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

101–110 of 288 posts

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#101

Post by sobjornstad »

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…

I still buy e-books for nonfiction I expect I'll read once, take a few notes on, and then probably never come back to, if I can't easily get them at the library. No need to clutter up my already overflowing bookshelves. For anything else I'm with you – not only do you not have DRM or other bullshit, physical books are still easier to navigate and overall more usable.

(This is absolutely bonkers though – the experience of using an e-reader has basically not gotten better since 2008 when I got my first Kindle. There are still glaringly obvious usability issues which nobody has spent any time innovating on.)

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#102

Post by themadturk »

WolfeReader wrote: post #74
wao0uuno wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I truly hope you're buying books as well - authors (and editors, illustrators, translators, etc) should be rewarded for their art.

Yes, it's not hard to do both.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#103

Post by two_cents »

pickleglitch wrote: post #86
two_cents wrote: post #73

> We are still dealing with a home screen that prioritizes advertisements and promoted recommendations over your actual library. Navigating a large collection of books remains a chore, with sluggish animations and a lack of robust folder management that has been a standard feature on rival devices for years. Such claims make me think that this article is biased. There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Lib…

Kindle's are cheaper because Amazon sells them at or below cost to lure users into their ecosystem. This helps them control the market from both the seller and consumer sides, in keeping with their overall business model. Add to that the fact that you don't really own the e-books you "buy" through Amazon, just like pretty much every other digital "purchase" these days, and that's enough for me to never buy one. Of co…

> Add to that the fact that you don't really own the e-books you "buy" through Amazon, just like pretty much every other digital "purchase" these days, and that's enough for me to never buy one.

True. That's why I prefer to buy books on other platforms, sometimes directly on authors website. And nothing stops me from reading them on Kindle. Maybe that's the reason why I don't understand the problem here.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#104

Post by taco_emoji »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #100

I bought a kobo years ago, never updated it, never connected it to wifi, never bought a book for it, just download epubs and write them to it via calibre

I do the same with a Kindle. Also jailbroke it and made it so it won't auto-update in case I do ever accidentally turn the wi-fi back on.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#105

Post by pizzathyme »

If you don't like this, physical books are wonderful.

Unpopular here but: This won't bother non-techies who aren't religiously against DRM. They love their kindles, old ones should be thrown away and they will buy a new one (with cool new features like blue light blocking mode).

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#106

Post by jmyeet »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #93
jmyeet wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can. An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen. A physical book has to be typeset, printed, shipped to stores, shipped to customers, marketed in store, etc etc etc. If a physical book is sold for $10 at least half that is printing, distribution and retail. Like the GP, the price fixing of ebooks at the Dane price as physical books mothers me as well, particularly because physical books can be s…

>> An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen. 100% incorrect. ebooks still: - Have to be edited, proof read and formatted properly. - Have to have a cover design. - Unless you're distributing on your own website (which is uber rare), you still need to pay for platform fees and retailer costs for distribution. - Marketing and tech support which is the same for any book, regardless of what platform its so…

These are all fixed costs not per-unit costs. If you sell 10,000 ebooks or 10 million ebooks, the costs are basically the same.

And book themselves are 500k-5MB in size typically, which is a single HTTP request, basically. Actual costs of storage and distribution are basically zero (per unit). And sure 10M books is more traffic than 10k books but we're talking $0.10/GB or less in baseline traffic. This is like Cloudfare free tier levels of traffic. And while the traffic costs do scale, it's completely dwarfed by the amortization of fixed costs like editing, formatting and cover design.

As for tech support, it's not the same. Publishers have to handle returns from retailers. Ebooks don't. It's no more complicated than revoking a key and the actual process of requesting a refund requires no human intervention either.

This really feels like I made some blanket statement than offended your sensibilities so you decided to argue without knowing why, if I'm being honest.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#107

Post by themadturk »

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…

Either I've gotten so used to lagginess on the Kobo that I don't notice it anymore, or it no longer is a problem. It seems to turn pages just fine, which is the only place I'm concerned about performance. I've got a Clara BW, so no page turn buttons (they make the device bigger than I liked).

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#108

Post by cyberax »

Kindle is abandoning readers...

I got a Kindle Oasis in 2018 and it was a perfect device for me. Cellular connectivity, Bluetooth support for audiobooks, and synchronization.

I could start reading on my phone, then transition to listening in my car, and then pick up reading on Kindle. And it worked well in a literal airplane. I didn't have to faff about with WiFi passwords to sync to the latest page, thanks to the cellular connectivity.

And now Kindle devices lost cellular (why?!?), lost physical keys (facepalm), and are getting worse and worse UI/UX-wise.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#109

Post by pwinnski »

Every year or so, I look into alternative to my Paperwhite, which has been in "airplane mode" since I bought it. So far, nothing else seems to be quite up to the level of my existing device for my use case, let alone better.

It's possible I needed to log into Amazon in 2016 and 2020 when I bought my two Paperwhites, but I haven't needed to do so again since, so I'm not sure this will affect me at all. If it does, I'll have to check my notes for what was closest last year when I last checked.

Post reply on HN