Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

aboutamazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 683 posts

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#91

Post by bloopernova »

Kindle Scribe should show your calendar, news, weather, etc when it's plugged in.

I hope Scribe note sharing is improved from "email yourself a PDF".

And come on, still no physical page turn buttons?

I also want a Kindle Scribe with a scroll display: a high-refresh-rate LCD touchscreen that sits just below the bottom of the eink screen. Use case being: swipe to a bookmark or page very quickly. It would stay off until touched and would be about 2cm tall, with the same width as the eink screen.

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#92

Post by IPTN »

andrewla wrote: post #88
IPTN wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check out the PocketBook Era. It's what I moved to from the Kindle Oasis and I've really enjoyed it. The device isn't as svelte as the Oasis since it isn't subsidized by Amazon, but has an assymetric design and even more physical buttons which you can fully customize the control scheme. Also like the Oasis it gets amazing battery life with it's light weight OS compared to the Android based e-readers. The P…

I have a significant library with Amazon -- does this have any support for Kindle books? The Android-based ones let you run a Kindle app, which, while not ideal, at least lets me access the library. I've considered doing a sweep to download all of my kindle books and de-DRM them so that I have an archive, but this is a tortuous process if your library has over a thousand titles, as mine does.

Not seemlessly because Amazon has their store locked down to Kindle. But you can export all your books from the Amazon web interface or use the desktop Kindle app to download them all. You would then use Calibre with a couple plugins to deDRM them. At that point you have plain ebook files in Amazon's format to do what you want with. Calibre can convert them to any one of the open ebook formats (I personally prefer epub) and sync them to your device(s)). Those ebooks are treated like any others and fully supported by PocketBook cloud if you use it. The convenience of Amazon's store for Kindle is nice, but it's also how they lock you in to their ecosystem and devices so you keep only buying/paying for a subscription with them.

The process is really not bad at all if you use the desktop Kindle app to download your library before importing to Calibre. Each step is fully automated with the only manual parts being setting it up and doing each step in sequence for the whole library but not each individual book.

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#93

Post by marcellus23 »

al_borland wrote: post #42
jsheard wrote: post #3

The color model is uncharacteristically expensive for Kindle at $280, more than the color Kobos which are $220 for the same 7" size (which also has physical buttons and stylus support) or just $150 for the smaller 6" size. Kindles are usually the cheaper option, at the expense of being less amenable to sideloading and jailbreaking than Kobos are.

This article really buries the lead. It talks about updating monochrome kindles, when they just released their first color Kindle (not counting the Fire). I had to look elsewhere to confirm this was indeed a brand new line of products, and others give it top billing.

From the second paragraph of the article:

> In addition to the monochrome e-readers, Amazon introduced its first color e-reader today. The new Kindle Colorsoft, covered in more detail here, looks almost identical to the new Paperwhite and launches on October 30 for $279.99.

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#94

Post by Wowfunhappy »

jjice wrote: post #2

I own a Kindle Paperwhite (last gen, relative to this new one) and a Kobo Clara BW (purchase in the last 6 months). IMO, the Kindle is the premium e-reader when it comes to look and feel. It's just a fantastic experience. The issue is Amazon and how even if you want to put your own purchased ebooks on it, you have it send it through their servers. That tied with a few other privacy issues over the years led me to als…

Where do you buy DRM Free books from? (I assume that's a requirement for the device to be fully offline, right?) Do you run everything through that DRM-stripper Calibre plugin?

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#95

Post by dml2135 »

thimabi wrote: post #4
jjice wrote: post #2

I own a Kindle Paperwhite (last gen, relative to this new one) and a Kobo Clara BW (purchase in the last 6 months). IMO, the Kindle is the premium e-reader when it comes to look and feel. It's just a fantastic experience. The issue is Amazon and how even if you want to put your own purchased ebooks on it, you have it send it through their servers. That tied with a few other privacy issues over the years led me to als…

> The issue is Amazon and how even if you want to put your own purchased ebooks on it, you have it send it through their servers. You can sideload your books over USB too, using Calibre for instance. I own a few Kindle models and a Kobo Forma as well. The Kindles do have some quirks and bugs (e.g., disappearing books, issues with sideloaded fonts…). But my Kobo Forma’s battery completely died after a couple years of…

I recently picked up a refurbed Kobo Forma, and I absolutely love the device -- with the caveat that, like you mentioned, the battery has been completely unreliable.

Multiple times I have picked up the device to find it completely dead, while it was at full battery less than a day ago. I haven't quite narrowed down the cause yet -- since I did install KOReader and Nickel right after getting the device, it's not running stock software, so I'm not certain if the issue is hardware or software related.

It definitely seems to be doing something in sleep mode that's draining the battery, even with wifi turned off. This really shouldn't be the case -- I'd expect close to 0 power being used when not actively refreshing a page. I've recently turned to mitigating the issue by setting the device to turn off completely after an hour... which is not ideal, but having to wait for the thing to boot up is definitely preferable to waiting for it to charge.

It's annoying because otherwise this thing is pretty close to perfect for me -- the form factor is excellent, extremely lightweight, and I can connect to my Calibre-web server and download any ebook I have on demand. I'd seriously consider buying an extra one to crack open and install my own battery if I knew that would fix the issue.

Edit: Lastly, I have a sneaking suspicion that "refurbished" does not mean "replaced with a new battery", which, honestly, should probably be illegal to advertise a device that way vs "used".

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#96

Post by OnionBlender »

bloopernova wrote: post #91

Kindle Scribe should show your calendar, news, weather, etc when it's plugged in. I hope Scribe note sharing is improved from "email yourself a PDF". And come on, still no physical page turn buttons? I also want a Kindle Scribe with a scroll display: a high-refresh-rate LCD touchscreen that sits just below the bottom of the eink screen. Use case being: swipe to a bookmark or page very quickly. It would stay off until…

The "email yourself a PDF" note taking issue made the Scribe a no-go for me. Basically, if you transfer your PDF over USB, it wouldn't allow you to use certain note taking features. You had to email the PDF to yourself through Amazon's servers.

I hope Kobo releases a new Elipsa. I waited for the new reMarkable, but it is full of subscription garbage.

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#97

Post by packetlost »

criddell wrote: post #71
packetlost wrote: post #34

The new Kindle Scribe looks kinda lame compared to the new reMarkable Pro, though significantly cheaper. Maybe the colored ePaper isn't that great, but at least you get some color for highlighting, which is probably a non-insignificant use of these types of devices. Either way, sad there's no Oasis refresh. I'm not super attached to the physical buttons, but I'd prefer it to not. Oh well.

The Scribe is neat, but it's too small (same goes for the Remarkable devices). It wish it was A4/Letter size to read PDFs at full size. There are a few devices like that out there (I've heard the Fujitsu Quaderno is nice), but none of them can be used with books purchased at Amazon. And yes, I know about Calibre and the DeDRM tools. They don't work on KFX files and the workarounds degrade the book (you lose typograph…

I've found a laser printer to be a more economical (if not less convenient) option for viewing PDFs. It's more fun too, IMO.

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#98

Post by mariusor »

criddell wrote: post #71
packetlost wrote: post #34

The new Kindle Scribe looks kinda lame compared to the new reMarkable Pro, though significantly cheaper. Maybe the colored ePaper isn't that great, but at least you get some color for highlighting, which is probably a non-insignificant use of these types of devices. Either way, sad there's no Oasis refresh. I'm not super attached to the physical buttons, but I'd prefer it to not. Oh well.

The Scribe is neat, but it's too small (same goes for the Remarkable devices). It wish it was A4/Letter size to read PDFs at full size. There are a few devices like that out there (I've heard the Fujitsu Quaderno is nice), but none of them can be used with books purchased at Amazon. And yes, I know about Calibre and the DeDRM tools. They don't work on KFX files and the workarounds degrade the book (you lose typograph…

The current 10inch devices are quite expensive, you can imagine what a 14inch color e-ink screen would be at almost twice the surface size.

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#99

Post by ed »

Ekaros wrote: post #53

I wish someone did slightly smaller models still. Not phone size, but bit down. Would be easier to carry sometimes.

You might be interested in the Kindle Basic. It's the smallest in the lineup and a comparable size to the first-gen oasis (before they increased the screen size) – my previous daily carry.

It's almost a pocketbook form-factor. I overlooked it initially because who wants a basic model? but the only thing I miss in practice is waterproofing. That, and the Oasis OEM cover which was unexpectedly nice, like a leather-bound pocketbook.

Re: Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

#100

Post by throwaway091290 »

My kindle paperwhite is my favorite tech that I own. It has changed by life significantly for the better and allowed me to cut down the time I waste on doom-scrolling social media. I find a book on shadow libraries, convert them into epub format and then send them over to my kindle via USB. Calibre helps in all this. I have read close to a hundred book now--all for no dime.
Post reply on HN