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Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

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Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#41

Post by MatthewPhillips »

duck wrote: post #2

On the Kindles, the ads aren’t intrusive, and if you get an ad model and change your mind later, you can just pay the difference and get the ads removed. So it’s not much of a risk to just get the ads. This is the first time I have heard this... you would think they would market that ability more.

Kindle is dangerously close to having too many models. Customers are becoming confused. I was at a Best Buy and I overheard a couple looking at a Kindle. This Best Buy seemed to only have the Special Offers models. The couple was asking for the ad-free version, and the employee wasn't giving them a sure answer. He thought that after you buy the Special Offers version it would ask you if you wanted to remove them for the addition $30. I'm a super nerd and even I don't know if that is true (I suspect not).

There are a couple of problems here: Amazon is allowing retailers to carry part of the line. Radio Shack has even fewer choices (mine didn't have the Touch at all). But worse, they have too many choices, and the retailers aren't able to (or are failing at) educate their employees on the devices. That couple I saw is going to be pissed if they take the device home and aren't able to remove the ads.

On the flip side, it encourages people to just buy from Amazon.com where you know what you're getting.

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#42

Post by microtherion »

berntb wrote: post #40
SWengineer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought the DX for the large screen so I can read programming books and pdfs on e ink. I like some of the artwork, esp the one of the fish. I think the kindle 4 smaller devices have more contemporary screen savers.

I really want to get a DX, but the page switch time scare me. It would be hard to browse code, etc. How does this work for technical books? (Also, I'd be fired if I sent internal pdf documents off for conversion... :-)

It works quite well for reading books sequentially, even technical books. One problem I had is that their fixed width font is not the most readable in the world. For jumping back and forth, the experience is not great, but not completely intolerable either.

The DX (and I think also the other Kindles by now) reads pdfs natively, no need for a conversion service.

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#43

Post by jsnell »

bmuon wrote: post #38
jad wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you would think they would market that ability more Maybe Amazon thinks that if it is obvious, no one will pay up front to have ads removed, and getting more money at the time of purchase is more valuable than future ad revenue.

Everything on the web points to the opposite. Ads in the long run are always more profitable. Besides, nothing guarantees that the quality of the ads will stay the same. When I bought my Kindle 4 I reasoned they looked well now because the service is pretty new, but we'll start seeing all the abhorring ads we see on the web soon enough.

I would be stunned if the lifetime advertising revenue from a Kindle unit was higher than the price to turn the ads off. Isn't it much more likely to be purely a market segmentation thing? Sell the cheap version to the extremely price-sensitive, but get an extra $30 from those who don't really care about the price.

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#44

Post by WalterBright »

berntb wrote: post #40
SWengineer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought the DX for the large screen so I can read programming books and pdfs on e ink. I like some of the artwork, esp the one of the fish. I think the kindle 4 smaller devices have more contemporary screen savers.

I really want to get a DX, but the page switch time scare me. It would be hard to browse code, etc. How does this work for technical books? (Also, I'd be fired if I sent internal pdf documents off for conversion... :-)

I bought the DX in order to read PDFs on it. No conversion is necessary - just attach a USB cable and drag-n-drop the PDFs to it. The page switch time is fine.

The only real downside is you can't "flip" through the pages. Reading a book sequentially works fine, any other way is a pain.

I got the DX at the $250 special Amazon had for it last Monday. The price is back to $379.

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#46

Post by pasbesoin »

wvenable wrote: post #31

The Kobo touch seems pretty hackable -- it's very easy to root the device; the firmware upgrades are just tarballs that overwrite files in the main partition and it has a backup partition if you screw it up. There's some documentation on mmapping the e-ink display and using ioctl to update portions of the display. I'm looking to get one of these for my wife for Christmas (Neither the Nook or the kindle are really ava…

I have the version before the Touch -- the one where they added wifi. I'd love to hack it just enough to get fixed width code examples to (mostly) fit the display width. Or, better yet, to get it to support a landscape display of ePub books (for the same reason).

I don't suppose someone's already done something along these lines? (Just asking in case happenstance brings a knowledgeable reader past this comment.)

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#47

Post by pasbesoin »

pasbesoin wrote: post #46
wvenable wrote: post #31

The Kobo touch seems pretty hackable -- it's very easy to root the device; the firmware upgrades are just tarballs that overwrite files in the main partition and it has a backup partition if you screw it up. There's some documentation on mmapping the e-ink display and using ioctl to update portions of the display. I'm looking to get one of these for my wife for Christmas (Neither the Nook or the kindle are really ava…

I have the version before the Touch -- the one where they added wifi. I'd love to hack it just enough to get fixed width code examples to (mostly) fit the display width. Or, better yet, to get it to support a landscape display of ePub books (for the same reason). I don't suppose someone's already done something along these lines? (Just asking in case happenstance brings a knowledgeable reader past this comment.)

It appears one can hack the ePub to change font settings and include an embedded TrueType font (maybe also other formats?), and the Kobo firmware will successfully process this.

I'm waiting for the battery to finish charging to see how Proggy Tiny Slashed-Zero looks. It may be too small, in which case I'll try one of the other Proggy variants, or Dina. (Both Proggy and Dina have TrueType implementations, although I'm uncertain how complete they are. I may have to look around for a better choice of a small-format fixed width font implemented in TrueType format.)

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#48

Post by pasbesoin »

swanson wrote: post #5

Can anyone comment on the page turn speed of the non-touch Kindle4 vs the Kindle3? I picked up a Kindle Touch thinking that the refresh speed would be better than the 3rd gen model, but, like Marco, I didn't really find it to be the case.

I took a very brief look at the Touch and 4 (ads version) while breezing by them in a Target (I know -- and they had some Sony's and Kobo's as well; these things are really going mainstream).

Anyway, after spending a few seconds with them, my impression was that page turn on the Touch and 4 were about the same. If so, you could use your Touch experience as a basis for comparison.

EDIT: Reading his article, now. Apparently, I didn't spend enough time with them to form an accurate observation:

The Kobo Touch is the slowest at page-turns, followed closely by the Kindle Touch. In fact, my old Kindle 2 turns pages slightly faster than the Kindle Touch. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#49

Post by wvenable »

pasbesoin wrote: post #46
wvenable wrote: post #31

The Kobo touch seems pretty hackable -- it's very easy to root the device; the firmware upgrades are just tarballs that overwrite files in the main partition and it has a backup partition if you screw it up. There's some documentation on mmapping the e-ink display and using ioctl to update portions of the display. I'm looking to get one of these for my wife for Christmas (Neither the Nook or the kindle are really ava…

I have the version before the Touch -- the one where they added wifi. I'd love to hack it just enough to get fixed width code examples to (mostly) fit the display width. Or, better yet, to get it to support a landscape display of ePub books (for the same reason). I don't suppose someone's already done something along these lines? (Just asking in case happenstance brings a knowledgeable reader past this comment.)

The Wifi version is also hackable in the same way. You might want to google "Kobo wifi hacks" and start looking around. Unfortunately, it's pretty early in the scene and developers are still working to figure stuff out. I'm not sure there are yet any workable apps written for these devices.

Re: Marco's eReader Roundup (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch)

#50

Post by duck »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #41
duck wrote: post #2

On the Kindles, the ads aren’t intrusive, and if you get an ad model and change your mind later, you can just pay the difference and get the ads removed. So it’s not much of a risk to just get the ads. This is the first time I have heard this... you would think they would market that ability more.

Kindle is dangerously close to having too many models. Customers are becoming confused. I was at a Best Buy and I overheard a couple looking at a Kindle. This Best Buy seemed to only have the Special Offers models. The couple was asking for the ad-free version, and the employee wasn't giving them a sure answer. He thought that after you buy the Special Offers version it would ask you if you wanted to remove them for…

Unrelated to the Kindle, but regarding too many models - I wanted to get a new Dremel tool last week and looked online, but for the life of me I can't figure out what the difference is between all of them and their site is terrible at comparing models. Because of that I stopped looking for one and just realized why when I read your comment.
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