191–200 of 433 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this trade off shouldn't exist in the first place.
I know, right? Poorer people should just suck it up instead of having the option to get it cheaper. Wait another month to buy it and don’t offend my aesthetics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I highly doubt that people are thinking of 50 year olds when they're talking about grandmas. But in answer to your question, I suspect the cliche will slowly die out when most of the 60/70/80 year olds we meet are tech savvy.
A ton of kids these days aren't that tech savvy. I work with high school kids and many have a real lack of understanding about how things work. A large number have no idea how to much with software outside of browser, believe that internet traffic travels through satellites to get between continents, and can't even debug simple printer jams.
- Your first computer given to you was probably a Chromebook at school. It is your browser. Every app is a web page. Docs, Sheets are all web pages. If you were rich or privileged you might have gotten a Macbook at school instead. But nearly everything is a web page. You use Google Docs with your friends and for group projects. I can count the people that had desktop versions of Word or Excel on one hand. You upload your videos to YouTube, presentations to Canvas or Google Drive, you don't bring in a flash drive. If you plug in a flash drive it might just show up as "External Storage (128 GB)" and not /sdcard or /media/USB0 or whatever. Even then, you don't really folder it up. You might use it to copy one file or a ton of images from one thing to another, then you format it when you're done. You don't just keep one around to build stuff up on, why bother, it's on The Cloud.
- You grow up with no hierarchical file organization. Imagine mobile. You have a "Pictures" tab I guess, and a "Downloads" tab? What else is there? You don't have album folders with FLAC files or anything; all your music streams, all your content streams, none of the apps that serve that content allow you to download them into the filesystem, if anything they do their best to prevent that. You don't have a filesystem path on iPhone. You have maybe tags and categories on Google Drive and you don't keep anything on it other than Sheets and Docs stuff that is listed by name, sorted by recent usage, and do not physically exist as files on the filesystem. Tap to select by thumbnail and Most Recent do an insane amount of work to hide what a folder is, nearly nothing but F/OSS f-droid apps on Android will expose things like /sdcard/Something or /sdcard0/emulated/Downloads. You get a selector of thumbnails.
- Mobile is first, always. Phones are cheaper than computers. Every kid has a phone, whether it's for legitimate use or for parents to abusively track them and monitor and record everything they do. Internet is always just kind of around you in the air, magically. You've never really had to think about how continents were connected, there never was a time in your life where the internet wasn't just magically all around you apart from during no signal areas. If you go to a location you ask for the wifi login. You don't ask where you plug in your ethernet cable. When you sign up for internet, unless you are specifically an enthusiast, your ISP gives you mesh wifi pods/gateway/whatever as the default. When you travel, hotel, coffeeshop, class, library, you get a wifi login. If you don't have wifi you use your phone or tether your laptop to your phone wifi.
- Rarely have a printer. If you print in class you weren't allowed to resolve paper jams yourself, and pro-tier laser printers almost never jammed even if you were doing 50+ pages at a time. When was the last time I had to print something? Your presentations are on Google Classroom/Google Drive/etc. Your homework is turned in online. Your concert tickets are on your phone with a moving barcode to prevent screenshotting (hope you have mobile service and it isn't too contended). Amazon returns are just dropped off and show them QR code, you don't print a label and they actively discourage you from choosing an option where you have to print a label.
You have to very actively seek out these things and want to learn, you can't passively pick it up like presumably in the past you had to tinker at least a little - tablets and phones are meant to force you to shut up and consume, not know about it. Chromebooks are intentionally locked down as hard as possible. Every app you use is probably a web page or a web page in a CEF wrapper.
I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.
The Kindle is inexpensive, has great support, has a huge library (open to non-US people with non-US credit cards), and you could just email a MOBI to it (which is great if the Kindle owner is your parent). It's only disadvantage was that it did not support ePub and so one had to go through Calibre. Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB and no Calibre-tion is needed, I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.
So far I find that for my purposes, the Kindle is way easier to get content onto, and there's quite a bit of content I want that I can just buy there, but couldn't buy for Kobo.
I hope to not get locked in to the Amazon ecosystem but as of right now, my cheapest-model Kindle is way more useful than my old top-of-the-line Kobo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> functionality had another major drawcard of working just about anywhere, even if you didn't have wifi coverage or a phone with data services I have around 50 books and a dozen of comic books on my e-reader. It works perfectly without any connection whatsoever. I'm not sure that being able to download a book while sitting on top of Mountain Everest it's a such an important feature, but YMMV.
Ha, funny you say that. Last time I was at Everest Base Camp nearly everyone had an e-ink kindle. The long battery life and light weight are ideal for long isolated stretches in the Himalayas.
that's not surprising.
it's the most popular e-reader.
anyway, base camp is not the top of the mountain :)
where they downloading e-books with the device 2g connection from there?
> The long battery life and light weight are ideal for long isolated stretches in the Himalayas.
modern e-readers last weeks on battery and weight less than 200 grams.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this trade off shouldn't exist in the first place.
I know, right? Poorer people should just suck it up instead of having the option to get it cheaper. Wait another month to buy it and don’t offend my aesthetics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Kindle is inexpensive, has great support, has a huge library (open to non-US people with non-US credit cards), and you could just email a MOBI to it (which is great if the Kindle owner is your parent). It's only disadvantage was that it did not support ePub and so one had to go through Calibre. Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB and no Calibre-tion is needed, I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.
Kobo has built-in Overdrive, Dropbox and Pocket support on the device itself, which Kindle lacks.
I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.
I'm not telling you or anyone to buy a Kindle, but from a VERY quick look my Kindle cost half of what a Kobo costs (tolino seems to be available around the 70-80€ mark though and so far has worked fine although the default seems to be some nasty Adobe ebook management software). Maybe 150 or 200 is worth it to you if you use it all the time, but for me it was mostly 1-2 books a month, which weren't necessarily cheaper than on paper.
I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.
Similar story here. Bought a Kobo Libra half a year ago, after more than ten years using Kindles. I chose this Kobo for its bigger screen, as well as hackability. It was cheaper than a corresponding Kindle. Also, I knew I could easily install Koreader [1] in it, pretty much the only UI I have been using for many years now. I'm glad I did. However, and this is important. Though happy with this Kobo, truth is that it f…
I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.
I'd love not buying Kindle if I knew what to get but every-time I look into it, seems like people suggesting similar products for marginally worse prices or its just personal preference of the person with no real justification.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Kindle is inexpensive, has great support, has a huge library (open to non-US people with non-US credit cards), and you could just email a MOBI to it (which is great if the Kindle owner is your parent). It's only disadvantage was that it did not support ePub and so one had to go through Calibre. Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB and no Calibre-tion is needed, I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.
I used a Kobo for a long time and I just bought a Kindle, because it was so hard to get articles on the Kobo. They stopped supporting direct file transfers from Mac, so I was left with Pocket, and Pocket didn't think a lot of what I tried to save was "articles." So far I find that for my purposes, the Kindle is way easier to get content onto, and there's quite a bit of content I want that I can just buy there, but co…