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I like e-readers now

devinlogan.org

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Re: I like e-readers now

#81

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.

First time I thought reading books on an iPad was actually not bad is when they added true tone. It's been a while I think but it's just much easier on the eyes.

Re: I like e-readers now

#82

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.

The battery life of a Kindle is what draws me there, along with the lack of distractions. The screen looks like paper and has no glare like an iPad Mini does. If I were reading reference manuals with either color or a lot of diagrams, though, the iPad would be preferred. Either way, the best feature of eReaders is that you don't need a bookmark and you can carry a lot of books with you. It's perfect for traveling.

> has no glare like an iPad Mini does

Unless you use a PaperLike screen protector. I don't like glossy screens, so I get matte protectors for all my i-devices (except the Watch).

Re: I like e-readers now

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery life of a Kindle is what draws me there, along with the lack of distractions. The screen looks like paper and has no glare like an iPad Mini does. If I were reading reference manuals with either color or a lot of diagrams, though, the iPad would be preferred. Either way, the best feature of eReaders is that you don't need a bookmark and you can carry a lot of books with you. It's perfect for traveling.

> has no glare like an iPad Mini does Unless you use a PaperLike screen protector. I don't like glossy screens, so I get matte protectors for all my i-devices (except the Watch).

I didn't even know that these were available. I'll have to check them out. Thanks!

Re: I like e-readers now

#84
I stopped using readers after the open ereader maker alaratek stopped making them. The brands left are twice the cost and do not support as many formats.

If anyone knows of a good non-amazon, kobo brand is please share.

Re: I like e-readers now

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Do you complain about knives because they're not good at scooping? When something does one thing well, I don't care if it does auxiliary things poorly, or at all.

Re: I like e-readers now

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They half-assed the capability to mix two liquids with my Kindle, as well, IPX8 certification nonwithstanding. Useless. I'm sticking with spoons.

Re: I like e-readers now

#88

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 reMarkable is pretty big, maybe that's the key?

The Remarkable is the device that convinced me of the value of e-readers, but it's not so much the screen size as it is the ability to just scribble notes in the margins, and underline, circle etc. easily. You can install Koreader on the Remarkable, but then it's just another ereader without a frontlight, rather than something more tangible like a book.

I convert everything to PDF before moving it to the device though, for a lot of reasons, some aesthetic and some related to lack of functionality in the built-in epub converter. It's a shame there is no software that does a perfect job at converting epub to PDF though. I use one of three different workflows depending on the source material.

One tip for those using the device: the built-in margin trimming feature for PDFs also lets you add margins on whatever side of the document you want, which is a bit counterintuitive but really useful if you like scribbling in the margins.

Re: I like e-readers now

#89
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 .

Look into Kindle X-Ray [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Ray_(Amazon_Kindle)

Re: I like e-readers now

#90

I really like e-readers and e-books, mainly for the reasons commenters pointed out (much lighter than physical books, configurable font size, etc..). But there are big downsides too. Mainly the market discourages ownership on the one hand and encourages piracy on the other hand. The result is that DRM protections are everywhere and some authors like Jonathan Lewin were burned up by e-book piracy and reverted to only…

I wish there were a Netflix like model for books. I think Amazon has a service like that, but without very much content (last time I checked). If the selection was good I would be happy to pay monthly for what is effectively a library card (which is basically how you do that today with ebooks but for free. Much worse user experience than piracy unfortunately)

I too love ebooks by the way. Between that and audiobooks I now consume more books than any other kind of content. It has been pretty amazing, highly recommend it.

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