[HN Gopher] I returned my Remarkable2
___________________________________________________________________
I returned my Remarkable2
Author : zekenie
Score : 147 points
Date : 2021-11-28 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (offbyone.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (offbyone.us)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Where can you get e-pub books?
|
| Most tech publishers that sell directly, IME, sell multi format
| bundles, and one of the formats is usually ePub (and usually DRM-
| free).
| bambax wrote:
| > _Where can you get e-pub books? Basically nowhere._
|
| Not trying to defend the Remarkable (I have no interest in it)
| but this isn't true. You can purchase epub files in lots of
| places (usually on the publisher's website). You can download
| epubs for public domain books on Gutemberg. And you can remove
| drm from most Kindle files on Calibre, and then transform them to
| epubs.
| ozzydave wrote:
| I've made a few things for my Remarkable which mean it's now
| almost indispensable for me:
|
| - an iOS share sheet shortcut to save a webpage as PDF to the
| tablet
|
| - a script that bundles my long form RSS feeds into a daily
| newspaper
|
| - a yearly/weekly/daily planner PDF (with clickable links)
|
| - a short manual process for de-drm'ing kindle books
| harshalizee wrote:
| Any chance you can link to or provide info or the iOS share
| sheet shortcut? That sounds nifty to have. Thanks!
| gamache wrote:
| I used a reMarkable 2 regularly for a little over six months. It
| replaced pencil and graph paper for me.
|
| The eInk display and writing feel is top notch. Everything else
| has plenty of room for improvement. In particular, organizing and
| reorganizing notes is a real chore. This could be solved by
| either a brilliant UI on the tablet, or (much more achievably) by
| a good desktop app that complements the device. Instead the
| desktop app was just as useless as the native UI, and did not
| improve during the time I used it.
|
| Eventually, my toddler ran off with the $100 stylus, and I never
| found it. I went back to pencil and paper, and that is when it
| hit me: the reMarkable offered me basically nothing. I do not
| intend to use it again.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _Where can you get e-pub books? Basically nowhere._
|
| Legally. If you're willing to break the law you can essentially
| get every book ever written in a few minutes via torrent. Truly
| vast archives are available at surprisingly small file sizes.
| alexellisuk wrote:
| I have been quite tempted by the reMarkable2, but reviews like
| this are the ones that make me think twice.
|
| When I got an iPad Pro in early 2018, I was of course taking all
| of my notes with it - from meetings, to ideas, to task lists. At
| some point I went back to paper and the iPad was relegated to
| ideation. Exporting is not great, in an ideal world there'd be a
| fast export of PDFs, but I found myself emailing them or Slacking
| them to myself to share ideas.
|
| The iPad's screen is glossy and gets finger grease onto it, the
| 1st gen pencil isn't the most natural in the hand. I know you can
| get matt screen protectors, but I like to use the iPad as a
| tablet. There's no substitute for paper, but I do find indexing
| and going back to ideas more challenging.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Supernote A5X however has been amazing for me for the last 3
| months and a joy to use.
|
| The eraser function alone makes it an upgrade (!) to pen and
| paper workflow
| fouc wrote:
| Author seems to be expecting Big Corp level quality of software &
| integration. He says something about not being able to read books
| on the ReMarkable because he can't find e-pub files for them,
| lol.
|
| It does high-light the fact that the best users for RM don't have
| a need for a Microsoft Onenote level experience and/or are more
| technically astute and can figure out their own workarounds.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I've never once had a problem turning the page (it's just swipe
| left from the right edge, feels extremely natural).
|
| You can write a lot smaller than you think you can when you first
| start. My first few pages were comically full of huge writing.
| Now I use the "small lined" template and fit my writing to that,
| and it's fine. Roughly equivalent to A4 (rather than the OP's
| A5).
|
| I read technical books on it, and it works. It's not the same
| experience as my e-reader that I read novels at night on, but I
| find the Remarkable experience better for technical and workshop
| books (and recipes).
|
| The pen eraser is a little rough, but the eraser option from the
| menu is more precise. Depends on what I'm erasing as to what I
| use.
|
| Advantages over paper:
|
| - I can move whole chunks of text around the page (or copy-paste
| between documents). I use this a _lot_
|
| - I have ~500 pages of notes on my Remarkable. I cannot carry
| that much paper easily.
|
| - I create lots of notebooks, with meaningful titles (a lot of
| those notebooks are 1-2 pages long, which is fine), so finding
| stuff is a breeze. I don't use the OCR because I don't need it. I
| can't find stuff in paper notebooks nearly as easily.
|
| I have a (homemade) paper journal that I enjoy writing in for
| journaling - there's something about making marks on paper, and
| about making journals, that I enjoy. For everything else, I use
| my Remarkable, and it's been great.
| fouc wrote:
| My biggest question about the Remarkable 2 is whether it is big
| enough to read computer programming or other large books
| comfortably.
|
| The writing aspect of it would be more of a bonus to me. I do
| like the idea of potentially writing/doodling in the margins,
| highlighting with a pen, etc - but it sounds like it just ends up
| saving that out as as a modified PDF, which isn't as convenient
| perhaps.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Here it is on top of a piece of printer paper 8.5x11"
| https://i.imgur.com/Hg5nl3O.jpg
| supermatt wrote:
| Im a bit surprised that it is a5. I was thinking to purchase one,
| expecting it to be closer to a4 from the pictures on the website.
| Either they are composites, or those models must have tiny hands!
| (or maybe i dont look at other peoples hands enough to know what
| is "normal" :))
| shakow wrote:
| Yeah, I have no idea where the author found that. I have one on
| my desk right now (but no ruler unfortunately), and it stands
| somewhere between A4 and A5.
|
| Edit: according to A4/5 standards and Remarkable promotional
| content, it should be very close to A4.5.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It has a 10" screen. The long side of an A4 piece of paper is
| 11+.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| A4ish sized eInk is expensive. There is a few 13.3" eInk
| devices out there like the Boox Max Lumi and Fujitsu Quaderno
| A4 but they are pretty much all around $700-800. The 10.3"
| devices are IMO a good compromise in size and price. It's
| basically normal iPad size.
| Aeolun wrote:
| You didn't check what it could do before buying it? Especially
| when these are the lacking features you are now returning it
| over?
|
| I dunno, this whole article screams 'user error' to me.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| > When I turned it on, I had one of my first disappointments. It
| was really hard to to type my wifi password.
|
| Not only that, but there is no supported way at all of getting
| the MAC address of the device, which makes it incredibly
| irritating when users want to use one in an enterprise/academic
| network.
| aranchelk wrote:
| > Pen, paper & scanner
|
| Yeah, tough to beat. I keep on looking at iPad/Remarkable/etc.
| and keep coming back to fountain pens and paper.
|
| More often than not I'm just working through a problem and the
| distilled version ends up in code; for documentation I dictate
| with text-to-speech. When I need to, I've got a scanner with ADF.
|
| The real estate is as big as whatever surface I'm working on. No
| lag. No distractions. Minimal cost. I can color code with
| different inks. Slightly annoying to travel with but as long as I
| fill up my pens (100% with no air bubbles before flying), it
| works fine.
| someonewhocar3s wrote:
| It's kind of funny how the man opens the narrative with "I can't
| write"
|
| Like okay you tried something for note taking but you can't
| write.
|
| He mentions the OS being skimpy or something. It views e-pub and
| takes notes. Should be a remote for the desktop, probably isn't.
| Should have like a per-observation history for drawing apps to
| work with, and probably doesn't. It's okay. It's how it is.
| ksec wrote:
| I mean most of these are software problems. It is built on a
| Cortex A7, released in 2011, the same SoC being used in
| "original" Raspberry Pi 2. Even if the remarkable team had the
| time to develop or adopt open source solution they will still
| need their hardware to keep up.
|
| And they had to lower the price to $299 already because of the
| volume they were selling at $399 simply wont make it.
|
| This just shows the bar of today's consumers. If they had sold at
| least a million unit a year they could easily have further lower
| the price by another $100 while working on a much improved R3
| with better processor ( not that I am aware of there is one...
| all the NXP SoC Solution are quite under powered ).
|
| Last time I checked they were at least profitable. So I hope they
| keep working on it.
|
| Consumer Electronics are hard. Very Hard.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Guys, I really like the iPad Pros with the pencil but the thing
| is I want just a simple notebook app. I want to draw on a page
| and then add a new page easily and draw on that one and so on. If
| I could screen share that would be great but if I can't, so be
| it.
|
| Who knows what app I should get?
|
| Procreate and Fresco are what I've tried.
|
| I was thinking about the Remarkable 2 but now I don't know. Seems
| like a bad idea if all I want is a sketching tool that I can
| quickly take notes on.
|
| This sync issue is just a nightmare. I don't want to pay big
| bucks just to post to my own Google Drive. It isn't the money,
| it's that I won't get it because I know it costs money and then I
| won't use it and then I'll use the device less as a result. At
| least on an iPad I can just airdrop it.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Nebo is great if you want absolutely first-class handwriting
| recognition. It also does equation and shape recognition and is
| basically black magic as far as I'm concerned.
|
| Paper by WeTransfer is probably the best pure notebook app -
| really refined and easy to use. I have years of work notes in
| this.
|
| Vectornator is good for vector work along with the Affinity
| apps. My favourite vector app is still Graphic, but it was
| sadly bought by Autodesk and basically abandoned.
| Syzygies wrote:
| "Undo" killed the typewriter, the rest is a bonus.
|
| Algorithmic support will kill journals. How do you rank these
| apps, if one wants some degree of algorithmic sophistication?
| selectodude wrote:
| Oh gosh, the notebook apps on iPad are best in class.
|
| Goodnotes is insanely great. I loved Notability but they
| started doing some nonsense and moving to a subscription plan
| so I hesitate to recommend that anymore (though it is like
| $12/yr).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Just tried Goodnotes and it's pretty good but the iCloud sync
| just fails with a 503. I like the recommendation, though.
| It's got exactly the flow I want so I am grateful.
|
| It's just a pity that the sync is rubbish. It's unfortunate
| that this happens so frequently. Like between Miro,
| Procreate, and Goodnotes I have the functionality but no one
| does everything neatly.
| selectodude wrote:
| It's a known problem that apparently just resolves on its
| own. iCloud sucks.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/GoodNotes/comments/qpo3kf/icloud_s
| y...
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > In reality, this only works if you have e-pub books
|
| There is soooooooooooo much content available in PDF
| [deleted]
| bartvk wrote:
| Those may display too small on that Remarkable2, since it must
| zoom out to show a standard-sized PDF.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I haven't had any problems viewing things formatted for
| 8.5"x11"
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah, there are a few core features that can really make or break
| a notetaking workflow. I'm on an iPad (I need full color pan/zoom
| for my core workflow) and I want to love ZoomNotes so badly, but
| the OCR search is slow. It's a silly problem -- it goes one
| document at a time every time, so probably OCR caching is janked
| out or something -- but it's core enough that I am willing to cut
| out _all_ of its considerable feature library from my workflow
| and use a much simpler app, GoodNotes, instead. It barely meets
| the core subset of features that I absolutely need, but none of
| those features are broken, and that makes it a winner.
| scottndecker wrote:
| This person likely spent more time writing the review than using
| the product. I have a remarkable2 and saying you have to give
| "the sidebar menu a colonoscopy to find the UI to list all pages,
| then create a new one, then navigate to it" is patently false and
| just stupid to say. Also, in the comparison between remarkable
| and pen/paper/scanner, the reviewer leaves out several important
| features.
|
| - How about an infinite number of pages?
|
| - Or the ability to undo/redo?
|
| - Or the ability to resize?
|
| - Or the ability to quickly send a document to a coworker?
|
| - Or the ability to just be drastically more organized?
|
| - Or the ability to not have to carry around 5 different
| notebooks everywhere you go?
|
| - Or the ability password protect your documents?
|
| There are lots of reasons a reMarkable is drastically better than
| pen/paper.
| unknown2374 wrote:
| Reading the review, i cant help but feel that the author was
| always planning to return the unit. They did not seem to spend
| much time actually using the tablet and invest in learning how
| to use it, they just took advantage of the return window, and
| from tge sounds of it, was always planning to.
| p2t2p wrote:
| I use iPad with Notability and it seems to be perfect. I keep my
| notes in Apple Notes and hand writing in Notability. Endless
| scrolling makes it so it doesn't feel size limiting and features
| like circle a piece of text to move/zoom it makes usual paper
| feel outdated. I'm trying to migrate to Apple Notes for hand
| writing as well but they are way less than perfect for it for
| now.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I got a Remarkable2 last year and an Onyx Boox Air. The Boox Air
| (and there is now an Air 2) is on the whole, a lot better. The
| Android support makes it usable as an e-reader and the writing
| experience isn't different enough, in my mind, to justify the
| other limitations of the Remarkable.
|
| Having spent $1000 on e-Ink tablets, I have a lot of opinions on
| them, but the primary one is to not mistake what you are buying.
| I think 95% of the time, people would be better off with an iPad
| and Apple Pencil. That isn't to dissuade people from getting a
| Remarkable, but it definitely isn't what the marketing/zealous
| fans make it out to be. It's primarily about capturing hand-
| written text. If you want something with more capabilities, Onyx
| is where it's at.
| syshum wrote:
| That is the thing though most remarkable fans say it is for
| replacing paper notebooks. I dont know of many that talk widely
| about "other features"
|
| I got the remarkable specifically because it did not have
| "other features", I have enough distractions and alerts from my
| phone, I do not need a tablet that get my email, twitter, etc
| etc. I specifically did not want an iPAD or a full featured
| Andriod Tablet with Slack, Teams, Email, etc etc etc
|
| I needed something to replace the paper notebooks I carried
| with me everywhere, it does that job exactly as I wanted
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| Why would you prefer an e-ink over a regular tablet with
| colored screen as a replacement for paper notebooks? Isn't
| having colors available an advantage?
|
| My primary incentive for buying an Air 2 (I'm still on the
| fence) would be to use it as an e-book reader that I can use
| in the evening without having to worry about blue light
| interfering with my bio rythm. And from what I read - most e
| book readers are crap. (Kindle is out of the question for me
| as I hate Amazon and avoid it where I can - except for AWS
| which is 50% of my job).
| mushufasa wrote:
| I bought a first gen remarkable used at the beginning of the
| year, with the expectations that
|
| - I would read more
|
| - I could use it for organizing work notes
|
| For reading, almost none of my reading actually happens on
| remarkable. It's usually easier to just use my ultralight laptop
| (macbook air) instead of setting up a buggy sync to the
| remarkable, and having backlit screens is better than e-ink
| unless you have the perfect reading chair/nightstand light setup,
| which I don't.
|
| For writing, I do get a lot of use out of it. I used to write a
| lot of paper notes and draw on scrap / computer paper, and then
| would gradually lose them and not be able to find things when I
| need them. Part of this is my own disorganization, but I also
| travel a lot so it sucks to have the notes in another place, and
| scanning requires intentional effort that seems like overkill for
| notes, that is until you remember them and want to look them up
| later.
|
| The most useful remarkable feature, by far, though, is where you
| can stream your screen to a computer. Then i can write drawings
| and diagrams like on a whiteboard, but over Zoom for a remote
| team.
|
| The problem is this feature is super duper buggy. It's currently
| broken for me. They "improved it" in the software but it's broken
| without a subscription, except I seem to have the subscription???
| If anyone from remarkable is reading this, please fix that one
| feature, (used to be called LiveView), and then I will keep your
| product and write a good review.
|
| Yes, a laptop with a pen or tablet would also serve the same
| purpose, I know. If I had an iPad, I would probably use it
| instead.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| > having backlit screens is better than e-ink
|
| I enjoy "frontlit" e-ink screens like the Paperwhite and Kobo
| Glo/Aura quite a lot to be honest.
| martini333 wrote:
| I was considering an reMarkable instead of an iPad Pro with a
| pencil back in 2015. But with the cheap iPad having Pencil
| support, I would never consider it today.
| mywacaday wrote:
| Has anybody used onenote on the boox note air 2?
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| Check-out MyDeepGuide on YouTube; he tried OneNote on the Note
| Air 2.
| throwanem wrote:
| Having recently picked up a Remarkable, I can empathize with some
| of these frustrations, but only some.
|
| Good things first: The writing and drawing experience is
| excellent. It's enough like paper and pencil that I've
| occasionally found myself trying to shade with my fingertip, as I
| would when drawing with graphite. The medium fineliner tool is
| perfect for notetaking, and the calligraphy pen tool does a solid
| enough job of feeling like a flex-nibbed pen that it's taught me
| some things about how to use one of those which I previously
| hadn't grasped. Battery life is ample, and palm rejection is if
| imperfect then at least tolerably okay.
|
| The OCR is surprisingly good, _if_ your handwriting doesn 't
| suck. Mine doesn't, by dint of having spent a few years using
| fountain pens - we missed a trick dropping those in childhood
| instruction here in the US; they're a tool you just can't use
| long-term and _not_ improve your hand. For fun yesterday I hand-
| wrote a trivial shell script, without really trying to write more
| neatly than usual, and fed it to the reMarkable 's OCR to find it
| fell only two characters short of perfect accuracy. Especially
| given that, I can't really accept the claim that the OCR is bad -
| if you can't write clearly enough for humans to read, is it fair
| to expect a machine to do better?
|
| Now the bad, of which there is regrettably quite a lot: The
| first-party software ecosystem is basically nonexistent, and the
| on-device capabilities are weirdly rudimentary. In paper notes I
| index by topic and page number, which is probably the simplest
| possible system of organization to maintain over such a corpus,
| and I expected thoughtfully built software on the reMarkable to
| do at least as well. But there isn't _anything_ , so I'm faced
| with the need not only to come up with a new system that
| withstands freely rearrangeable pages whose numbers no longer can
| be relied upon, but also in so doing to work around the slowness
| and lack of tactility of the reMarkable as compared to paper. The
| page turning gestures are indeed not that reliable, and slow when
| they do work. Worse, the absence of even a basic bookmarking
| system forecloses any kind of rapid access to a specific page
| anywhere.
|
| Even the few features that exist tend not to be completely
| implemented. For example, layers exist but aren't opaque; if you
| draw in white on a layer below lines in gray or black, the white
| appears on _top_. It 's hard to even come up with a mental model
| for how this is implemented, and it violates the expectation
| created by every other graphical program that provides layers.
| They're still useful for protecting some content on a page from
| accidental erasure, but they're _only_ useful for that. The lack
| of a "save as template" feature means that, to use eg the custom
| layout I've drawn up for a sleep diary, I have to either keep it
| as a blank page which I laboriously duplicate and move for each
| new page I need, or go through a convoluted flow of exporting,
| saving as PNG, and reuploading via the onboard SSH server. Too,
| if I want straight lines for that layout, I need a physical ruler
| to create them - which is fun for a little while, but would be
| preferably replaced by a straight line tool in the actual UI.
|
| The hackability of the device is clearly excellent, and the
| community ecosystem quite rich. I can see where the folks at
| reMarkable could imagine this was enough, but it isn't. The
| device sells as being "like paper but better" right out of the
| box, but that's only true for people who have no idea how to get
| the most out of paper. But I _do_ know how, and the device has at
| every turn frustrated my efforts to apply that knowledge to its
| use.
|
| I have to say that I've found the reMarkable on balance mostly
| disappointing. I don't know whether they got so excited about the
| tech for itself that they forgot to put thought into making it
| pleasant to use, or if the tech cost so much to productize that
| they can't afford to build the software it deserves, but either
| way it comes to the same in my view.
|
| I haven't yet decided to return it, but I also haven't decided
| _not_ to. Maybe I can hack it into being the tool it really
| should have been out of the box, or turn it into a "newspaper"
| annotable RSS reader, or something.
|
| In any case I expect before long I'll be back to taking regular
| notes with pen and paper, because the reMarkable has a very long
| way to go before it can provide a comparable level of utility.
| Syzygies wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I have a career of scanned math research notes, in felt-tip
| color on 32 lb laser printer paper. Teaching through the
| pandemic forced me on to an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. I
| quickly tired of the primitive Notability interface, and moved
| to Concepts. One rejects many art apps by testing whether
| handwriting is rendered naturally (or better), then most of the
| rest if one wants scalable vector art rather than bit maps.
| Concepts has the most advanced algorithmic support of those
| left, as far as I can tell. I certainly have complaints, but in
| some ways their layers are smarter than Adobe Illustrator
| layers. For instance one can group art without moving it all to
| one layer. This is as big a deal as lexical scope in
| programming languages.
|
| I yearn for the calm of a separate device just for pencil
| notes, but I fear this is like buying a wind surfing board. A
| week after learning to balance on this board, I'll want a
| trickier board.
|
| Algorithmic drawing is still at the Dartmouth BASIC stage, and
| the future is exciting. One imagines future drawing platforms
| with the self-referential power of Lisp. One doesn't imagine
| moving backwards.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The OCR quality is comically bad
|
| Why is handwriting recognition so bad? One would think that if we
| can build a machine to recognize cat pictures, recognizing a
| handwritten "A" ought to be trivial.
| [deleted]
| activitypea wrote:
| > Recognizing a handwritten "A" ought to be trivial
|
| You clearly haven't seen my handwriting :)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Perhaps I have. I've seen the prescriptions you write!
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I notice in the comparison the author has the cost of scanning
| the digital pages.
|
| If you have an issue with organization, OCR, and interface, it
| seems these issues would be 10x worse if you're digitizing your
| hand written notes.
|
| Just the process of digitizing them with a camera is cumbersome.
| The quality of the image isn't really great. Tearing up your
| notebook and feeding it into a scanner is worse.
|
| So the author compares the cost of the writing on a notebook and
| phone to the remarkable but not the convenience.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Phone cameras have gotten good enough to reliably capture
| notes, and there's software that'll give you better results and
| are tailored to scanning documents. It's a pain to have to scan
| everything by hand, but I find pen & paper to be an overall
| better experience, plus you get a built-in physical backup.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Office Lens (and CamScanner and similar applications) are
| incredible, the output without much effort is absolutely
| serviceable for me.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Strongly agree. I am seriously impressed with the ocr engine
| in iOS 15, and it's ability to successfully ocr any images or
| photos in my photo roll, even my poor handwriting.
|
| My only complaint is that the Apple Notes app doesn't seem to
| OCR content added to notes; hopefully in the future it might,
| I submitted a feature request.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Is there any state-of-the-art OCR system on linux, which
| works reliably without too much fiddling?
| selectodude wrote:
| I've had pretty good outcomes with Tesseract, but it's
| command line only and it's not even a small fraction as
| simple and straightforward and plain useful as the built in
| tools on Mac OS X.
|
| https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract
| endymi0n wrote:
| Interesting. I was on the verge of returning my Onyx Boox Max
| Lumi (v1) myself, which, as far as I know is the only other
| contender in that space.
|
| The whole experience is sluggish, the UX terribly bad, the
| hardware feels cheap and subpar and the software is really not
| well adapted to e-ink.
|
| It's a cool A4 sized PDF e-ink reader without many equivalents
| and okay to decent digital notebook with digital syncing.
| Everything else still sucks badly.
|
| I was hoping we'd get more competition in this space.
| opheliate wrote:
| > I should note that in theory there is a gesture I saw
| referenced in the onboarding materials to go to the "next" page,
| but I never could figure out how to make it happen
|
| This makes the whole article seem un-serious to me. It seems like
| there was either a defect with the author's device, or they
| couldn't take the time to Google "turn page remarkable" and find
| this help page showing the (very intuitive) gestures listed, with
| videos: https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/36000958211.... This is absolutely not something I
| had trouble with on my device.
| taysix wrote:
| I stopped reading this review after hitting this point. The
| next page gesture is so simple and gestures overall are a key
| thing to nail down if you're trying to use a remarkable. It
| sounds like it just wasn't for the author but it also seems
| like they didn't try to learn the device or look up guides for
| it.
| shakow wrote:
| > I should note that in theory there is a gesture I saw
| referenced in the onboarding materials to go to the "next" page,
| but I never could figure out how to make it happen
|
| Either the author or their device has a big problem, because it's
| the ubiquitous "swipe to the side" gesture.
|
| Now I understand that the R2 is not necessarily the best thing
| since sliced bread and that it does not fit well in all
| workflows, but the author criticism is rather low quality.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The author has a few silly points, as pointed out by others - but
| plenty of valid criticism.
|
| The basic problem with the Remarkable is that it's useless
| without the $8/month "cloud" plan because that's the only plan
| that enables its primary feature: handwriting recognition. That
| means that very rapidly it has a TCO approaching or exceeding,
| say, a used iPad and Pencil. A device that exceeds the
| capabilities of the reMarkable in every regard (even on the most
| basic level: an iPad doesn't require a network connection and
| cloud service to do handwriting recognition and drawing
| simplification), even before you get to the massive ecosystem of
| accessories and apps. This device is a one-trick pony that is
| expensive and requires its own special food.
|
| They're also more than a little shady about their refund/return
| policies. If you don't buy the cloud "trial", you don't get the
| "free" trial/return policy. The cloud trial is a nonrefundable 3
| month $24 fee.
|
| They have no defined return/warranty policy if you don't buy the
| cloud service; it's literally "go look up what your rights are,
| we'll do that." This is buried several pages into their site away
| from the product page.
|
| I've never seen a consumer electronic device company say that nor
| make it so hard to tell what the warranty and return policies
| are.
|
| I've never seen a consumer electronic device company tie a return
| policy to a cloud service purchase.
|
| In the last discussion about reMarkable I believe several HNers
| had return/warranty issues with them, too.
|
| That doesn't even begin to get into the privacy concerns with
| them being what appears to be a principally Hong Kong based
| company. They may have some offices in the Netherlands, but
| everything on their homepage points to HK operations for some
| reason. Where are the cloud servers based?
| renewiltord wrote:
| I thought they were Norwegian.
| thisiszilff wrote:
| > The basic problem with the Remarkable is that it's useless
| without the $8/month "cloud" plan because that's the only plan
| that enables its primary feature: handwriting recognition.
|
| Are you saying the key feature for the remarkable is
| handwriting recognition?
|
| I have a remarkable 2 and I love it, but the whole appeal is to
| replace the endless paper notebooks and loose sheets that I
| use. It is great for that. Since I've bought it they've added a
| bunch of new stuff and the subscription stuff as well. I'm not
| sure how I feel about it, but then again I have no need for
| those features. It sounds like most people want a general
| purpose e-ink tablet whereas the remarkable is basically e-ink
| paper.
| throwanem wrote:
| Even as paper, it's subpar, because I can _index_ paper and
| perform index lookups in sublinear time. On the reMarkable,
| not so much, and it has not yet stopped being wild to me that
| for all its evidently brilliant hardware integration, its
| software falls short on functionality that was an established
| standard centuries before computing machines were even
| _imagined_.
| thisiszilff wrote:
| That's a fair criticism. I always rewrite & revise the
| important notes as I go forward, so I never end up looking
| back. I can imagine that it is super frustrating to find
| things that aren't near the end or on a known page number
| -- their page scrolling functionality is clunky to say the
| least.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Interesting rant. I'm wondering if I'm weird because I didn't hit
| any of this.
|
| In defense of the RemarkAble2
|
| Page flipping by swiping my thumb left or right seemed both
| intuitive and pretty flawless.
|
| Granted, my handwriting is okay, I print rather than use cursive,
| but perhaps that makes it easier to recognize what I write?
|
| As for e-pub's, everything from O'Reilly and NoStarch (a couple
| of places where I get reference books) work fine, I also had a
| number of text books scanned and their PDFs work well as do the
| 1000+ page PDFs that count as reference manuals for
| microprocessors these days.
|
| Things I hope improve;
|
| I do wish the PDF navigation was a bit better. In the ideal world
| an upswipe would bring up the 'bookmarks' for the PDF and allow
| one to select one, but using the menu to go to page view then
| picking the page you want hasn't proven to be too much of an
| issue.
|
| Drawing notes is the best for me. Feels very good and works well.
| The one thing I would improve would be a zoom in/zoom out feature
| for adding detail.
|
| And I'd love a screen that is both larger and higher resolution.
| erolx wrote:
| Just update the latest software.
| lallysingh wrote:
| * Says he has horrible handwriting and complains about the OCR
|
| * Never looks up how to do the basic gestures
|
| * Complains about the size, when it's comically obvious what the
| size is from the constant advertising.
|
| Look, the device isn't for most, but HN really deserves a less
| half-assed critique than this.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| * Making OCR work with perfect handwriting was happening in the
| 90s, it's not unreasonable to expect modern hardware to work
| with messy handwriting
|
| * Gestures should be intuitive, and if they're not they should
| be prompted
|
| * Size on paper != size in reality. The weight distribution
| alone can make two devices with seemingly identical dimensions
| feel very different in hand
|
| This is a fair critique of device, your comment just feels like
| a kneejerk defense of something you like.
|
| For the record I returned mine, I get it's meant to be a
| focused device but the value proposition is just not there, and
| it felt like a complete waste.
|
| It sits in the awkward position of doing too much to be smaller
| and cheaper and doing too little to take advantage of its size
| and computing power.
|
| No matter how much you value minimalism and paperfeel I'd
| easily recommend an iPad Mini over this. If you're a tinkerer
| making a distraction-free iPad is an evening's work. And if
| you're not a tinkerer the Remarkable is not that interesting
| theon144 wrote:
| >* Never looks up how to do the basic gestures
|
| To me, it read like it just didn't work, not that he didn't try
| or look it up.
|
| >* Complains about the size, when it's comically obvious what
| the size is from the constant advertising.
|
| It's still a valid criticism, no? The digital pen/e-ink combo
| gives you way less feedback, hence precision, hence density of
| writing in a given area. I'm not just speculating, I've tried
| out a Remarkable 2 my friend got, and that was my impression -
| _nearly_ like paper, but I still had to focus more and write
| slightly bigger letters for it to be legible.
| stonogo wrote:
| If you want to write denser you can just zoom in. I don't
| feel the need, because the fineliner pen does great, but
| sometimes I do it to fit notes into pdf margins.
| Spivak wrote:
| Whether or not it makes sense for a HN post notwithstanding,
| these kinds of reviews are good because if you are similar to
| the author then you'll likely have the same feelings.
|
| It's the same with movie critics, knowing a movie with 84% on
| Rotten Tomatoes or something isn't half as useful as the
| opinion of your twin flame critic.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The parent commenter cherrypicked a few of the weaker
| arguments and threw out the extensive criticism of other
| aspects of the device, such as the atrocious UI.
|
| The reMarkable was panned pretty hard by every major tech
| outlet as being useful for only one thing, and worse, _not
| very good at that one thing._
| eitland wrote:
| > The reMarkable was panned pretty hard by every major tech
| outlet as being useful for only one thing, and worse, _not
| very good at that one thing_.
|
| yet my colleagues who loved the first one love this one to
| and keep recruiting new users so there is obviously a
| market for it.
|
| Personally I returned mine because I couldn't justify both
| the iPad and the reMarkable at that time but the writing
| experience was fantastic.
| throwanem wrote:
| Yeah, I got recruited that way too, only the trouble is
| that having had the device a few days now my takeaway is
| I should really have done more research first and ideally
| spent that money elsewhere. Presented by an excited
| aficionado, the thing looks amazing, but when you go to
| actually _use_ it the way you use a notebook, the
| software just isn 't there to help you do that.
|
| Oh, well. I guess if nothing else it's a valuable
| refresher on the correct weighting to apply when
| evaluating early adopter opinions.
| eitland wrote:
| I sent mine back.
|
| Is it too late to return your?
| throwanem wrote:
| No, I've only had it a few days. I haven't yet really
| decided to return it, either; the tech is legitimately
| amazing, even if the software lacks a lot, and I've yet
| to more than scratch the surface of what the community
| has to offer.
|
| I'll find _some_ worthwhile use for the thing, even if it
| takes a while. I 'm just disappointed that that looks so
| much like not being the use for which I actually bought
| it.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I thought it was a good review, because I find devices like
| this are always tempting, but never live up to the imagined
| utility compared to simple pencil and paper or simple "editor
| and text files" (or real books, in that case). I was glad to
| find out this is another one of those, before I spent $$$ on
| one.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Quick warning: I bought my device before they started
| offering a subscription service and got grandfathered in for
| free.
|
| It profoundly changed how I organise my desk and work day.
|
| I used to have a stack of papers which contained mostly
| random noted and work related diagrams. It was a mess to find
| anything and most notes were of "questionable" quality
| (strikethroughs and corrections galore)
|
| Over the years I tried several methods to get better at
| organising myself (hi-tech and lo-tech aka pen and paper).
|
| For some reason I can't explain, the remarkable stuck and
| helped me to get my shit together.
|
| I suspect that it was mostly by chance that this specific
| model came to my attention at the right time with the right
| design. Most likely any one of several similar
| products(e-ink, "paperlike writing feeling", no app store or
| browser) would've done the trick.
|
| It was quite expensive though and had they had their
| subscription service at the time, I probably wouldn't have
| bought it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > stack of papers
|
| The trick is to get a spiral paper notebook. When full, run
| it through a sheet-fed scanner, and throw the notebook
| away.
|
| You'll need a scanner anyway, for all those other random
| papers.
|
| Also, a sheet-fed scanner is infinitely faster than a
| flatbed, and it'll do both sides at once.
|
| Don't forget to back up your disk drive. If you drop it on
| the floor (like I did) it's gone.
| epmaybe wrote:
| I went through a few weeks of debating with myself the benefits
| of getting an e-ink tablet for note taking, reading, etc.
|
| I need color for the majority of stuff that I read/study/work on,
| which was certainly one point against remarkable. Additionally, I
| couldn't really justify getting a tablet to replace paper. Paper
| is ubiquitous. It is thin. It goes everywhere. I can fold it. And
| there's something _fun_ about writing with a good pen (I mainly
| use fountain pens nowadays).
|
| Eventually, my workplace just gave us all iPads, so I use that
| for annotating PDFs, otherwise I'm still just using trusty pen
| and paper for jotting things down. Can always scan them if
| needed.
| ralphb wrote:
| I've had my Remarkable 2 for 2-3 months.
|
| I agree with some of the critiscims here (missing tags, bad
| typing experience, little integrability), but overall I am super
| happy with the tablet. I think it's just down to the usecase. It
| does what I most need it do to! (replace physical notebooks)
|
| It also does some things that I didn't know I needed. It's just
| so amazing to have an undo for stuff you write on paper. The
| ability to select and move stuff around is also something I now
| do constantly.
|
| I think it just comes down to what problem you're trying to
| solve. For me, replacing physical notebooks = solved problem.
| biztos wrote:
| May I ask how you used physical notebooks before?
|
| I'm really tempted by the ReMarkable -- decent PDF reader with
| good annotations, and replacing pen and paper in meetings,
| would be enough.
|
| But I'm a pretty hardcore pen and paper user. I find iPad and
| Pencil great for art but laughably deficient for writing and
| brainstorming.
|
| Is the Re that far ahead of Apple?
| throwanem wrote:
| No. See my comments elsewhere in this thread, but the
| takeaway for me is that, even just to replace pen and paper
| in meetings, it's not up to the task - I need to be able to
| refer back to those notes later, and the reMarkable does
| nothing to facilitate that and, by inaction, a good deal to
| frustrate it.
| throwanem wrote:
| > It's just so amazing to have an undo for stuff you write on
| paper.
|
| _Sometimes._ When drawing, absolutely. When writing,
| absolutely _not_. Nothing else in my entire life has improved
| my handwriting so much as using a pen to do it, because without
| an eraser there are no options left but to get better or give
| up, and it 's also amazing how much an eraser slows you down.
| xvector wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I wrote something by hand for
| someone else to read. As long as I can read what I wrote, I
| don't care how shitty my handwriting is, and I'd wager it's
| the same for most people.
| mbreese wrote:
| I see taking notes like writing code. I write code as if
| it's to be read and understood by "me, 6 months from now".
| And let me tell you, "me from 6 months ago" can be an idiot
| at times. But ever since I started with that mindset, my
| code quality has gotten better, and it is vastly easier to
| understand.
|
| Notes are the same way, but even more explicit. You largely
| aren't writing notes to be consumed while the topic is
| still fresh in your head and you can remember what your
| cryptic scratches were meant to convey. You are writing for
| you in the future when you can remember what a particular
| acronym was or why you wrote "important!!! - check
| kobernets out".
| throwanem wrote:
| This is an excellent point, and basically all of why I
| worked out the indexing scheme I've mentioned elsewhere
| today. An _aide-memoire_ is only as good as the aid it
| can provide, and the index largely unbinds it in time -
| if I need something from a year ago, it 's no harder to
| find than when it was from yesterday.
|
| It takes a few minutes a day to maintain the index and
| keep it current, but only a few minutes, and that time is
| amply repaid by the benefits in utility.
|
| Likewise, I'll sometimes spend the few minutes after a
| meeting expanding on my notes with context, thoughts for
| further action or research, etc. This stuff can be hugely
| useful both in the short term and especially in the long,
| when I'm revisiting or reconsidering a project and
| rebuilding the threads of context I had when it was last
| at the center of my focus.
|
| On the whole, I think the general rule here is that
| taking notes is a good start, but what really makes them
| count is putting some thought and effort into taking that
| raw material and turning it into an accessible and useful
| mnemonic tool.
|
| And that brings us back to the reMarkable's shortcomings,
| not least of which is that it offers no way to actually
| _do_ that. It 's all the more frustrating for how the
| platform clearly _could_ support this capability, maybe
| in ways genuinely not seen in human history before now -
| but, as it currently is, it can 't even provide the same
| utility you could get with a quill and hand-laid pages in
| the 1600s.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yah, this is majorly true. I discovered at exam time my
| freshman year that I couldn't read my class notes. I then
| did a major upgrade to my lettering technique :-)
|
| (I had never taken notes before.)
| stevekemp wrote:
| That was me, until the various recent lockdowns, when I've
| started writing letters to people.
|
| Concentration is hard when I want to write quickly "just
| for myself", but force myself to slow down to make sure
| what I mail is readable.
|
| It's a fun process, far harder than typing, but very
| worthwhile.
| throwanem wrote:
| I used to say the same, and then found myself surprised by
| how difficult it is to go back and read even my own old
| handwriting compared to how it is now, enough so that I
| feel I've done myself a favor by putting in the effort to
| improve it.
|
| Like good headphones, it seems to be one of those things
| where you don't know what you're missing until you know
| what you're missing.
| ralphb wrote:
| That's interesting. Maybe I should work on improving my
| handwriting. For now I just really love the undo feature,
| and I specifically use when I look at something I wrote
| and think "I wont be able to read that in the future" :-)
| throwanem wrote:
| That's entirely fair! And I don't mean to sound as if,
| using a pen, I never find the need to just scratch
| something out and try again. But these days it's maybe
| once a page, where looking back to the first volume of my
| diary from back in 2018, it was more like once a line.
|
| And in general, I find a real benefit in facility of
| writing to facility of _thought_ - not falsely is it said
| that we think a little differently when writing vs.
| typing, and each kind of thinking is both valuable and
| not precisely replicable in the other medium. Being able
| to write neatly, at a speed approximating that at which I
| think, has made it a _lot_ easier to fix thoughts in a
| form that allows me to work with them.
| xvector wrote:
| Were you brought up writing, and did you do most of your
| schoolwork writing? I think that might have an impact.
|
| As kids today begin typing more than writing, I think the
| perspective of writing facilitating thought might change.
|
| The implications for this are interesting long-term, as
| humanity's methods of thought entry change. In the future
| we likely will one day revert to machine-assisted oral
| entry.
| throwanem wrote:
| Quite the contrary, really. I actually started typing at
| age six, much earlier than most of my cohort, and used
| pen and paper mostly under protest as a child and
| especially a teenager. Years on MU*s in my teens and 20s,
| and probably on the order of a million words of prose
| expended in roleplaying, left me with no interest in
| paper save for the most evanescent of purposes.
|
| So when I picked up that first Metropolitan and Amazon
| Basics notebook in 2018, it was more for the sake of it
| than anything, and with no real expectation of
| persevering - indeed, having surprised myself with the
| discovery that the medium really does make a difference
| has no small amount to do with why I've kept up the
| practice to the tune of around 1500 diary pages and
| several A5 books filled with work notes.
|
| (While I'm singing the praises of the old ways, I suppose
| I should mention that a good hand, with a good pen, also
| doesn't hurt to use. When it doesn't take any force to
| clearly mark the paper, you can write pages at a time
| with barely a pause and never feel it in your wrist.
| Granted I do also have a writer's bump now, but I'm not a
| hand model, so that's not really a drawback!)
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| The "undo" functionality, in my experience, is not amazing
| because it provides an enhanced eraser. It's amazing
| because it allows you step backwards through your free-hand
| thoughts.
|
| As an example, I routinely use my tablet like a whiteboard
| for working out bits of math. The ability to bring back a
| value I'd previously erased to see exactly where I
| miscalculated is extremely useful. Similarly, I find this
| sort of thing to be really helpful when whiteboarding my
| way through a particularly thorny programming problem at
| work.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How is it for reading PDF books and research papers?
| sidr wrote:
| This was my primary use case for this and I love it - I need
| to be taking notes in the margins for me to stay engaged with
| the material. My rare pain points have been: * sometimes the
| resolution is not enough and if you really want to zoom into
| a figure, the UX to do that is a little clunky * colors can
| be critical for some figures and the papers/books don't take
| care to pick colors that are easily distinguishable in
| greyscale.
|
| I place a _lot_ of value on paperfeel for writing though (I
| tried writing on pdfs with an ipad and...ugh). I 've also
| really come to appreciate the distraction-free setting (I
| thought I could just be disciplined and not need a device
| specifically for this - I was wrong). I also use it for note
| taking in meetings where I want to be present and pay
| attention the whole time - game changer there as well.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> I place a lot of value on paperfeel for writing though
| (I tried writing on pdfs with an ipad and...ugh)_
|
| I use a product called "paperlike" for my iPad and it has
| amazing paperfeel. I can write and it feels like I'm
| writing on a paper notebook. Okay, a very hard, flat,
| glass-backed notebook, but the pencil moving over the
| surface is great.
|
| For me, the downside is that I'm writing on a mini computer
| that can do anything. So, it's easy to get distracted from
| the primary job of taking notes.
| throwanem wrote:
| On the note of paper feel, you might consider trying a
| fountain pen and smooth coated paper. The ink forms a
| liquid bearing and causes the nib to glide over the page,
| and there can be almost no friction - by comparison, the
| reMarkable feels _extremely_ rough, like using a hard
| pencil on toothy sketchbook paper. It 's not unpleasant,
| but an iPad would actually be a lot more like using a
| medium nib on a sheet from Clairefontaine or Tomoe River.
|
| (While we're making this sort of comparison, it's also
| interesting to note that, as with a graphite or Apple
| pencil, the reMarkable stylus tip is a wearing item, while
| fountain pen nibs are not.)
| therein wrote:
| iPad feels too slippery to me as is. I get one of those
| screen protectors that give a paper-like feel to make it
| more like what I am used to from Remarkable.
| throwanem wrote:
| Higher friction at the interface between tool and surface
| makes for easier control at the cost of requiring more
| force to produce a given result. That's why your hand and
| wrist get sore so quickly.
|
| With a fountain pen or (presumably) an iPad with no
| screen protector, you have no choice but to learn to
| control the tool _without_ that excess force - force
| which will eventually destroy a pen nib, and in both
| cases will ruin your lines because there 's no friction
| to damp it. Learning not to overcontrol does take a
| little while, but pays off both in work that's neater and
| more skillful, and in being able to work much longer
| before aches force a pause.
|
| (With the reMarkable, too, there's a benefit in that your
| stylus tips will last longer, and you'll get more nuance
| out of the pressure sensitivity with tools that make use
| of it.)
| lottin wrote:
| It's OK. You can use a highlighter and scribble on the
| margins. Taking notes on a separate notebook is a little
| awkward because you have to switch back and forth.
| stewbrew wrote:
| For reading books, I'd rather go for an Android based device
| that features a more potent reader app that allows you to set
| bookmarks and to more easily jump around in big books. It
| works very well for reading papers and well structured books
| that don't ask you to look back x pages all the time.
| garren wrote:
| I agree. I'm waiting on a Boox Lumi at the moment. I read
| PDFs on my reMarkable primarily because other formats,
| specifically e-pub, aren't that great on it. As strictly a
| PDF reader the reMarkable is good (albeit overpriced for
| just reading PDFs.)
|
| The nice thing about android is that you can also get a
| kindle app. I know the parent is looking specifically for
| PDF support, but it's nice to have solid kindle, PDF, and
| e-pub support on a single device.
| spasiu144 wrote:
| I think this is the perfect tool for PDFs and research notes.
|
| My Remarkable is filled with research papers and books.
|
| As I read them I scrawl notes all over the margins just like
| I did with paper printouts during my undergrad.
| BoysenberryPi wrote:
| > Remarkable is advertised as an E-Ink reader as well as a
| writing device. In reality, this only works if you have e-pub
| books on your hard drive. Where can you get e-pub books?
| Basically nowhere
|
| What? I'll give you that the two largest distributors, Amazon and
| Barnes and Nobles don't sell epub but pretty much everyone else
| who sells ebooks does including Google Books. Also, you can use
| Calibre to turn any other ebook format into an epub.
|
| https://calibre-ebook.com/
| Yoric wrote:
| I'm not sure how they get there. I have a Kobo and ~100% of my
| hundreds of books are epub.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| or https://z-lib.org/ if you're not too squeamish about
| copyright
| eslaught wrote:
| Does Remarkable support Adobe DRM? If not, then the vast
| majority of places you can get ePubs either (a) won't be
| compatible, or (b) won't have the ebooks you care about
| (because publishers only sell them with DRM).
|
| So no, unless you're going out of your way to use a workflow
| that's unsupported and of questionable legality (DRM
| stripping), you probably can't read ebooks you care about on
| this device.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I think its unfortunately accepted as standard that you have
| to use these kind of tools if you want to use these devices
| seriously.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't think there's questionable legality of stripping DRM
| to read books you have a license to on your own device.
| meibo wrote:
| There may not be, but it's a pain in the ass. To strip
| Kindle books, you need to use an outdated Kindle PC client
| that uses an old encryption and may or may not break at any
| point in time, stop it from updating, track down some
| shifty plugin for Calibre that handles like a house of
| cards, etc.
| input_sh wrote:
| Years ago, yeah. It took some time to figure out the new
| .kfx format. Now? If you're on a macOS/Windows no setup
| is necessary, provided you have the Kindle app installed.
| If you have a physical Kindle and you use Linux, the
| setup is as easy as looking up a serial number in
| settings and entering it into the plugin's settings. If
| you don't have a physical one and no access to a Windows
| machine, then it is a bit tricky, yeah. That said, I
| assume this doesn't apply to at least 70% of its users.
|
| As for the plugin's stability, I have yet to experience a
| problem after like 7-8 years of usage. I've upgraded from
| Calibre v4 to v5 before the plugin supported v5, but
| that's about it.
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| Appropriate any pointers, as I want to copy and paste
| from an book on the Kindle ended up camera photo to ocr.
| I am on Linux (Debian) and struggle to complete this
| task. Either I am not good a google or need to re-try.
| djbusby wrote:
| You don't think that; publishers however think differently.
| If you think it's user-hostile, they think it's right way.
| dheera wrote:
| Well, the publishers aren't entitled to enter my house
| and check.
|
| If bits and bytes enter my home I can do anything I want
| with them within that private property.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| AFAIK, It's not questionable, there is no gray area. On the
| US it's a crime, almost everywhere else it's perfectly
| legal.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You're right. It's in the realm of not paying sales tax
| on stuff you buy out of state. No one keeps track of that
| shit but also it's illegal to not do that.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| As of a couple years ago, my state (Maine) added an
| option to calculate out-of-state taxes as a percentage of
| your income instead of tracking.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I actually did do that until e-tailers started collecting
| state taxes.
|
| It was very frustrating, from a civics perspective, to
| have to choose between obeying democratically enacted
| laws or being a chump.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| The only two places I know that haven't criminalised the
| circumvention of technical protection measures are Israel
| and Afghanistan. I'd love to be told different.
|
| (I feel there's still an opportunity to challenge DMCA
| 1201 in the US, and then there's also the triennial
| review. It's harder in places where the exemptions are
| hard-coded -- but maybe you know of one that includes an
| exemption for this kind of DRM removal?).
| dannyobrien wrote:
| It's not quite as bad as that: according to the IIPA,
| "Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Norway, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
| South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as smaller
| markets, such as Bolivia, Brunei, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon,
| Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda" haven't implemented it.
| e12e wrote:
| Wasn't DeCSS held legal in the US for purposes of playing
| back DVDs you've purchased? Shouldn't consuming e-books
| fall under the same ruling?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If I remember it correctly, CSS was deemed too weak for
| being considered copy protection. But I'm far from an
| expert. I'm not even from the US.
| stewbrew wrote:
| I think things are beginning to change. My impression is more
| publishers sell watermarked but DRM free PDFs.
|
| BTW I personally find it odd the OP wants to reads epubs on
| the remarkable. The remarkable is good for reading PDFs. The
| epub experience is rather meh.
| nextos wrote:
| Me too, I only read technical PDFs. I've tried Remarkable 1
| for this and it was pretty decent. How is version 2?
| AQuantized wrote:
| To be frank I don't know if there's any serious 'workflow'
| involving ebooks that doesn't involve using calibre or
| equivalent software to ensure they're DRM free and in the
| format you want.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| On Kindle it's just clicking "buy now" and waiting 30
| seconds for it to load on the device.
|
| I know that's not "drm free" or anything but I doubt 99% of
| ebook users actually care as long as their device can load
| it.
| stewbrew wrote:
| Does Kindle allow you to scribble in the ebook?
| jvandonsel wrote:
| No. Highlights with typed notes are supported, though.
| y4mi wrote:
| If readers didn't care about anything besides comfort
| then they'd just download the DRM free epubs from
| z-library for free, which is even less hassle then
| dealing with amazon kindle.
|
| I still own a Kindle and buy books through it, but it's
| just false that this is the least hassle option.
| tw04 wrote:
| I'm guessing if you took a poll of 1000 random people and
| asked them if they know what z-library is you'd be lucky
| to find more than 1 person. I'd never heard of it until a
| year ago and nobody in my friends group had either.
| bernulli wrote:
| What's the legal side of this?
| coldtea wrote:
| Don't ask, don't tell
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Not relevant if the only metric is 'comfort'.
| biztos wrote:
| Does "comfort" not include ease of use and discovery?
|
| I'm on Kobo and I'm a nerd and I have "workflows" for
| content I already paid for but isn't Pocket compatible
| (lookin at you, NYRB!) and I've never even heard of
| z-library.
|
| Maybe the average Kindle user, ditto?
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I'm not sure I get your argument here. On the one hand:
|
| 1. shop for a book right on your Kindle device
|
| 2. click "buy"
|
| Whereas on the other:
|
| 1. go to your computer and search for a book on z-library
|
| 2. download the epub
|
| 3. convert the epub to a Kindle-compatible format
|
| 4. copy the book to your Kindle
|
| Isn't the first workflow clearly "less hassle" than the
| second?
| y4mi wrote:
| Z library has a button to email/send the ebook to your
| kindle, so it's done after the first step. You can do
| that on your phone or kindle itself depending on the
| model.
| [deleted]
| asiachick wrote:
| I've never found calibre to work except on novels. Books
| with diagrams, tech books, it totally fails, at least for
| me
| amluto wrote:
| See https://public-
| inspection.federalregister.gov/2021-23311.pdf
|
| Under III.A.3, it appears presently legal to use tools such
| as this:
|
| https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/
|
| as long as you are using it for a purpose listed in the
| exemption.
| lelandfe wrote:
| This carve out is for "persons who are blind, visually
| impaired, or have print disabilities," for the record.
|
| Wired did a nice write up on this:
| https://www.wired.com/story/ebooks-drm-blind-
| accessibility-d...
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Remarkable is advertised as an E-Ink reader as well as a
| writing device. In reality, this only works if you have e-pub
| books on your hard drive. Where can you get e-pub books?
| Basically nowhere_
|
| Has this guy ever heard of zlib?
| Bud wrote:
| Not to mention MyAnonymouse...
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Well, even if you do that, the e-reader on the Remarkable is
| really, really poor. It's a note taking device that can be
| hacked into doing some other stuff with varying degrees of
| success.
| dheera wrote:
| Personally I use a Boox e-Ink tablet, which just runs Android.
| That means I can just install the Kindle app and read Kindle
| books without any fuss. I do hate DRM with a passion but
| sometimes I just want to get on with my day and this solution
| works for me.
|
| I really like the _look_ of the Remarkable though, I just wish
| it ran Android.
| misja111 wrote:
| I'm doing exactly the same, I'm using almost exclusively the
| Kindle app and it works fine on my Boox tablet.
|
| What disappointed me is the slowness of the refreshing. I
| guess it's because I hadn't used any e-reader before. I
| bought my Boox with the idea that I could also run other apps
| on it, since after all it ran on Android. Running other apps
| is possible but it's just really a pain, even web browsing is
| just too slow.
| dspillett wrote:
| I've considered Boox devices, but I'm put off by not wanting
| to reward the GPL abuse that seems to be occurring in that
| product range.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| How is it? Does it feel fast like iPad? Or at least
| responsive even if not that that fast? I have Paperwhite and
| while I still love it to death after 8 years, I just can't
| live with the lag with traditional e-ink tablets like
| Paperwhite.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| You can tweak some of the refresh rate settings. My
| experience is it's a lot faster than a paperwhite (to the
| point that now when I use the kindle I wonder why it's so
| slow), but nowhere close to an ipad.
| sithadmin wrote:
| Boox tablets seem to refresh faster than Kindle
| Paperwhites, but the appearance can be janky looking
| because Android isn't optimized for running on eInk. It
| takes some time to adjust to.
|
| This isn't a big problem for reading, but navigating
| through the general system UI and Android apps can be
| offputting.
| garren wrote:
| I've got a reMarkable2 and have been using it on and off for a
| few months now. I was looking for a larger e-reader to replace my
| broken kindle DX. I use mine exclusively for reading, mostly
| technical, and not for note taking. I don't use the pen and I
| don't annotate PDFs.
|
| Reading e-pubs tends to be more miss than hit. Often e-pubs will
| fail to render things like code snippets, diagrams, occasionally
| whole pages, on the reMarkable. The same epubs work fine
| everywhere else.
|
| The device works great for PDFs though. Fortunately the
| publishers I usually buy books from offer multiple formats, and a
| PDF is always an option. I gave up on wrestling with e-pubs on
| the device.
|
| I agree that the page turning can be janky. The UI is mediocre,
| and navigation could be improved quite a bit. Syncing is also not
| great, but eventually works.
|
| The battery life is excellent though, and the physical design is
| better than anything else I've encountered. It's the software
| that sucks.
|
| Overall, I wouldn't consider purchasing it again. There are
| alternatives that offer similar capabilities, larger screen
| sizes, and more. I'd look at those first.
| nnwright wrote:
| I had many of the same complaints with my remarkable 2...
| returned it and got an onyx boox note air 2 instead. Still not
| perfect, but I find the experience much better for my needs.
| bartvk wrote:
| The writer complains about not being able to find/do the "next
| page" gesture. That seems hard to believe when it's just a
| swipe. Did you also experience this?
| schmorptron wrote:
| The PineNote ( https://www.pine64.org/2021/08/15/introducing-the-
| pinenote/ ) looks like it could really be a good competitor to
| the remarkable, if software support is as excellent as it has
| been for the PineTime watch. Really looking forward to things
| heating up in this space!
| shbooms wrote:
| Per the author in the link you posted, the PineNote appears to
| still be a prototype in development and does not sound like
| it's really anywhere close to be competing against the
| consumer-ready remarkable:
|
| "If you're looking to buy a PineNote in the first batch, you
| must expect to write software for it, not to write notes on it.
| The software shipping from the factory for the first batch will
| not be suitable for taking notes, reading e-books, or writing
| your dissertation. It may not even boot to a graphical
| environment."
| trevyn wrote:
| That looks very cool. It says preorders are open to
| "developers", but the preorder button goes to an empty preorder
| store. Has anyone been able to preorder?
|
| https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/
| paulhart wrote:
| I registered for the pre-order and was accepted into the
| developer batch. AFAIK we're all waiting on the devices.
| Kernel development is actively occurring on the Quartz64
| board (same CPU), and some people with pre-release devices
| are working on the display driver.
| codebook wrote:
| I am using Supernote A5x. It has solutions for almost all issues
| the author addressed. Syncing is exceptionally good. It can sync
| to its own cloud or dropbox.
|
| User can install Kindle app, so I can read all e book. The
| annotation feature while reading the book is good.
| halayli wrote:
| Not sure what the author is talking about. I've been purchasing
| epub books exclusively since 2014. It's the format that unlocked
| me to start reading books on devices. Prior to using epub format,
| I've tried on numerous occasions to read on devices but I
| couldn't make the jump. I use my 2018 ipad exclusively for
| reading. The only apps installed are apple books and safari.
| throwthere wrote:
| The new "connect" subscription for $11.99/month is required for
| dropbox/drive integration. That was enough reason for me to pass
| on remarkable. I get the subscriptionification of everything but
| the pricing is out of whack. I mean if you capitalize $144 at 3x
| you're paying $432 for a simple integration.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I'd been on the fence about buying one for a while too, but
| once the cloud subscription became required, that was it for me
| deciding against it.
| a-dub wrote:
| i've wanted an e-ink tablet for reading (full size for stem docs
| as well as casual reading) for quite some time. as the remarkable
| doesn't support kindle, it was sort of out for me... moreover, i
| have similar handwriting issues as the op and can only write
| legibly under very specific conditions that the tablet is likely
| not to work out for. (lots of space, no lines, no distractions,
| large desk. it's complicated)
|
| i've been eyeing the onyx boox series, but they weren't gpl
| compliant at the time i was looking into them and perhaps more
| seriously, i didn't want to introduce any android devices into my
| life that didn't clearly have a rigorous security update program
| behind them.
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