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Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

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201–210 of 344 posts

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#201

This move has nothing to do with usability or device capabilities or software support. The only reason for turning them off is to remove a hole in their DRM. These old devices allowed you to remove the copy protection from their books (hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore). Removing the old devices makes freeing your books from DRM just much harder.

> hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore I thought that all the major ebook stores had DRM on most purchases, and it was just a few indie publishers choosing to be DRM-free. Has that changed?

There is a difference between hard and soft DRM. Soft DRM can be only some watermark, not keeping you from creating copies for your own devices. Hard DRM aims to prevent any copying.

In my experience soft DRM is very common, hard DRM not so much.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#202

What is a good e-reader nowadays? I had a pocket book 2 for 15+ years but destroyed the display recently :/ Looking for a replacement now that is black&white, has a very good paper like screen, long battery life and allows me to read any .epub/.mobi without DRM or other bs restrictions. I don’t need colour screen, don’t need audio support and no integrations with any shops or anything like that. Kindle is ruled out,…

How about PineNote?

PineNote isn't really a consumer device. PINE64 has made it abundantly clear that the PineNote is a developer playground device; they're waiting on the community to refine the software support and flesh out the ecosystem for it.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#203

What is a good e-reader nowadays? I had a pocket book 2 for 15+ years but destroyed the display recently :/ Looking for a replacement now that is black&white, has a very good paper like screen, long battery life and allows me to read any .epub/.mobi without DRM or other bs restrictions. I don’t need colour screen, don’t need audio support and no integrations with any shops or anything like that. Kindle is ruled out,…

I've now moved to an Android eReader (Boox Note 7, for example [1]).

I can just get the Ebook or PDF files and transfer them via Calibre, simple as that, and I can also download any Android app i want. There are tons of apps out there that support eInk screens.

[1] https://shop.boox.com/products/go7

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#204

What is a good e-reader nowadays? I had a pocket book 2 for 15+ years but destroyed the display recently :/ Looking for a replacement now that is black&white, has a very good paper like screen, long battery life and allows me to read any .epub/.mobi without DRM or other bs restrictions. I don’t need colour screen, don’t need audio support and no integrations with any shops or anything like that. Kindle is ruled out,…

Remarkable 2 is pretty good, though last time I used it the search feature for large pdfs was pretty janky. The BOOX eink devices are also perfectly fine; they're really just android tablets with a special build of android for eink devices. Those are the ones I've used personally.

Pocket Book still makes eink ereaders, though. Is there something wrong with their offerings if you stuck with one of their products for 15 years?

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#205

What is a good e-reader nowadays? I had a pocket book 2 for 15+ years but destroyed the display recently :/ Looking for a replacement now that is black&white, has a very good paper like screen, long battery life and allows me to read any .epub/.mobi without DRM or other bs restrictions. I don’t need colour screen, don’t need audio support and no integrations with any shops or anything like that. Kindle is ruled out,…

Remarkable 2 is pretty good, though last time I used it the search feature for large pdfs was pretty janky. The BOOX eink devices are also perfectly fine; they're really just android tablets with a special build of android for eink devices. Those are the ones I've used personally. Pocket Book still makes eink ereaders, though. Is there something wrong with their offerings if you stuck with one of their products for 1…

I’ll check out Box, thanks for the tip!

I’ll also take a look at the newer pocket books - I only stuck so long with my old one because it worked perfectly fine and there was no reason to get a new device.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#206
Who needs software updates and Bezos's spying.

We have several different ecosystem e-readers in our household and all are used via USB and Calibre. The "extra time used" is won by multitude with approach where the reading stays in the center and uploading is once in a while event.

This creates a barrier for addictive bookshopping, though a reader with plenty of books allows the change of minds, not just the endless booscrrolling that a connected device enables.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#207

Who needs software updates and Bezos's spying. We have several different ecosystem e-readers in our household and all are used via USB and Calibre. The "extra time used" is won by multitude with approach where the reading stays in the center and uploading is once in a while event. This creates a barrier for addictive bookshopping, though a reader with plenty of books allows the change of minds, not just the endless b…

If there's a problem with the reader the firmware can be updated but I don't remember such issues since my first reader (Kindle version without backlight and physical buttons only, no idea of the year).

Now a fourth one (Kobo) in use and all the previous ones still fully functional and in use by close ones.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#208

This move has nothing to do with usability or device capabilities or software support. The only reason for turning them off is to remove a hole in their DRM. These old devices allowed you to remove the copy protection from their books (hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore). Removing the old devices makes freeing your books from DRM just much harder.

> hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore I thought that all the major ebook stores had DRM on most purchases, and it was just a few indie publishers choosing to be DRM-free. Has that changed?

It hasn't changed, and I don't know why people are saying that most books don't have DRM. It is only a small minority.

Tor books is the largest publisher without it (owned by Macmillan). Otherwise everything is truly hard DRM either ACSM with epub or Kindle's. They are both more or less easily defeated though.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore I thought that all the major ebook stores had DRM on most purchases, and it was just a few indie publishers choosing to be DRM-free. Has that changed?

There is a difference between hard and soft DRM. Soft DRM can be only some watermark, not keeping you from creating copies for your own devices. Hard DRM aims to prevent any copying. In my experience soft DRM is very common, hard DRM not so much.

[deleted]

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore I thought that all the major ebook stores had DRM on most purchases, and it was just a few indie publishers choosing to be DRM-free. Has that changed?

There is a difference between hard and soft DRM. Soft DRM can be only some watermark, not keeping you from creating copies for your own devices. Hard DRM aims to prevent any copying. In my experience soft DRM is very common, hard DRM not so much.

[deleted]
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