavy, and can benefit from having a search function. But on the other, e-reader screens tend to be small and require a lot of scrolling back and forth (like between a code sample and an accompanying explanation). Does anyone have experience with reading technical books on an e-r…

The Kindle Oasis is probably large enough at 7" to make it work. If you're reading PDFs, you probably want something that's 10" or so -- I believe Kobo's Ellipsa fits the bill. Or you could end up in-between with a Forma or a Libra, which I believe are both 7.8". As someone who used a 6" e-reader for years and switched a few months ago to a 7.8" e-reader... it makes a massive difference. Technical material is actuall…

I have an Oasis and think that an iPad would be a better choice for content with a significant number of diagrams or where color is important.

Re: I like e-readers now

#73

Post by xur17 »

Otek wrote: post #46
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am a pirate and i extensively use a borrowed overdrive. i still buy kindle from olx because i can get them on the cheap, much more than amazon itself.

Ebooks are so cheap these days, that it's a shame to pirate them.

I realize it's irrational given the price of ebooks, but the lack of "ownership" of the books makes me a lot less interested in buying them.

Re: I like e-readers now

#74

Post by alasano »

severine wrote: post #13
willvarfar wrote: post #5

I fell into a phase of reading free e-books (I love amateur authors and fan-fiction generally) on my phone and that lasted about a year but the constant charging and eye strain was a pain. So I finally got an e-reader (the cheapest simplest Kobo) and I've had it nine months now. Oh what a difference the screen makes! Completely transformed how much I read and for how long I read. The software on the Kobo sucks, and e…

Definitely install Koreader! http://koreader.rocks/ I can't even begin enumerating the features. It really rocks!

Gonna install this just to get screen rotation on my Clara HD.

Thanks!

Re: I like e-readers now

#75

Post by fullstop »

ubermonkey wrote: post #55

I've been a Kindle user for a long time now. I love reading and I love books, but I also used to be a high-travel kind of guy, and the Kindle is lighter than carrying even ONE book. The travel stopped, but the Kindle stayed. I buy MOST of my books in physical form at a great local shop, but I still also use a Kindle for some things -- mostly genre, or for the inevitable moments of "I don't feel like starting any of t…

>The Kindle is also great for reading in the bath, and is honestly BETTER for reading in bed than a real book for me now -- I'm 51, so my eyes aren't as great as they were 20 years ago. The lovely cool backlight of a Paperwhite, together with the adjustable font, make it a pretty pleasant experience.

The Oasis (and the brand new Paperwhite) both have adjustable color temperature. I've found the warm light is much better for my eyes, and feels more natural. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that you can choose your font as well as install your own fonts on the device, so you have a significant amount of control over what the text looks like.

Re: I like e-readers now

#76

Post by fullstop »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #8

i listen to audiobooks. come to think of it, i have been doing that for the last decade and i recently found out that i do not sleep well if i do not have some book speak to me while i fall asleep.

How do you remember where you left off?

Re: I like e-readers now

#77

Post by handrous »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #62

I've been using an iPad Mini for the last few years, for my reading. I have about 400 books on it. I needed to get used to it. Now that I am used to it, I actually have difficulty with paper books. My wife is the opposite. She doesn't want to use an eReader.

I really like e-ink, but the ability to fiddle with page corners & edges in the iOS Books app means it's the only way I actually get ebooks read. Mini's perfect for fiction, 12.9" pro's amazing for PDFs (say, textbooks) or other work that needs large pages (comics, too—it's close enough to the size of a two-page comic spread, in landscape mode, to be entirely readable that way, at least until my eyesight gets even worse)

Re: I like e-readers now

#78

Post by dominotw »

nindalf wrote: post #21

I prefer reading on my e-reader for a number of reasons you’ve probably come across elsewhere. But the most underrated thing for me is that I can read large books. I feel they’re too unwieldly to carry around and also heavy enough that I feel too much friction actually starting to read. I had The Gene on my shelf for 3 years before I realised this was why I hadn’t even read 10 pages of it. I bought the ebook and fini…

> The Gene

I read this book but i had to take huge amounts of notes/scribbles on the pages to keep track of various acronyms. I go back and lookup stuff that i forgot about. I thin an ereader is less amenable to going back forth and refer things. I feel like ereaders are designed more for linear reading .

Re: I like e-readers now

#79

Post by derbOac »

echlipse wrote: post #44
maltalex wrote: post #16

As someone who's reading a lot of technical material, I'm on the fence about e-readers. On the one hand, many technical books are thick and heavy, and can benefit from having a search function. But on the other, e-reader screens tend to be small and require a lot of scrolling back and forth (like between a code sample and an accompanying explanation). Does anyone have experience with reading technical books on an e-r…

Even if the e-reader supports pdf, I think it's a much worse experince than even reading on a big computer screen(which doesn't work for me either). Physical copy of techincal books are way superior than e-book version. It's way easier to study in a physical book from my personal experience.

This is the one thing that's been a deal-breaker for me with ereaders. I still love physical books and the interactivity with a laptop or desktop, but always saw ereaders as filling a gap neither really address, where you want to read material on a eink-style screen without worrying about the sun or batteries, but don't want to lug around a large number of texts.

However, for me reading material goes back and forth between relatively simple text and things that require pdfs, and I always had trouble with pdfs. They've never displayed correctly and have been ridiculously slow on top of it.

My dream ereader would have an eink display (preferably color but it's not a necessity for me to be happy with it) that is optimized around displaying technical pdfs, like math-heavy scientific articles with lots of images. If it could do that and display simple text well, I'd probably use it a lot, probably next to my laptop sometimes even.

Re: I like e-readers now

#80

Post by jaymzcampbell »

maltalex wrote: post #16

As someone who's reading a lot of technical material, I'm on the fence about e-readers. On the one hand, many technical books are thick and heavy, and can benefit from having a search function. But on the other, e-reader screens tend to be small and require a lot of scrolling back and forth (like between a code sample and an accompanying explanation). Does anyone have experience with reading technical books on an e-r…

I read a lot of maths and have ended up for the most part using a 10 inch Fire tablet. I then tend to prefer them in their original typeset PDF format that way and am able navigate them with the sort of speed you need. It'll depend on the particular technical content but I tend to need to jump back and forth and zoom in and out and it never seems pleasant on e-ink.

I've been seriously tempted by splashing out on a BOOX 10.3 (https://shop.boox.com/collections/eink-tablet) - but don't think I can really justify it to myself and from what I gather the refresh rate is still not going to be anything like a tablet.

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