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

Not buying another Kindle

androidauthority.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 288 posts

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#21

Post by stevekemp »

johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

I feel the same way. To be honest I'm on my third kindle, their life-span seems to be about five years for me.

I don't love having to replace them, but paying €120 every five years is probably worth it. I mean that's €2/month, and I have a huge library of books which I load via calibre.

I read daily, on the bus to work, at home in bed, and while there are "more free" ereaders I've become accustomed to the kindle and have no complaints. If I were not so clumsy they'd last longer, so that's on me.

My physical library is pretty big, but being able to carry 50+ books at all times? And have a battery life of a few weeks? (I stay in airplane mode, as I transfer books via the USB cable). It's hard to complain.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#22

Post by wao0uuno »

occamofsandwich wrote: post #9

The ereader scene is just a disaster that shows the dangers of prioritizing DRM. I had ereaders for two decades, managed to read about 6 books on them and ultimately have almost nothing to do with related media forms because of the experience which replaced any actual reading routine with jumping through hoops.

I've owned an ereader for about a decade and never felt that I need to jump through any hoops to read a book on it. I've been getting my books from some gal called Anna. Apparently she has a pretty impressive archive.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#23

Post by gjsman-1000 »

johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

What's also not mentioned is that the discontinued devices don't support KFX.

KFX is the modern kindle format, AZW meanwhile is heavily PDF-based. KFX was designed ground-up by Amazon, supports every modern feature they could think of, and presumably couldn't be backported to 2013 and earlier Kindles; AZW meanwhile was basically a wrapper around a subset of PDF. KFX is a complete redo, notable enough it's what "Enhanced Typesetting" on every Kindle product page means, not a small DRM upgrade.

By doing this, all authors will soon receive guarantees that they will have the full KFX feature set when designing eBooks, and won't break AZW by accident. Trying to point this out though to the "it's about DRM" or "it's about obsolescence" crowd will get you downvoted to oblivion before the truth is even considered (speaking from experience, -4 when I dared suggest legitimate reasons exist) and is a prime example of echo chambers and deeply ingrained bias on this forum.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#24

Post by lokar »

andrewla wrote: post #17

In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

It's hard to evaluate the cost of a ebook vs physical book without knowing the cut that the author and publisher get of the sales price.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#25

Post by Saris »

I use one because of kindle unlimited, it's nice to have a big selection of books I can just hit 'read' on right on the kindle store.

I don't know if the alternative e-readers have an equivalent store? Tracking down epub files on my PC then transferring to the device multiple times a week sounds a bit frustrating as an alternative.

Also they support kindles for a long time, my kindle oasis from 2016 that I bought used still is supported, and the things battery also somehow is still in good shape.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#26

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

boplicity wrote: post #14
jihadjihad wrote: post #5

The site causes cancer but the conclusion of TFA is sensible: just get a Kobo and be done with it. I had a Kindle for years but there's no reason to stick to Amazon for e-readers anymore.

I really want to like the Kobo. I really do. But I've had such bad luck with their devices. For example, sometimes the pages randomly start turning, really fast, so I completely lose my place. It also never reliably syncs between devices. And the integration with Overdrive is unreliable, only working some of the time. I also read it in the bath sometimes, which supposedly is one of the features available due to the w…

I've had three different Kobos (two with touchscreen) and never ran into this issue.

But the Overdrive issues are infuriating, especially when you miss out on a hold from the library and have to get in the queue again. On popular books it can take months. :(

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#27

Post by hosel »

andrewla wrote: post #18

I'm still using a Kindle Oasis (and bought a couple of unopened used ones on eBay). I need the physical page turn buttons so Amazon has basically abandoned me. Trying out the Boox and Kobo readers I was immediately struck by their leggy and unresponsive UI (and this is saying something, coming from the kindle, which is already pretty laggy). I used a Nook in a demo and was impressed, but I'm leery of buying the eread…

I also use an oasis permanently in airplane mode, it’s almost perfect, but I am afraid of the day it bites the dust.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#28

Post by WorldMaker »

Insanity wrote: post #4

The devices were supported for more than a decade. Sure, this forced deprecation isn’t great but it’s still had a longer lifetime than many other devices. I’ll happily keep reading on my kindle, it’s the most ergonomic way of reading for me especially when traveling. I get that there are other options like Kobo, but I don’t see it as significantly better than the Kindles. And I like the fact that I can also use the i…

Also Kobo's ecosystem exhibits many of the same DRM problems that Amazon has. The majority of book publishers still require DRM. You get DRM locked copies regardless of if you buy them from Amazon or Kobo (or Google Play Store).

Some of this post just seems that an "Android Authority" only just now realized there are less-forked Android-based e-readers versus Kindle and they feel happier with the Android ecosystem (and its DRM) than Amazon's. To me it feels a bit like a choice between Purple Drazi and Green Drazi. Many of the same problems but a different ascot color.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#29

Post by [deleted] »

Saris wrote: post #25

I use one because of kindle unlimited, it's nice to have a big selection of books I can just hit 'read' on right on the kindle store. I don't know if the alternative e-readers have an equivalent store? Tracking down epub files on my PC then transferring to the device multiple times a week sounds a bit frustrating as an alternative. Also they support kindles for a long time, my kindle oasis from 2016 that I bought use…

[deleted]

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#30

Post by WillAdams »

paulnpace wrote: post #13
Insanity wrote: post #4

The devices were supported for more than a decade. Sure, this forced deprecation isn’t great but it’s still had a longer lifetime than many other devices. I’ll happily keep reading on my kindle, it’s the most ergonomic way of reading for me especially when traveling. I get that there are other options like Kobo, but I don’t see it as significantly better than the Kindles. And I like the fact that I can also use the i…

IIRC, part of the original sales pitch was replacing physical books, for whatever reason one might like to do that. I did it because I was doing a LOT of travel. I haven't had a job that requires travel in a long time, so looking at it from that perspective, having my library also require some kind of additional device maintenance cycle or whatever really adds a layer of complexity I don't want to deal with, so depen…

Yeah, my sister bought into the Kindle eco-system early on, but I picked a Sony PRS-505 instead (mostly because it would fit in a Travelsmith shirt pocket) and for a long while, the only ebook which I had "purchased" was Robert Heinlein's _Space Cadet_ which I got w/ a $10 credit for browsing their store on a certain day (which I then got a price-fixing rebate check for which I kind of wish I'd kept...) and it was so rife with errors I had to check out a copy from the library to determine what some of them were. When the Sony ebook store closed down, my "library" was transferred to Kobo's and their copy of that novel was made in a different fashion, or corrected, so was actually readable on the Sony PRS-600 I eventually upgraded to.

Since then, I bought a Kindle Paperwhite, and I've made a game of either getting free e-books when offered on the store, or purchasing books when on sale and I've had sufficient Amazon gift cards from Microsoft Rewards, so that I've not spent "real" money on any virtual books, except for when I've purchased an ebook to go along with a newly published hardcover by an author whose work I feel strongly enough that it merits such doubled purchasing.

Post reply on HN