[HN Gopher] Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format
___________________________________________________________________
Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format
Author : bumbledraven
Score : 331 points
Date : 2022-08-11 03:47 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.microsoftpressstore.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.microsoftpressstore.com)
| evolve2k wrote:
| Umm does this mean I can now "borrow" ebooks from the library?
| From the point of view that the library borrow systems never
| supported MOBI but seemed to support other formats.
| nikau wrote:
| There is software that can strip out the DRM, but its piracy
| either way so if that's your preference just go to library
| genesis and get the book already converted.
| cable2600 wrote:
| Amazon chose MOBL because it was compatible with the PRC format
| the old Palm Pilots used. The Palm Pilot was the original eBook
| reader.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| yup, and the original app to read these was MobiPocket reader.
| Curiously, the pdb wrapper is completely pointless on all non-
| palmOS platforms, but since it only adds a negligibly-small
| header (0x4e + (dataSize / 0xff00) * 8) bytes, nobody cared and
| it allowed using all original tools
| wyldfire wrote:
| I actually read a bunch of novels on the palm. It seems bonkers
| to imagine straining my eyes that way these days. But I found
| it pretty enjoyable at the time.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > It seems bonkers to imagine straining my eyes that way
| these days. But I found it pretty enjoyable at the time.
|
| Haha yeah! Similar story here. When I was in high school I
| had a Sony Ericsson W810i.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W810
|
| I read multiple full books, hundreds of pages long, on this
| tiny screen.
| nottorp wrote:
| Worked fine if you enlarged the font. You ended up with 1/4
| or lesss of a page on screen at one time, but who cared.
| Weeks worth of reading in your pocket!
| themadturk wrote:
| The Palm was certainly my first ereader. I didn't use it for
| very long before my sister sent me her Kindle 1 (which she
| was replacing with a Kindle 2), but my eyes were much better
| in those days than they are now!
|
| I still miss the auto-scrolling feature of the Palm's
| ereading software.
| pseingatl wrote:
| No it wasn't. The original eBook reader was the Rocket eBook
| reader. The books were html 3.3 files.
| Bud wrote:
| The original ebook reader was a microfilm machine.
| utucuro wrote:
| The Palm Pilot 1000 was launched in 1996, the Rocket, 2 years
| later in 1998.
| Lio wrote:
| I can remember reading Project Gutenberg books on a Psion
| Series 3[1] in the early 90s but not sure exactly when that
| was, '92 maybe.
|
| I'll bet someone must have tried something similar,
| earlier, using one of the little Tandy portables.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3
| Finnucane wrote:
| There was the Sony Data Discman in '92, which failed
| because books had to be distributed on a proprietary disc
| format, and there were not many.
| lostgame wrote:
| Uhh...the Rocket didn't come out until 1998.
|
| Sony's _1992_ Data Discman would beat that by 6 years.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I still miss Peanut Reader and peanutpress.com
|
| Simpler times.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Is this just trying to frustrate people pirating e-books and
| e-mailing themselves them via AWS servers?
| jhbadger wrote:
| Probably not. Most ebooks "floating out there" are already in
| epub format. If anything, this makes it easier because they
| don't have to be converted to mobi.
| sanjayts wrote:
| Why would someone do this? Isn't it basically asking to get the
| account deactivated due to piracy concerns esp given that now
| Amazon has the whole trail of things you have pirated?
| physicsguy wrote:
| People do it because documents that go through the e-mail
| thing sync across devices like Amazon purchased books.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| As has been said lots of books are already out there as epub,
| there are many that are already in Amazon's file format too.
| I'd guess that most people torrenting books are using calibre
| anyway.
| leotaku wrote:
| This is great news! MOBI and especially KF8 (Amazon flavour of
| XHTML on MOBI) are horribly complex by virtue of them being
| additional layers over the PalmDB format, which on it's own is
| actually quite elegant.
|
| I've spent quite some time on building a fully featured MOBI
| library[1]. A bit sad that my work will become obsolete this
| quickly, but definitely good in the long run.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/leotaku/mobi
| mariusor wrote:
| I was just looking for a replacement library for go to build
| documents for the Kindle. I have a little service that converts
| RSS feeds articles into content for ebook readers and currently
| for them I was converting to mobi. It's great to see that
| there's an "easy" way to switch to AZW.
| debugnik wrote:
| Is this to stop users from downloading MOBI files with old
| versions of the Kindle app and export them with Calibre? Or was
| that already over?
| innocenat wrote:
| That process has been being done with AZW3 for a long, long
| time already. It's not related.
| debugnik wrote:
| Last time I checked, removing the AZW3 DRM required third
| party plugins that many people had trouble making work, while
| the MOBI downloads were easy and DRM-free. But that was long
| ago, so maybe it's easier now.
| DavidWoof wrote:
| This is a welcome move, but I keep trying to figure out how this
| is going to effect Libby users (which is probably 80% of my
| kindle usage these day) and I can't find any info at all.
|
| Does anyone have any idea?
| teraflop wrote:
| This particular page is only talking about a change to
| Microsoft's ebook store.
|
| On Amazon's side, they've been updating their docs to talk
| about how MOBI is "deprecated", but the only _actual_ change
| announced is that MOBI support has been removed from the "Send
| to Kindle" (via email) feature. So if you're not using that,
| you should be unaffected.
| [deleted]
| Rufhfhs3747rhe7 wrote:
| ~8" foldable phones have eliminated the need for a separate
| eReader in my opinion. OLED screens are comfortable enough to
| read on and open source apps on Android can open any format and
| integrate with any dictionary. And most importantly, it's already
| always with me.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I disagree that reading on OLED is the same as e-ink, and I
| disagree with the idea that I would want to read on my phone
| instead of on a dedicated device. For me, part of the
| experience is getting away from the phone.
| Markoff wrote:
| How many weeks of reading they last on one charge? Also OLED
| screens ae horrible for reading compared to e-ink.
| glenngillen wrote:
| If, like me, Amazon dropping support for the MOBI for at was news
| to you then here is an article discussing the announcement:
| https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2022/05/03/amazon-dropping...
| lvass wrote:
| This is just a transfer feature, the deprecation is older as I
| was already unable to source the official CLI converter a few
| years ago.
| innocenat wrote:
| The CLI is still shipped with Kindle Previewer 3 software.
| It's still used internally by Amazon.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I'm extremely confused about this. I have an older Kindle
| Paperwhite (PW 3/ 7th gen I think?) and when I used the 'email
| sent' feature I got that mail about dropping mobi support in
| favor of epub, but when sending an actual epub I got an error for
| sending a wrong file, ostensibly because the Kindle only supports
| mobi.
|
| Are they going to ship a software update? Would be a shame if
| that service doesn't work any more in the future.
| lizzard wrote:
| I had this happen as well and ran the epub through Calibre,
| converting epub to epub. That actually fixed it and the Kindle
| accepted the new file.
| AndyJames wrote:
| I never investigated this deeper but I have similar issue on
| my Nook Glowlight. Despite it supporting ePUB files some of
| them just throw an error on the devices. Converting them ePUB
| to ePUB solves the problem.
| sudo_rm wrote:
| I've learned recently at my new job that ePubs are just a
| giant zip file of html, css, etc. Sometimes you need to
| rezip them if they are not working quite right and I
| imagine that is what converting them from ePub to ePub is
| doing.
| drittich wrote:
| I converted a PDF to EPUB (v2) through Calibre, and Send to
| Kindle would not accept it.
| innocenat wrote:
| Probably because the EPUB file has some problem. Amazon is very
| strict about EPUB validity.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Amazon is very strict about EPUB validity.
|
| They're also bad at converting perfectly valid epubs to their
| own format.
| innocenat wrote:
| EPUB3, yes. I don't think I have seen any EPUB2 having
| problem (except if it's missing encoding declaration)
| drittich wrote:
| How are you getting them onto your Kindle? Send to Kindle
| using EPUB does not work at all for me.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Amazon provides a tool that will convert epubs to kindle
| documents. (Poorly.)
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-
| Previewer/b?ie=UTF8&node=21381...
|
| They do this because the normal flow involved in
| publishing a kindle book is that you write an epub and
| submit it to Amazon.
| ilamont wrote:
| Not in my experience. Amazon will accept ePubs that Apple
| Books rejects because of validation errors.
|
| Example:
| https://twitter.com/leanmediaorg/status/1547292135963168775
| drittich wrote:
| I'm confused, because Send to Kindle does not support sending
| EPUB files as of yet. Does this mean a future release will?
| tmd83 wrote:
| One of my favourite kindle feature :) it fits in most of my back
| pockets. I like to read while on the road, when waiting etc and
| not having to carry it on my hand which is a hassle and not
| forgetting in random place is a big feature for me.
| notdarkyet wrote:
| Are there any good ebook services that sell books in epub
| formats? Typically I will try and buy from the publishers website
| to load onto the Kobo but ideally I can buy the epubs themselves
| without being locked into a service like Amazon/Kobo.
| hiidrew wrote:
| library genesis is a wonderful site :)
| anilakar wrote:
| I can only find mentions about Amazon's "Send to Kindle" feature
| doing internal .epub to AZW coversion and I really don't consider
| that as proper support for the format.
| atlgator wrote:
| My understanding is that Amazon supports conversions of EPUB to
| MOBI through their "email to your kindle" feature. Is there a
| firmware update planned for Kindles to support EPUB natively?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| My understanding is that there was OS version years back that
| added EPUB native support, but Amazon never properly announced
| it, it just quietly happened. It's taken a while longer for the
| Send to Kindle tool to update to add .epub file format support,
| but people have been sideloading EPUBs over USB for some time
| now.
| varispeed wrote:
| On topic, how does the eReader world look today? I tried one a
| couple of years ago, and as a person with ADHD I was constantly
| frustrated how bad the experience was in terms of responsiveness.
| I can see it could work for a book that you access linearly, but
| for technical books, where you often need to switch between pages
| it was a chore and I couldn't focus my attention on reading. So I
| still buy paper books, because I can quickly flick between the
| pages and access my bookmarks. The downside is that they use a
| ton of space in my room and I am hoping that one day someone
| makes an eReader that I can flick through pages as fast as a real
| book (or faster).
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I have a 2014 model an I only use it for narrative reading. I'm
| not sure the UX has caught up with the need to quickly go
| between different areas of a book. But I hear the new Kindle
| Paperwhite has a really fast refresh.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Full page refresh is still slow, but the interfaces have gotten
| better to mitigate that a little. I've never used a Kindle, but
| on Kobos there's a scrubbing interface that appears that shows
| pages about 1/8th size so you can flip through them visually a
| lot faster (due to partial refresh), and the page location
| scrollbar places enlarged dots around places you've been
| recently, so it's not hard to flip back and forth between a few
| places (e.g., your current reading location and an endnotes
| section).
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Interesting, I thought piracy might've had something to do with
| it.
| paxys wrote:
| I'm very confused about what file format(s) Kindle actually
| supports.
|
| * They are dropping support for MOBI from their Send to Kindle
| website and apps.
|
| * They are adding support for ePub in their Send to Kindle
| website and apps, but apparently they will be converted to Kindle
| format (MOBI? AZW?) under the hood.
|
| * Several sites mention AZW3 as the official Kindle format. Is
| that the same as MOBI?
|
| * It is unclear whether ePub and/or MOBI are natively supported
| by Kindle.
|
| If I connect my Kindle and (1) drag an ePub to its local storage
| and (2) drag a MOBI to its local storage, will either of them
| work or not?
| alexott wrote:
| I downloaded send to kindle this weekend trying to upload file
| bigger than 25mb tgat I can't send by gmail. It didn't accept
| ePub. I ended by using calibre to send it as email
| manholio wrote:
| It supports exactly the format it needs to so that you can
| purchase DRM encumbered ebooks off Amazon. I hope that clears
| it up.
| nottorp wrote:
| For local storage just use Calibre and stop worrying about
| formats IMO.
|
| Drag whatever into Calibre, press send to device, end of story.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I bought Code 2e from the MS press store just this week.
|
| I downloaded the epub, Calibre converted it to mobi when I
| said to deliver to my 2014 Kindle. Looked kinda crappy.
|
| Downloaded the mobi direct, sent it to the Kindle. Looks much
| better.
|
| The conversions are not always quality.
| julianlam wrote:
| Short of a software update, I don't imagine older Kindles would
| magically be able to read ePub files.
|
| It sounds like sideloading a .mobi file will still work.
| iou wrote:
| I did a sideload of .mobi today after being rejected by
| email, no issues.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| My paperwhite did an update a month or so ago around the time
| I started getting emails about this. It's been nice not
| converting to .mobi before transferring (sorry Calibre, I
| don't need you anymore) but there are still a few glitches
| reading the format, especially with special characters.
| Nothing too annoying.
| skrause wrote:
| My 4th generation Kindle from 2011 didn't get a software
| update.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Mobi and AZW3 (aka KF8) are both at their core Palm DB files.
| AZW3 are basically Mobi files for backwards compatibility
| purposes, with an added compiled ePub file for improved layout
| options. Kindles can read both formats, with newer Kindles
| using the HTML/CSS from AZW3 files.
|
| As far as I know, the only options to get an ePub onto a Kindle
| convert to an AZW3 before putting sending it to the Kindle (or
| manually convert to a Mobi file before sideloading it). And
| those conversions aren't perfect, I've absolutely had
| technically correct ePubs end up as a confused mess when sent
| to a Kindle. Though, these days most publishers seem to be
| targeting whatever subset of ePubs Amazon supports in their
| conversion pipeline.
| goosedragons wrote:
| AZW3 is itself one of their "old" formats. Their new hotness
| is KFX which is some proprietary binary ever-shifting always-
| DRM'd even when "DRM-free" format. This is the only format
| that supports the enhanced typesetting feature. The best way
| I've found to get ePubs onto Kindles is to use Amazon's
| Kindlegen. It does the least damage.
| twerh34fasdfa wrote:
| On a side-note: I'm surprised devices like Kindle survive where
| superior ones like those from Sony perish simply because of the
| software walled garden. Not a good outlook for humanity.
| DanAtC wrote:
| Sony's love affair with propriety formats (Betamax, MiniDisc
| (and ATRAC), Media Stick, UMD) doesn't do them any favors.
| oittaa wrote:
| > Sony
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
| cratermoon wrote:
| One word: Betamax
| lvass wrote:
| What walled garden are you talking about? I never even
| connected my ~8 year old kindle to the internet, only send
| files that I own via USB.
| Markoff wrote:
| good luck transferring files if you forget cable, see my
| other lengthy post here
| Shorel wrote:
| As long as they have Wi-Fi, Calibre has a nice web server
| for this.
| Markoff wrote:
| TIL GTK thanks
| liveoneggs wrote:
| How often are you recycling books on these devices?
| nottorp wrote:
| Sony still makes ereaders? Are they affordable yet? Last time i
| checked they cost an arm and a leg.
|
| Don't know about others but the first ereader i bought was a
| paperwhite on sale. I.e. cheap. I was used to reading on dead
| tree and pda/tablet and didn't see why I should get an
| expensive dedicated device. Only tried when it was discounted
| enough to be an impulse purchase. Don't think Sony ever had
| something in impulse purchase territory... and come to think of
| it, haven't seen anything about ereaders from them in the news
| in a long while.
|
| As for walled garden, Calibre. Amazon can be safely ignored
| should you wish that.
| Markoff wrote:
| Sony product affordable
|
| Pick one.
|
| When had last time Sony affordable product with good VFM not
| beaten by any other brand? It's same story with their
| smartphones and anything I can think of.
| nottorp wrote:
| That was kinda my point :)
| nicolas_t wrote:
| So far the kindle oasis is the best ereader in term of hardware
| and ergonomy I've used and that's comparing to a kobo sage I
| also have and to all the ereaders I've had over the years
| (never had sony but I used to purposefully avoid amazon)
| hbossy wrote:
| That's too bad. I used it a lot to produce epub fitting on my old
| Sony PRS-300. It couldn't parse pirated epubs with tables of
| contents, diacritical signs and illustrations, so it was easier
| to download mobi and convert it in Calibre to epub. It worked
| nine times out of ten, compared to maybe 10% with epub->epub
| conversion.
| iou wrote:
| Also send-to-kindle today rejected a mobi I sent by email with:
|
| >>>
|
| Send to Kindle supports the following document formats: Adobe PDF
| (.pdf) Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) Rich Text Format (.rtf) HTML
| (.htm, .html) Text (.txt) documents Archived documents (zip ,
| x-zip) and compressed archived documents MOBI (.azw, .mobi) (will
| not support the most up-to-date Kindle features for documents)
| JPEG (.jpg), GIF (.gif), Bitmap (.bmp), and PNG (.png) images.
|
| Additionally, Send to Kindle emails now supports EPUB (.epub).
| Later this year, we'll also be adding EPUB support to the free
| Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to Kindle
| desktop app for PC and Mac.
| iou wrote:
| I thought the response was a bad thing, but if it just means
| we're finally accepting epub as a common default that's pretty
| great, right?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Does Amazon still strip metadata and cover art from user-
| provided epubs? If they're still intentionally gimping the
| implementation, IMO it's a step backwards
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| It does on first web sync after the ebook is transferred.
| It can be fixed (by transferring again) and then it won't
| be removed on subsequent sync.
| alexott wrote:
| At least author title and cover is kept - I've sent few
| books few days ago. There was a period when it didn't
| handle them well when sent via email, but they fixed it few
| months ago
| kemayo wrote:
| Not sure about metadata, but cover art persists through the
| email-to-kindle process at least.
| pseingatl wrote:
| I hope not. Publishers know that it's impossible to typeset
| an ePub exactly as you want it displayed since display is
| under the control of the reader, or the reading device. At
| least until pdf is no longer synonymous with letter paper/A4,
| ePub is a flawed format.
|
| And for the umpteenth time, the pdf format is size agnostic.
| NeverFade wrote:
| How is that different from the old default, which was MOBI?
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Has anyone had any success sending epub with send to kindle via
| email? So far since the announcement of them dropping support,
| I've tried but every time I get a message saying the epub I sent
| is not in the correct format.
| colomon wrote:
| It's worked about 90% of the time for me. Basically everything
| I've sent to kindle the last two months I've sent as EPUB, and
| most of it worked. A lot of them were the "Compatible EPUB"
| version from Standard EBooks. (Even though it says they're not
| for Kindle, that appears to be out-of-date.)
|
| So I just tried Man and Superman this way --
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/man-an...
| -- and it worked just fine. I guess I don't know if the
| formatting is completely correct, but I haven't had any
| difficulty reading books loaded this way -- pretty sure they
| look significantly better than the Project Gutenberg
| equivalents.
| acabal wrote:
| AFAIK when you use "send to Kindle", Amazon takes your epub
| and runs it through Kindlegen (or whatever Amazon's current
| equivalent is) to create an azw3 on their end. They are not
| rendering the raw epub - it goes through a black-box
| conversion before you see it. Thus, all bets are off as to
| how the "epub" will look on your Kindle. (Indeed, Calibre
| does a better job converting to azw3 than Kindlegen! That's
| why we use Calibre when creating azw3 files at Standard
| Ebooks.)
|
| I won't believe Kindle supports epub until I can transfer an
| epub via USB cable and have it available to for immediate
| reading. Anything else is Amazon "supporting" epub with very
| big air quotes.
| colomon wrote:
| "We wanted to let you know that starting August 2022,
| you'll no longer be able to send MOBI (.mobi, .azw) files
| to your Kindle library."
|
| That said, that was August 2nd and sending that file as
| MOBI did work.
|
| (And the success e-mail message they sent me today said
| they did convert the Man and Superman EPUB to "Man and
| Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy.azw3".)
| vzaliva wrote:
| I tried 2 days ago and it worked.
| longnguyen wrote:
| I build a tool to send articles and newsletters to Kindle[0].
| I've been sending EPUB for a few months and it's tricky.
|
| Amazon still use the old Kindlegen software and to check if
| your epub has issues, you need to download their Kindlepreview
| app and open your epub.
|
| [0]: https://ktool.io
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I asked about whether DeDRM will still work for me to truly own
| the books I legally purchased on /r/kindle, and my post was
| removed.
|
| It is infuriating there are communities of readers who are so in
| the pocket of Amazon they block conversations about DRM
| stripping.
| clementmas wrote:
| From a user perspective that seems like great news. Now I don't
| have to worry about file extensions. I just keep ePub files in my
| library.
| Thorentis wrote:
| I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader
| about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me
| very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does
| more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom
| OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even
| see what the Kindle value prop is.
| maratc wrote:
| The Kindle is inexpensive, has great support, has a huge
| library (open to non-US people with non-US credit cards), and
| you could just email a MOBI to it (which is great if the Kindle
| owner is your parent). It's only disadvantage was that it did
| not support ePub and so one had to go through Calibre.
|
| Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB and no Calibre-tion is
| needed, I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.
| nixgeek wrote:
| I'm not incredibly comfortable with Kindle transmitting
| information on every page turn back to Amazon. Always felt a
| bit creepy to me.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117217/amazon-kindle-
| tr...
| thebeardisred wrote:
| In that sense though, it's not much different from an RSS
| client reporting back to a synchronization server which
| articles you've read and which you haven't. It would be
| great to turn it off without resorting to "airplane mode",
| but it's also been a nice feature which allows me to
| squeeze in a little bit of reading from my phone when I
| don't have an e-reader on my person.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| AFAIK Kindle shows you ads and can occasionally delete a book
| from your library. Isn't it so?
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| My Kindle doesn't show ads, because I didn't buy the
| version that shows ads. I have never had a book deleted
| from my Kindle by Amazon.
|
| There was a single instance of a couple of George Orwell's
| books being removed from user devices in July 2009.
| Customers had the purchase price they paid refunded. It was
| done because the company selling those books didn't
| actually have the rights to sell them. Afterwards, Jeff
| Bezos apologised and described it as "stupid, thoughtless,
| and painfully out of line with our principles". It is
| therefore unlikely to happen again.
|
| Given the commercial structure of Amazon e-Books, does it
| make sense to buy something that gives you as a reader more
| rights (e.g. when you die)? Perhaps. But I know what I've
| got into, so has every other Kindle owner on Earth.
|
| You do you, but your stated premise against Kindle is at
| best a little inaccurate and outdated, and at worst comes
| across perhaps a little hyperbolic.
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| >Afterwards, Jeff Bezos apologised [...] It is therefore
| unlikely to happen again.
|
| If it's still technically possible (it is), it will
| happen again. It's implemented to be used, even if
| occasionally. And mere existence of this feature is a
| clear declaration, you don't own it, you rent it. Many
| people may find it acceptable, taking other
| circumstances, but it's a big bold minus.
| appletrotter wrote:
| Just pirate your books if you're so concerned.
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| I'm concerned by the fact that Amazon can delete files
| from a device I bought. How is this related to your
| comment? I don't see
| ectopod wrote:
| I bought a version that didn't show ads but I did a
| hardware reset after a few years. Now it does.
|
| Since then they've also added an annoying carousel of
| sponsored apps to the home screen.
|
| I've never bought an ebook from Amazon so at least I can
| easily move to something else when the kindle finally
| packs in.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Kindle shows you ads
|
| Never seen an advert on my Kindle.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I turned off WiFi on mine because I was too annoyed by
| ads.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Where do they show up? Never seen one.
| sofixa wrote:
| There's a specific, cheaper version (10 euros cheaper in
| France) that has ads in.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| An ad replaces the "screen saver" when you unlock the
| device (until you swipe it away), and there's a small
| banner at the bottom of the book list in the main menu.
| You probably bought a more expensive version with no ads.
| They can also be removed later for a small fee, or you
| can simply never enable wi-fi and there will be no ads at
| all.
| [deleted]
| dizhn wrote:
| It shows ads if you buy the cheaper ad supported version.
| (They even removed the ads for me because Amazon did not
| sell books in my country)
| gambiting wrote:
| If you buy a kindle that is specifically advertised as
| having ads(and therefore being sold for less money), then
| yes, you will get ads. If you don't want them, buy the ad
| free version.
|
| And the deletion from your library happened...once? Over
| millions of titles available?
| Namari wrote:
| Can't believe there is such a thing of having an Ereader
| with ads. Ok it's cheaper but come on, that really shows
| us how low they think of us. I can understand for a free
| product but for something you pay ... like seriously!
| gambiting wrote:
| It's a very clear trade off - you get the device for less
| money, but you get ads. How is this "how low they think
| of us"?????
| Namari wrote:
| I think this trade off shouldn't exist in the first
| place.
| gambiting wrote:
| Why? Do you think companies giving you 10% in exchange
| for signing up for their newsletter shouldn't be able to
| do so too?
|
| It's the same thing - you get a discount for signing up
| to their ads campaign.
| Namari wrote:
| Well they already got profits on their bookstore, why
| would they need to make a version where you got ads on
| top of that. I guess if we follow your logic they could
| build phones, consoles and TVs with ads too. I can
| understand free books with ads but not the
| hardware/software that reads it.
| gambiting wrote:
| Again, if Amazon just said "hey you get PS10 off your
| Kindle purchase if you subscribe to our newsletter",
| would that be any better?
|
| >>why would they need to make a version where you got ads
| on top of that
|
| Gee, to make a device cheaper for you.
|
| >>I guess if we follow your logic they could build
| phones, consoles and TVs with ads too
|
| I mean....yes. I'm just surprised this hasn't happened
| already.
| Beldin wrote:
| It has - 5 or so years ago, non-smart TVs were more
| expensive than the same ones with "smartness".
| eddieroger wrote:
| You know, hardware isn't free, right? Each Kindle model
| requires R&D, design, testing, manufacturing, lots of
| work to product, beyond the ability to show books. Sure
| Amazon makes money off the books, too, but those files
| aren't free to store on a server (and the servers aren't
| free), or free to send to you over the Internet, and so
| on. Ads support hardware cost. If you don't want to see
| ads, buy the one without ads.
| corobo wrote:
| So that you decide if you want to buy the one with ads
| (eww, gross!) or the one without ads (woohoo, I beat the
| system for a tenner!). Meanwhile Amazon are happy you
| bought one of them rather than deciding to buy one or
| not.
|
| The ads are the front cover of some other book on the
| lock screen instead of the one you're reading. I dislike
| a lot of Amazon's methods but this one scenario is
| honestly a contender for least invasive advert still in
| use 2022.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| I know, right? Poorer people should just suck it up
| instead of having the option to get it cheaper. Wait
| another month to buy it and don't offend my aesthetics.
| Namari wrote:
| Can you at least upgrade or you get stuck with ads until
| the end?
| gambiting wrote:
| You can pay the difference between the ad-supported and
| ads-free model to get rid of the ads at any point, yet.
| Namari wrote:
| Or maybe they could make it cheaper in the first place?
| They got a lot of profit from the ebooks already.
| gambiting wrote:
| That's a different argument to the one you were making.
| And frankly the "why isn't this cheaper, hasn't the
| company profited enough" argument is never a very
| compelling one. Amazon isn't a charity.
| senko wrote:
| Wait until you figure out printed books (paperbacks) come
| with ads too ...
| Namari wrote:
| They already do, especially like the travel guides, there
| are always some ads here and there :|
| barry-cotter wrote:
| That was the point. You were being mocked for your
| naivete.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| They're only on the lock screen, never when you're
| actually reading. I've had the same ad for years (because
| I use the device with Wi-Fi off) and have no idea what's
| on it since I never paid any attention.
| II2II wrote:
| Both Kobo and Kindle include ads on their home screen.
| Heck, they even have complete storefronts built in. While
| I realize this isn't what most people mean by ads, I'm a
| bit old fashioned and don't see much of a difference.
|
| If you want something that is truly ad-free, try the
| KOReader software.
| [deleted]
| deelly wrote:
| Honestly, one time is enough.
| gambiting wrote:
| Really? I guess you don't use Steam either then?
| Maken wrote:
| When Steam removes a game, it means they no longer sell
| it, but they don't remove it from your computer nor stop
| you from downloading it if you already adquired it.
| gambiting wrote:
| Typically, yes - but they have also removed games from
| user libraries, preventing them from ever downloading the
| game again - exactly like Amazon has done in that one
| instance with an eBook.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-
| remov...
|
| My point is - OP said that "once is enough" - well by
| that metric, I'm asking if they also don't use steam,
| because Steam has done exactly this at least once in the
| past.
| [deleted]
| haxnewsben wrote:
| Also, if you buy the one with ads (because it's cheaper),
| you can literally just go on amazon customer support chat
| and ask them nicely to turn them off. It's worked for the
| few kindles I've owned
| [deleted]
| Iolaum wrote:
| The title that got removed was 1984, you can't make this
| stuff up
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/1
| 8am...
| gambiting wrote:
| Yeah, which is pretty incredible from PR perspective and
| I can't believe Amazon let that happen in the first
| place.
| ta988 wrote:
| That's what happens when you design systems with no
| humans in the loop.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I don't think Amazon actually had a realistic choice
| there.
|
| The edition of 1984 in question was pirated. Amazon could
| either remove it, or face a massive fine for distributing
| pirated material.
| gambiting wrote:
| Ah, right. Didn't know that!
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Totally agree that the optics on this were horrendous.
| And Amazon admitted as much 13 years ago.
|
| The only slight thing I'll say in their defense is that
| since the uploaded (it was through a self-service system)
| didn't have the rights to upload those books
| (essentially, a third-party pirated the book, uploaded it
| to Amazon's servers and then sold the book they didn't
| have rights to), I understand the thought process that
| you'd delete and refund. It's not like this was a
| legitimate book they removed. It was literally pirated.
| Removing books from purchaser's devices was absolutely
| the wrong move and has created negative PR for Amazon for
| 13 years because of one bad decision. But Amazon has
| admitted it was the wrong move and to my knowledge hasn't
| done it again.
|
| In fact, there are a number of books I've bought from
| Amazon over the years that are no longer available on
| Kindle for a variety of reasons (sometimes publishers
| pull them, sometimes authors) that I can still download
| retroactively to any of my devices. So if I'm going to be
| locked into any ecosystem, and this is just me, I'd
| rather be locked into the ecosystem that has had its DRM
| cracked pretty succinctly (meaning I can use my purchases
| on non-Amazon devices or apps) and that has an insanely
| robust library of books. Oh, and that integrates with my
| Audible library.
|
| Compare that to iBooks, where the DRM hasn't been broken
| (at least, not the current scheme. Some people have had
| success using insanely old versions of iTunes and DRM
| rippers from more than a decade ago, but that's not a
| reliable or approachable method) and I can't read any of
| those books on my Eink devices, or Kobo, which doesn't
| have as robust of a library and has always had that weird
| store-brand Frosted Flakes feeling, and I'm very happy to
| be inside the Kindle world.
|
| Plus, my Kindle Oasis has truly been a treat. (I said I
| would never buy one and now have bought two, so jokes on
| me).
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I really only have three minor gripes about the Kindle
| ecosystem... (Which is why I like it so much.)
|
| 1: The desktop applications don't auto-sync. (I really like
| reading books on my laptop because it holds the screen at a
| comfortable angle. This is especially the case when reading
| while eating or doing something else with my hands.)
|
| 2: Sometimes the Android app is buggy, requiring that I
| reinstall. When I reinstall, I have to re-enter all my
| preferences.
|
| 3: Some of the default settings in the Android app are dumb,
| like showing popular highlights. I always turn that off as
| quickly as possible.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| My biggest issue is Kobo doesn't actually support epub, or
| at least the modern incarnation. Their reader software is
| woefully out of date and has terrible epub handling, so to
| get the features you expect you're back to the
| Calibre->reader loop you're on with kindle, only instead of
| converting to AZW3 or KFX you're converting to KePub,
| Kobo's homegrown version of epub they did instead. You can
| fix that by installing KOreader which DOES support the
| current epub format, but that again puts you in the same
| boat as the kindle (perhaps minus needing to jailbreak it)
| and the kindle has a much more robust community and
| support.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Kobos do support modern epubs, but for some inexplicable
| reason, they use their old epub2 renderer licensed from
| Adobe for all .epub files. You can just rename .epub
| files to .kepub and force Kobos to use the modern reader
| code. This gets you a lot better formatting. The catch is
| that location bookmarking becomes imprecise if you do
| this rather than use kepubify. It's super weird that they
| don't just offer the option to run kepubify locally on
| the device, behind the scenes.
| erispoe wrote:
| I am tempted to switch to Kobo just for the Pocket app.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The value prop is it's not controlled by Amazon and the whims
| of a tech giant. Have we learned nothing?
| whyoh wrote:
| >Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB...
|
| Kindles do not support ePUB. But you can send ePUBs through
| the Amazon online conversion service now, which wasn't
| possible in the past.
| maratc wrote:
| There's no magic ASIC on the Kobo that transfers the stream
| of bytes into the stream of pixels; ePub support is in the
| Kobo software. Amazon now has this support in their
| software. The fact that the conversion software runs on
| Kindle servers (and not on the Kindle device) is
| insignificant to me - what's important is I can have an
| ePub and can read it on the Kindle.
| ta8903 wrote:
| Not sure what to make of this post. You know that you can
| drop files straight to your Kindle through a USB cable,
| right? As long as an epub loaded this way doesn't work I
| can't see how you can say Kindles support epub.
|
| Yes, you can use Amazon's weird conversion service to
| convert them, but you could do that with Calibre (or just
| pandoc) anyways, and probably with less friction too.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| So long as the server doing that continues to exist.
| maratc wrote:
| You have a point. OTOH, my three Sony readers and my Nook
| supported ePub without any servers, but all are dead now.
| And again, without that server it's just back to Calibre.
| Hitton wrote:
| And if you are lucky, Amazon will even be able to convert
| them.
|
| About week ago I wanted to test it, I tried it with bunch
| of epubs from various sources and only about half converted
| successfully.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah I often have issues with "fancy quotes" not getting
| converted correctly if I email an ePub to Kindle. They
| get converted to HTML entities :(
|
| With Calibre it works but it's an annoying extra step. I
| hope Amazon fix this issue before they officially start
| supporting ePub.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Try using epubcheck on those to see where the finger
| really should be pointed.
|
| There are a lot of really crap "epubs" out there.
|
| https://www.w3.org/publishing/epubcheck/
| dkarl wrote:
| > I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is
|
| Not having to hack the device you supposedly own to avoid
| having ads as your screensaver? My Kindle is at the bottom of
| my closet for that reason. I haven't bought another physical
| e-reader, but if I do, it won't be a Kindle. I didn't want to
| go through the process of finding up-to-date instructions,
| waiting for a hack that would install on my hardware and
| software version, crossing my fingers to do the install, at
| the end of which I wouldn't even know if it was a victory for
| me or a victory for them that I was still using their
| product. So I stopped using it and won't buy another one.
| vageli wrote:
| The ad-supported model allows people to buy the kindle for
| less than the non-ad-supported model. AFAIK you can pay a
| one-time fee and remove them, or buy the non-ad-supported
| version in the first place.
| dkarl wrote:
| There wasn't a choice when I bought mine.
| coder543 wrote:
| > There wasn't a choice when I bought mine.
|
| Ad-supported or not has _always_ been a choice for as
| long as Amazon has offered ad-supported kindles. I
| remember making this choice about 10 years ago, and I
| made this choice about a month ago when I bought my most
| recent Kindle.
|
| If you bought it used or from a reseller, I don't know
| what to tell you, but Amazon gave you a choice if you
| bought it from them.
|
| As a source, here is an Engadget article from the time
| when this option was introduced:
| https://www.engadget.com/2011-04-11-amazon-releases-ad-
| suppo...
|
| You can clearly see that Amazon offered the "with Special
| Offers" version alongside the versions _without_ "Special
| Offers". The ad-supported version was discounted by $25
| back then. Nowadays, it appears to be a $20 difference on
| the Paperwhite.
| [deleted]
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.
|
| It is not amazon encumbered. That is a huge value to many
| maratc wrote:
| I had three readers from Sony (until they exited the
| business) and one from B&N (until they exited the
| business), because I didn't want to deal with conversion.
| Of these still in the business, Amazon looks the least-like
| to exit soon, and now there's no need to deal with
| conversion.
|
| As most of the books I read are out of copyright anyway,
| I'm not "encumbering" myself with Amazon in any way, except
| for buying hardware they made.
| coder543 wrote:
| > one from B&N (until they exited the business)
|
| Did they exit the business? It looks like the Nook
| Glowlight 4 was released less than a year ago.
|
| I don't know a single person in real life with an
| e-reader other than a Kindle, including myself, so I had
| to google to see how B&N Nook was doing when you said
| that, but it still seems to be a thing.
| maratc wrote:
| Just checked -- they indeed still have one model (not
| counting special editions in pink) after a hiatus of four
| years. Without an SD card, sideloading is an issue
| though.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's why I bought mine. I don't want to give Amazon any
| of my money.
| spacehunt wrote:
| Kobo has built-in Overdrive, Dropbox and Pocket support on
| the device itself, which Kindle lacks.
| Namari wrote:
| Pocket is the reason I chose the Kobo, how can the others
| miss that feature, it's not like people just read books
| nowadays.
| k1m wrote:
| While not exactly like Pocket, there are services that
| can send web articles to your Kindle. I work on one
| called Push to Kindle: https://www.fivefilters.org/push-
| to-kindle/
| Namari wrote:
| that's a good idea, you should try to implement some sort
| of extension to make it easier
| k1m wrote:
| Thanks. We already have extensions for most popular
| browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge. Links at the URL
| above. As well as an Android and iOS app.
|
| Chrome extension here:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/push-to-
| kindle/pna...
| shultays wrote:
| it also has a (experimental) browser
| sandos wrote:
| The overdrive and epub support was the reason for me buying
| the kobo even after already owning a kindle. Still worth it
| just for the overdrive support.
| maratc wrote:
| Kobo only needs it to support transfers, and because it
| lacks emailing. If I want Overdrive, Dropbox and Pocket
| support, I have a smartphone for that.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Nothing beats a reading long form article from Pocket on
| an e-ink screen, though.
| Lio wrote:
| Kobo supports email transfers already, if that's what you
| want.
|
| Just email to Dropbox and it'll sync onto the device.
| Lio wrote:
| That's not Kindle's only disadvantage. Kobo had distinct
| features I wanted that no Kindle offered at the time I last
| purchased.
|
| Like a screen big enough to comfortably read PDFs. 10.3" on
| Kobo Elipsa vs 7" on Kindle. IMHO that makes the Kindle only
| really useful for fiction.
|
| There's also Pocket support for reading offline web articles.
|
| Overdrive support so I can borrow books from my local library
| for free.
|
| Free Dropbox syncing without having to email everything when
| I buy a book from someone that isn't Amazon e.g PragProg,
| Packt, etc. (Dropbox does support email though if you do want
| that).
|
| In theory I could also use the pen and take written notes on
| my Elipsa too but it's not a feature I was looking for.
|
| The other stuff you mentioned, like Kindle having a large
| purchasable library, is also true for Kobo right from the
| homescreen. They're also priced similarly if you match specs
| and available for same day delivery from Argos in the UK.
|
| Finally, I know I could hack my last Kindle but Kobo make
| that really easy out of the box. Installing Koreader, Plato
| or anything else is simple even if it's not required for
| everyday use.
|
| So for me it's the other way around. Amazon offers nothing I
| want that Kobo doesn't have.
|
| Different people have different usecases but I don't think
| I'll go back to a Kindle now I've switched. Kobos are very
| easy to live with.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| For a while Kobos had warm backlights, while Kindle still
| only had their harsh cold light. But I think Kindle has
| caught up with that feature.
|
| That's what lead me to switch to Kobo a few years ago, and
| it's been great. Though some small press releases sometimes
| skip the kobo store still.
| BSOhealth wrote:
| Libraries are very important, and Kindle supports borrowing
| from them (for free): https://help.overdrive.com/en-
| us/0431.html
| anuragsoni wrote:
| So does the kobo (at least in the US). Kobo devices have
| the overdrive app installed on them and you can search
| for and borrow library books from within the device.
| multicelled wrote:
| So does Kobo! https://help.overdrive.com/en-us/9988.html
| BeetleB wrote:
| Funny you mention this, because Kindle support for
| libraries was amongst the last. For a number of years
| after buying my ereader libraries did not support Kindle.
| They've supported epub since at least 2010, possibly even
| before.
| aendruk wrote:
| This was the primary reason I chose a Kobo. You can use
| the pubic library entirely on the reader.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > Like a screen big enough to comfortably read PDFs. IMHO
| that makes the Kindle only really useful for fiction.
|
| There is plenty of non-fiction that doesn't come in PDF
| form. It is quite readable on a Kindle.
| Lio wrote:
| That's true but technical books always felt a bit tight
| even in landscape orientation on my Kindle.
|
| Things like code or diagrams don't always reformat well
| and scrolling is a pain in the arse.
|
| Life is just much easier with a bigger screen. Where I'd
| really come unstuck is when someone gives me a whitepaper
| or customer documentation that is only in PDF format. No
| reformating even if you want to.
|
| Amazon used to sell the bigger Kindle DX but they stopped
| making it. So if you're buying a new device anyway there
| doesn't seem to be much downside to switching to Kobo,
| that I've found anyway.
| criddell wrote:
| Bigger screens are essential for scientific papers that
| have lots of charts and other figures. For eink-type
| screens there's not a lot type choose from. Fujitsu has a
| couple of A4 size models that look pretty good. If you
| can deal with traditional screens, the biggest iPad Pro
| is great.
|
| Remarkable and some other companies have A5 or 10.3"
| screens but these are too small IMHO. You will still end
| up zooming and panning.
| jdougan wrote:
| How does the screen on the Elipsa compare to the old Kindle
| DX screens? I'm babying my pair of old DXs, and it would be
| nice to have a replacements.
| Lio wrote:
| I can't say for sure how they compare but the DX was what
| I was originally looking for. Unfortunately I've never
| actually seen a Kindle DX in the wild and they're rare as
| rocking horse poo on ebay here in the UK.
|
| The Kobo Elipsa is the first ebook reader I've used where
| I can read PDFs without zooming, which is a game changer
| for me.
|
| In general I think DX or Elipsa sized screens are more
| useful for text books even in epub format.
|
| It's much faster than my old Kindle but I was never
| really that bother about the old Kindle's page turn
| speed. The Elipsa also has much crisper text but again I
| thought my anchient Kindle was mostly good enough.
|
| The Kobo search features are _much_ better. My old Kindle
| 's search was too greedy which made it pretty much
| useless as I couldn't narrow results. e.g. I couldn't
| search for "act" without getting results for "actor" as
| well.
|
| The only irk I've had with Kobo is that the default PDF
| reader doesn't let you set a zoom level to reduce margins
| as you read. You can zoom in but you need to zoom out
| again to turn the page.
|
| That's only a very minor issues though, I can still read
| things fine with the default margins. Installing KOreader
| or Plato was as simple as dragging a file onto a USB
| drive and give you every ereader feature you could want
| including margin stripping PDFs.
|
| I considered a Remarkable 2 but I'm not really one for
| hand written notes and I wanted a frontlight, which the
| Elipsa has but the RM2 doesn't.
|
| I actually wish I could have bought the Elipsa without
| the bundled case or pen as I don't use either. The
| handwriting to text or drawing to flowchart conversion is
| fun to play with but it's not something I need, I'm
| strictly using it as a reading device.
|
| I'd guess that the Elipsa would be a good replacement for
| a Kindle DX but that's caviated by how you personally
| want to use it. There's something very pleasing about
| keeping an old ebook reader going though so it might be
| fun just to keep using your DXs until they absolutely die
| and then see what's on the market at the time.
|
| Hope that helps.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| To borrow from the library on Kindle, just use the Libby
| app. Very painless and easy. You can send to your kindle as
| the last click of checkout.
|
| https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| It's not available in all countries.
| II2II wrote:
| To borrow from the library on Kobo, just use your Kobo.
| There is no need to pull out a second device.
| hollandheese wrote:
| Except Kindle isn't supporting ePub. You can't sideload an
| ePub on to a Kindle. All you can do is e-mail an ePub to
| Amazon, and they'll convert it to AZW3 and load that file on
| to your Kindle.
|
| Further the conversion that they do is notoriously bad and
| often results in unreadable books. So you often have to tweak
| the ePub files before sending them to get a decent result.
| Calibre is essential to that process.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Notably they don't display book covers for converted epubs
| in your library -- clearly hamstringing the conversion so
| folks aren't too tempted to rely on books from external
| sources.
|
| The AZW3 proprietary format is not something I want to
| struggle with in my day-to-day -- if anything goes wrong,
| it's a rabbit hole of reverse engineering. I like copying
| media to my ereader using cables, because sometimes I don't
| have a solid internet connection or it just feels wasteful
| to send a bunch of big files over email (if I'm on a
| tethered or metered internet connection, just sending a
| couple dozen books is easily in the hundreds of megabytes
| up and down).
|
| Kobos are a much friendlier ecosystem, and are what I
| recommend to all family members who don't want their device
| shackled by Amazon. Easy to hook up to local libraries to
| borrow books on the fly, easy to copy DRM-free ebooks from
| online stores.
|
| I have a Boox tablet myself because I love notetaking in
| nonfiction books and hand writing my notes in work meetings
| and journals.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Kobo's are like a stone's throw in price from Kindles.
| Depending on features/market they can be cheaper and they
| don't even sell lockscreen ads. The only cheaper Kindle is
| the awful 800x600 screen one which should have been put to
| bed years ago. They also have a huge library open to non-US
| people with non-US credit cards. Kobos are considerably
| better at formatting text with far more options and are even
| easier to tweak. I literally could not find a font size I
| liked when I had a Kindle because the smallest was too small
| and every other one too big.
|
| And Kindle STILL does not support ePub. All Amazon has done
| is started letting people email epubs to their Kindle and
| their backend will convert it to an Amazon format. This has
| conversion warts, means you lose cover support too. You still
| can't copy an ePub over USB.
| adam12 wrote:
| Can I ever get a Kobo for $45?
| goosedragons wrote:
| I'm pretty sure at some point the Kobo mini was about
| that at some point...
|
| It's not like $45 is the regular price of the Kindle
| either. Camelcamelcamel has the new base model having
| it's lowest at $70 and I've seen the Nia for $80 and they
| are pretty comparable.
| biztos wrote:
| I used a Kobo for a long time and I just bought a Kindle,
| because it was so hard to get articles on the Kobo. They
| stopped supporting direct file transfers from Mac, so I was
| left with Pocket, and Pocket didn't think a lot of what I
| tried to save was "articles."
|
| So far I find that for my purposes, the Kindle is way easier
| to get content onto, and there's quite a bit of content I
| want that I can just buy there, but couldn't buy for Kobo.
|
| I hope to not get locked in to the Amazon ecosystem but as of
| right now, my cheapest-model Kindle is way more useful than
| my old top-of-the-line Kobo.
| topbanana wrote:
| How do you get articles onto your Kindle?
| damontal wrote:
| You can set Instapaper to auto send articles or a digest
| of articles to your kindle.
| [deleted]
| levesque wrote:
| Kobo appears to be an inferior device on most accounts. Both
| of my Kobo readers have had glitches, required reboots, and
| at times had a suspiciously low battery life. The first even
| just stopped working all of a sudden. But all of it was worth
| it knowing I wouldn't have to support Amazon's walled garden.
| Now it's mostly down to "do you support Amazon?", and I'm
| still not sure if I want a Kindle. I'll keep my Kobo H2O
| until it dies of old age, then we'll see.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > required reboots
|
| I feel like a FreeBSD guru in the 90s, "YOU REBOOT???" but
| seriously, I don't recall ever having to reboot my Kindle
| except the time I tried to open a 500MB PDF and I should of
| known better.
| tiahura wrote:
| Agreed. I love my kobo's form factor, but the glitchiness
| is frustrating. For me, the inaccuracy of the Aura HD's
| touch recognition is what causes the most headaches.
| levesque wrote:
| Oh right, forgot about touch recognition, that's also a
| bit off. Needs more strength / pressure than it should.
| I'm guessing they didn't tune it properly when they made
| the devices water resistant?
| nanomonkey wrote:
| > Now it's mostly down to "do you support Amazon?"
|
| I don't know if this is still the case, but the Kindle used
| to be a loss leader. So in theory, by purchasing one, using
| Calibre only and never purchasing ebooks from Amazon, you
| are causing Amazon to bleed revenue.
| levesque wrote:
| Great point!
| ergo14 wrote:
| I have Kobo H2O and it works great till this day. I charge
| it very rarly - maybe every 2-3 months. It reads everything
| I like. And it was one of the first with IP68
| certification.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Note if you email MOBI it might get its formatting randomly
| messed up.
|
| https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-
| ebooks#kindle...
| sureglymop wrote:
| I've been using it for years with KOReader instead of the stock
| OS and it's been amazing. I can ssh into it, open epubs
| directly from my nextcloud, sync reading progress etc with
| calibre. It's great! KOReader is one of the best pieces of open
| source software i have ever come across.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| The kindle oasis is one of the nicest pieces of hardware I've
| ever used
| wink wrote:
| The kindle's value prop is that it has existed for a while and
| I'm pretty sure my 8y old model would still work if I hadn't
| left it on a plane. So I bought a used one from a friend and
| that's been working for many years. I see no reason to upgrade
| e-readers all the time.
|
| I'm not telling you or anyone to buy a Kindle, but from a VERY
| quick look my Kindle cost half of what a Kobo costs (tolino
| seems to be available around the 70-80EUR mark though and so
| far has worked fine although the default seems to be some nasty
| Adobe ebook management software). Maybe 150 or 200 is worth it
| to you if you use it all the time, but for me it was mostly 1-2
| books a month, which weren't necessarily cheaper than on paper.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Are you German? Tolino eReaders are basically just rebadged
| Kobos at this point with a different software stack for a few
| European countries.
|
| I can get a Kobo Nia for $130 CAD (about EUR100), a base
| model Kindle is $120 CAD. They are very close in price and on
| the high end the Kobo is cheaper and offers more.
| wink wrote:
| Interesting, I did not know that, thanks.
|
| I didn't make up the numbers above, I just quickly looked
| at geizhals.de for a comparison - maybe Kobo-branded Kobos
| are exceptionally expensive here then.
|
| I don't have a tolino myself, but gave support to a family
| member in the recent past, that's why I've held one and
| used the software. That one was sold by a physical book
| store chain.
|
| But overall that doesn't change my main point - or maybe
| Kindles have gone up in price, I'm pretty sure I paid
| closer to 70EUR than 100EUR, which is still 1/3. Could be
| that it was a sale, and they don't even have that base
| model anymore, but as I said I was 100% happy with it.
| Izkata wrote:
| I still use my 8-year-old Kobo Aura, it's showing no signs of
| failing yet.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| My 6th Gen Paperwhite (2015) is still used to this day! So
| yours almost certainly would be functional.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure my 8y old model would still work if I
| hadn't left it on a plane.
|
| Can confirm - I am currently using a ~12 year old Kindle 3rd
| gen, with no problem at all. In fairness it hasn't seen very
| heavy use but even for the battery and electronics to have
| held up for that long, often being stored in sub-optimal
| conditions, is fairly impressive IMO.
|
| I strongly dislike Amazon and its walled garden but I dislike
| waste more so I have no intention of upgrading before I have
| to. I mostly use my ereader to read free ebooks downloaded
| from Gutenberg/Standard Ebooks/etc anyway.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| As others have said, I think the value for the Kindle is pretty
| damn high.
|
| * Works in lots and lots of countries
|
| * Great iOS and Android apps to supplement reading on Eink
|
| * Well-priced devices, even if you pay to remove ads, that
| offer years and years of software support and are extremely
| durable/reliable
|
| * Great hacking community and ability to use things like DeDRM
| to bring your purchases to other devices
|
| * Insanely robust library that is far more consistent than
| other services.
|
| * Ability to easily side-load other content via the Send to
| Kindle feature
|
| * Audible integration/sync/discounts
|
| If you prefer Kobo, that's fine. But I've always seen it as the
| second-rate alternative owned by the second-rate Amazon
| (Rakuten). If I'm going to get tied into any ecosystem, I'd
| prefer for it to be the biggest/most active. But that's just
| me.
|
| Edit: formatting
| philistine wrote:
| A point that you're forgetting, which is extremely important
| for a lot of people, is access to a public library's
| collection of ebooks. In Canada, Kobo is overwhelmingly
| capable of connecting with a public library, while Kindle
| cannot. It is, in my experience, the number one reason why
| people around me choose a Kobo over a Kindle.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| You can get library books on your kindle, you just need to
| use a phone app
| SXX wrote:
| Why would you need a phone app? You can just email them
| to special Amazon email address and they'll be converted
| and uploaded to Kindle.
|
| PS: Yeah that wouldn't work for books with DRM. So might
| be its the problem.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| Library books also work on Kindle ereaders. I've borrowed
| a few that way.
| dihydro wrote:
| That doesn't seem like a solution, but a work-around. I'm
| sure it works fine, but why should that extra step be
| necessary?
| [deleted]
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I don't live in Canada and so I wasn't aware of that
| because Kindle works in US library systems.
|
| My guess is that it doesn't work in Canada because Kobo was
| a Canadian company before it was acquired and because
| Kobo's owner used to own Overdrive (before it sold it to
| private equity a few years ago), but I could be wrong.
|
| Obviously, if a device doesn't work with the services you
| engage with, it's probably not the service for you. But
| since Kindle does work with many, many library systems (and
| its arrangements with libraries predates Kobo's existence),
| I think that's more regional edge case and not a blanket
| reason to use one over the other, which is what OP was
| saying.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Kindles only work with libraries in the U.S. Nowhere
| else. That's the regional edge case. Overdrive also
| supported ePubs before Kindle including the original Kobo
| back in 2010 although you had to go through the whole
| Adobe Digital Editions rigamarole.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| TIL. And yes, that's definitely a larger edge case but I
| would still posit that for many users who are buying into
| an ecosystem, Kindle is going to be the most portable.
| But that's an important distinction for anyone who wants
| to check books out from their local library.
| bradwood wrote:
| > A larger edge case?
|
| LOL, you think this is an _edge_ case? Feels pretty
| central from where me and the rest of the world are
| sitting...
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I mean, I've been using e-readers since 2006 or so and
| very rarely get books from the library. Honestly, they
| usually don't have the books I want to read or if they
| do, there is a many week wait. At that point, I just buy
| the book myself or I'll find it another way.
|
| I'm not going to pretend that's the same for everyone,
| but I'm equally not going to pretend every person who has
| an e-reader is constantly getting stuff from the public
| library.
| goosedragons wrote:
| I don't understand how you think Kindle is more portable.
| Kobo works with ePubs and they support Adobe's DRM which
| is used in a lot of stores. There's nothing tying you to
| Kobo's store and almost every ebook store that sells
| epubs is compatible.
|
| Meanwhile Amazon has been constantly messing with their
| proprietary format, DRM etc. Any book bought outside
| their store also almost always needs conversion too.
| ergo14 wrote:
| Thing is Kobo doesn't tie you anywhere - I use it in europe -
| I never ever used their online store even once.
| Keyframe wrote:
| I love my Oasis. Only major issue I have is with leather
| cover I bought with it.. when cover is open and behind the
| kindle itself.. you cannot easily grip on it anymore since
| there's no rised edge anymore. If that's the only thing
| bothering me, I'm good. The only other is there's no direct O
| Reilly support, so I have to go through shady motions in
| order to read a book from my O'Reilly sub on my kindle.
| II2II wrote:
| Yeap, I definitely prefer Kobo. I plug it into my PC to copy
| over public domain and DRM-free ePubs with ease, or DRMed
| ePubs via ADE. I am not tied to any ecosystem. As for the
| development community, I feel far more secure knowing my Kobo
| is _not_ locked down. There are no cat-and-mouse games being
| played with encryption or other protection mechanisms.
| Modifying the software is a matter of creating a tarball or
| by popping out an internal SD card and inserting it into my
| PC (or using ssh, once some initial setup is done).
|
| I don't have to say, imply, of even think that Amazon is
| "second-rate" to make myself feel secure about my decision.
| If anything I had to choose any word, it would be
| "monopolistic" or "vendor lock-in". But don't get me wrong:
| if Kobo changed their practices such that those words did
| apply, I would happily move elsewhere. (Kindle and Kobo are
| by no means the only companies out there.)
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Hey, if you're happy with what you're using, that's great.
| I've put hacks or modified OSes on various Kindles over the
| years, used DeDRM for Calibre, and very much had a solid
| experience.
|
| I also have a Remarkable 2 and a Boox Note Air that are
| obviously much more hackable.
|
| I've reviewed many Kobo devices over the years. I do find
| them second-rate compared to what you can get from the
| Kindle line. That's my honest opinion. That isn't me
| feeling insecure about my decision (I am an e-reader
| enthusiast and have reviewed dozens of devices and have the
| money to buy whatever device I want. I think Sony made the
| best devices if I'm really being honest, and they shut down
| their storefront over a decade ago and barely sell any
| units now), it's my personal opinion and I said "I've
| always seen it as" -- I didn't declare that as fact. You
| disagree, which is fine!
|
| I'm glad we have a choice of things. I still stand by my
| opinion that if I'm going to be tied down into an
| ecosystem, I'd rather be tied down to the one with the most
| books. And where I live, that's Amazon.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| Sony. Ah yes, I feel the nostalgia kicking in. The PRS
| all metal range were superb (in their time of course).
| kcartlidge wrote:
| I'm on a Kobo H20 as well after upgrading from a Kindle many
| years and several devices ago.
|
| * Also works in lots of countries
|
| * Great iOS and Android apps
|
| * Well-priced devices, and no ads to remove
|
| * Great hacking community (even complete replacement
| software) and DeDRM support
|
| * Insanely robust library that has never let me down
|
| * Ability to easily side-load content without needing a send-
| to feature (plug it in and drag/drop, or use Calibre)
|
| * No Audible, but (a) it's an ereader not an audio player (it
| does actually do mp3s though) and (b) Kobo have an audiobook
| store
|
| So all in all, the Kobo has worse audiobooks but better
| hacking and side-loading. Even if you prefer Kindle over
| Kobo, it is clearly not second-rate. And as for the last
| comment about being tied into an ecosystem, that's purely an
| Amazon thing. Kobo don't require that kind of acquiescence.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| The lack of 5 ghz wifi and micro usb are slightly annoying, but
| overall, I love it.
| fastball wrote:
| What in the world do you need 5GHz wifi for on an e-reader?
| Kelm wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more convenient to only need one wifi
| network without 2 frequencies? Especially in dense urban
| areas where "wifi pollution" is high and it can be
| difficult to find an unused 2.4GHz channel
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I usually disable 2.4 Ghz WiFi on the routers I set up
| because 2.4 Ghz WiFi is just a needless radio spectrum
| pollution nowadays (unless you need to connect retro
| devices). I initially decided to phase it out in hope of
| improving BlueTooth (wireless earphones) stability.
| fastball wrote:
| 2.4Ghz covers more area.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yeah, and because of that it quickly becomes useless in
| an apartment building surrounded by a few hundred 2.4GHz
| access points.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| As I said, it's slightly annoying, not a deal-breaker. It
| required me to change my wifi setup to be dual band (I'm in
| an apartment so lots of congestion on 2.4 ghz, and I don't
| need the extra range).
| nephanth wrote:
| Maybe their AP only supports that?
| janpieterz wrote:
| I switched from a Kindle to a Kobo, and now back to a Kindle.
|
| My experience was that the Kindle's responsiveness to changes
| (next/previous/moving around in the OS) was better, just
| significant enough to be bothering me when I was using the
| Kobo.
| rapind wrote:
| The latest low end kindle response time is horrendous and the
| material is slippy.
|
| I lost my paperwhite so replaced it last week and the quality
| has really really dipped. Also it was the cheapest kindle but
| cost more than I originally spent in my paperwhite...
|
| I'm returning it next week when I finish my current book.
| tbihl wrote:
| Newest version of the Paperwhite is a big step up. The
| larger screen and better processor are both put to good
| use.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They have three tiers. Paperwhite is the middle so you're
| going to see a difference with the low end model.
| grahamannett wrote:
| I'm on my 3rd kindle now and have had all the previous ones for
| like 7+ years or something before I broke it or an issue arose.
| I bought a different e-reader between the first and second
| kindle I had and returned it because the similar kindle at the
| time was cheaper and way nicer quality (and everything I read
| is transferred through Calibre). I looked again when I was
| buying a new kindle last year and it seemed similar that there
| was no clear winner for what was better than the kindle or
| similar but cheaper and a reputable brand.
|
| I'd love not buying Kindle if I knew what to get but every-time
| I look into it, seems like people suggesting similar products
| for marginally worse prices or its just personal preference of
| the person with no real justification.
| collegeburner wrote:
| i got my kindle for way under half that price. jailbroke it and
| now i can do whatever i want. so the value prop is cheap ass
| hardware subsidized by daddy bezos.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| Kindle unlimited - great for pulpy sci-fi books. Some people
| hate it, but I enjoy it and it's a killer feature for me.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Agreed, "SHTF"/"EOTWAWKI" types too. Any good recent sci-fi
| recommendations? After spending 23 days without running water
| in July due to multiple well failures, I've lost interested
| in SHTF/EOTWAWKI and need to get back into sci-fi titles that
| I'm not listening to via Audible for the performers (Omega
| Force, Expeditionary Force, Undying Mercenaries, Bobiverse,
| etc).
| thih9 wrote:
| Kindle can be significantly cheaper and easier to obtain. You
| can still use Calibre with Kindle, that's what I do.
| just_for_you wrote:
| >I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is
|
| One reason I'm stuck with Kindles is because Amazon makes it
| sane to look up words when reading Japanese books and articles.
|
| When you use Amazon's "Send to my Kindle" service (eg, you
| email a book to yourself, and then it appears on your device),
| Amazon seems to do some kind of de-conjugation which magically
| knows how to break-apart terms and grammar so that you can
| easily look anything up. Normally, if uploading straight to
| your device, or if using a Kobo, a term you want to look up has
| to match your on-device dictionary _exactly_ , which is clunky
| and awful, especially since Japanese doesn't use spaces and has
| lots of inflections.
|
| If Kobo had something similar, I'd ditch using Kindles
| entirely.
| gambiting wrote:
| As someone whose first language isn't English - 100000x times
| this. The fact that I can just hold down on any word and
| instantly see its definition is just incredible. It's a must
| have feature of any e-reader for me.
| Derbasti wrote:
| Kobos have this feature
| gambiting wrote:
| Didn't know that! Can you upload custom dictionaries to
| them? That was my only gripe with how Kindles do it -
| they support this feature in some languages but not
| others.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yeah it's possible but it's not an official feature (it's
| not hard though).
| Derbasti wrote:
| What are you talking about? It's built right into the
| Kobo reader, and has been for years.
| https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360017639893-Define-...
| goosedragons wrote:
| The dictionary is a built-in official feature and
| includes options in few different languages but CUSTOM
| dictionaries are not. It's possible to add dictionaries
| beyond what Kobo includes but it takes a little bit of
| work.
| Derbasti wrote:
| It seems to be a limited selection of languages (EN, DE,
| ES, FR, IT, PT, TR, SE, JP on my Kobo), with both EN-XX
| and XX-XX available for most languages. It doesn't look
| like you can add your own, at least not on my kobo.
| ta988 wrote:
| If you use Koreader then yes there are hundreds of
| dictionaries you can put.
| Bayart wrote:
| The Kindle I got last year is one of the best purchases I've
| ever made, I can't believe I went all that time without an
| ereader.
|
| Having to convert epubs to azw3 is the only minor
| inconvenience.
| fastball wrote:
| > Combined with Calibre
|
| I'd imagine something like < 1% of Kindle owners use Calibre,
| so presumably the value prop is... an e-reader that works well
| without needing any external software.
|
| Most people just buy books from Amazon I expect, so they don't
| really need multi-format support.
| themadturk wrote:
| I use Calibre primarily to...hmm, preserve my ownership of
| the books I have given money to Amazon for (if, for example,
| Amazon should decide to pull another _1984_.) I certainly don
| 't _need_ Calibre to use my Kindle, but I 'm glad I have it.
| unixhero wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, this looks like a very
| interesting product.
|
| But it is Sold Out
|
| _Sigh_
| omnimus wrote:
| I can recommend PocketBook i recently got some cheaper Touch HD
| model. It simply does the job. It runs linux, it has several
| book sync options natively and you can instal KOreader on it
| easy.
| mikolaj1024 wrote:
| I am using PocketBook Touch HD 3. Design is fantastic,
| however... It has really annoying bugs. For a long time - it
| had a problem with event handling - pages not flipping (than
| flipping several at once). Finally fixed - after years. And
| then they introduced a new bug - it randomly turns one page
| back instead of forward - yes occasionally...
| omnimus wrote:
| I have the same. Have you tried using KOreader?
| https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-
| Po... recent versions really improve the reading experience
| over the default reader app.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I can click a single button on Amazon and get a book pushed to
| my kindle in < 30 seconds. How is that not an incredible value
| proposition?
| kcartlidge wrote:
| It is. It just isn't unique to Amazon.
|
| That's exactly how Kobo do it too, from their own bookstore
| on the web or from the device itself.
| omnimus wrote:
| I can recommend PocketBook.I recently got some cheaper Touch HD
| model. It simply does the job. It runs linux. It has several
| book sync options (including dropbox) out of the box. And you
| can instal KOreader on it easy which i recommend.
| akudha wrote:
| I have a couple of thousand books on my ageing Kindle. Looking
| for a new ereader, will check out Kobo. Do you buy books from
| Kindle and convert them to ePub?
| kcartlidge wrote:
| The Kobo book store is smaller than Amazon's, but still huge.
| The UI may look different, but it is still the same process
| of search/browse, buy/preview. Either on the web site or from
| the device.
|
| All the talk of conversions and Calibre etc in the thread is
| possibly muddying the waters as it is totally unnecessary if
| you just want to mirror the Kindle flow.
| [deleted]
| rossmohax wrote:
| Kobo promotes own proprietary format "kepub", which has own
| better renderer. Standard epub is rendered using generic, not
| so good looking rendering engine.
| dihydro wrote:
| I am of the same thought. But I was gifted a Kindle so I am
| enjoying it besides. I have used Calibre to side load many of
| me pre-existing books and it works well.
| msh wrote:
| I am not located in the US and dont have an american payment
| method. Amazon will still let me shop ebooks from amazon.com
|
| I have previously had problems (I dont know if its still a
| problem) with being allowed to buy US books from other ebook
| stores, like kobo, when I did not have a US credit card.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.
|
| Availability. I can get the Kindle delivered the same day (or)
| the next from a village(Now a corporation) in Southern India.
| Once my Kindle didn't wake up, Got it replaced within couple of
| days near the end or after warranty period.
|
| That said, I'm with you and wouldn't be buying a Kindle again.
| It's Value/Price is low for its utility, Especially since
| Amazon is locking up the device and has started interrupting
| bulk emails from approved email addresses. Also since I have
| started to limit my purchases from Amazon.
|
| Now, I have to pester my friends and family from overseas to
| buy the Ereader not available here (or) Order one with
| international shipping and pray that the customs don't hold it
| and charge me a kidney(Compute devices are often charged 2x-3x
| the cost as excise duty!).
| zinekeller wrote:
| > Now a corporation
|
| Just stating that while I understand what you meant, it could
| be confusing to others not familiar with subdivisions of
| India
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_corporation_(India))
| KSteffensen wrote:
| Coming from a small country, it is amazing to me that an
| urban area of at least 1 million people is referred to as a
| village. I consider myself to live in a town and that has
| only 12000 residents.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| I'm from southern India too, likely even from the same
| state Abhishek_Muthian is from, and this meaning of
| corporation didn't occur even to me when reading their
| comment. I was wondering if they meant the village had
| become a company town or something. Thank you for the
| clarification.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Thanks, It's indeed confusing without specifying what a
| corporation is.
| whyoh wrote:
| >I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is
|
| The device itself seems pretty good (hardware). I don't own
| one, but I'm looking at the Kindle Paperwhite now and I can't
| find anything better for the same price. If you do, please let
| me know.
|
| Yes, the lack of ePUB support sucks, but you can convert to
| Amazon's format pretty easily from what I've read.
| henriquemaia wrote:
| Similar story here. Bought a Kobo Libra half a year ago, after
| more than ten years using Kindles.
|
| I chose this Kobo for its bigger screen, as well as
| hackability. It was cheaper than a corresponding Kindle. Also,
| I knew I could easily install Koreader [1] in it, pretty much
| the only UI I have been using for many years now. I'm glad I
| did.
|
| However, and this is important. Though happy with this Kobo,
| truth is that it feels cheaper. I keep it on a good case, and I
| use it with care, as I'm pretty sure it won't survive any fall
| from whatever height I may drop it. And my previous Kindle, a
| paperwhite 4, had its tumbles, and survived them quite nicely.
| And not exactly because I was fortunate. So there's that.
|
| But don't get me wrong. I'm not Kindle-nostalgic. I just have
| enough experience with both to know what I can reasonably
| expect from my current device.
|
| [1] http://koreader.rocks/
| Shorel wrote:
| I have a PocketBook, and it feels more expensive than the
| Kindles I've had before.
| bambax wrote:
| Amazon gave me a Kindle Oasis (the prize for being a finalist
| in last year's 'Amazon Storytelling' contest). I would never
| have bought it myself since it costs EUR249 (!) but I have to
| say it's a fantastic device.
|
| It's super-legible, has enormous memory, is water resistant,
| and has buttons for page-turning.
|
| Other than Kindle books that arrive directly after buying, I
| send books to it via email through Calibre, which removes DRM
| in the process. Calibre also did the mobi conversion, and now
| this step is not even necessary anymore.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >I would never have bought it myself since it costs EUR249
| (!)
|
| I bought my Oasis 2 around for closet to 299 EUR (309.97 USD)
| when I was making 30k USD a year, was 100% worth it to me
| while I still had a fully functional kindle keyboard and
| kindle paperwhite 3. If you're a casual reader, that might
| seem expensive, but if you are chewing through 1-3 books a
| week like I do (heck I read 3 books last time I flew from
| Indianapolis to San Francisco and 2 more on the return
| flights), it becomes a much better price.
|
| I've been using it for almost 5 years now which has me at a
| cost of 17 cents per day with thousands of hours of use
| (about 8 cents an hour if I had to guess).
| bambax wrote:
| Actually I had bought a Kindle Keyboard 3G in 2011, which
| at the time cost $189, so not that far from the cost of a
| Kindle Oasis today. It served me well for many years.
|
| While it's still working (and the keyboard is so nice to
| use to type in notes) the plastic case has become "sticky"
| and a kind of thick film comes off in places. It's strange
| and very unpleasant.
|
| Recently the battery died, I refurbished it with a new
| battery from Aliexpress and it came back to life. When the
| Oasis arrived I gave the 3G to my kids.
| criddell wrote:
| I bought an Oasis on Prime Day and it's mostly a nice
| upgrade from my old Paperwhite. The only negative is the
| battery life. I have to charge it twice as often as I had
| to with my years old Paperwhite.
| criddell wrote:
| I think we're nearing the end of Amazon not really caring
| about DRM. AFAIK, the DRM used by latest version of KFX files
| hasn't been thoroughly broken and it's a cat and mouse game
| now. There are some less than ideal workarounds (like
| downloading an older format), but you lose some of the
| typography improvements that Amazon only supports in KFX.
|
| Now that Amazon seems to be interested in strong DRM, I
| expect a legislative solution to book DRM is our only long
| term hope.
| bambax wrote:
| Downloading an older format really isn't a high price to
| pay for getting rid of DRM. But yes, in time, as older
| devices disappear, this could become a big problem.
| [deleted]
| ekianjo wrote:
| Kindle work very well too when you install koreader.
| themadturk wrote:
| You need a slightly older-than-current firmware version,
| though, correct? I haven't kept up on Mobiread forums lately.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Back in 2014, I bought a nook, returned it. I bought a kobo,
| returned it. I bought a Kindle voyage that I love to this day.
|
| #1 reason: out of those three, Kindle is or was the only ebook
| vendor I could crack with DeDRM and actually own my books. With
| Kindle for PC 1.17, I can still pull down my books and import
| them to my Calibre library for safe keeping.
|
| Can one DeDRM their Nook or Kobo files in 2022?
|
| PS: Kobo typography was noticably worse than Kindle in 2014.
| Again, it may have changed.
|
| PPS: I wish the symmetrical origami cover of the voyage was
| more used. I lay in bed and flip from side to side while
| reading. A book like cover or one that just is meant for
| vertical support is not sufficient for my use case.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| If you have an Eink Kindle, you don't even need to use the
| Kindle desktop app to download the book files to use with
| DeDRM and Calibre. I personally find using the desktop app
| more of a PITA than just downloading the files, but YMMV.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Where do you get your books from?
|
| My main use for my Kindle ($99, early 2015 model) is from
| library systems that use Libby/Overdrive. It's super easy to
| check out a book and have it delivered to my kindle. Kindle
| supports whatever DRM is used to return the book when the loan
| period is over. And I don't have to feel guilty about bypassing
| DRM on the service.
|
| What's the process like for the Kobo?
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Works the same on Kobo - full OverDrive integration.
| jfim wrote:
| > Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value
| prop is.
|
| Easy purchasing of ebooks from Amazon, combined with their
| large selection of ebooks.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The ridiculous pricing of ebooks on Amazon in the last few
| years has forced me to alternate sources. I'm not interested
| in paying through the nose for something that's far cheaper
| to distribute than a printed book. In today's market Kindle
| doesn't offer any value proposition.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| An ebook is only marginally cheaper to distribute than a
| printed book. If you're doing a reasonable sized print run,
| it's only going to cost you a dollar or two to print a
| book.
|
| Most of the cost is in labor to write and edit the book,
| which still needs to happen for ebooks.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Printing is only one of many costs, though. Shipping,
| returns, expen$ive retail space for physical inventory,
| salary and benefits for retail clerks, utilities,
| insurance, shoplifting losses...
| criddell wrote:
| When I'm buying something, I'm not thinking much about
| their margins. For me, it's mostly about value.
|
| An ebook is searchable, gives me instant access to a
| dictionary, doesn't take up space in my house, I can read
| in the dark, it's more comfortable to hold, and I can set
| the font to a size that works for my aging eyes. That $10
| ebook of _The Dog Stars_ is a much better value for me than
| a $4 paperback copy.
|
| Paper books have their place too. For example, I want
| physical cookbooks that I can leave open on a stand as I
| work in the kitchen.
| themadturk wrote:
| For me, a 66-year-old who's been reading voluminously for
| about 60 of those years, the value proposition of the
| Kindle (or probably just about any ereader, probably) is:
|
| 1. I don't have to store all the physical books I would
| have acquired over the decades. 2. I can carry around a
| large number of those beloved books with me at all times.
| 3. I can very the font size, which my ageing eyes
| appreciate.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Yeah like, I don't wanna point out the typical HN problem
| but...
|
| Imagine explaining this to someone's grandma.
|
| "Click this Amazon shortcut, type your book name up here,
| click on it down below, press 'buy now'. If it doesn't show
| up right away, wait 5 minutes and check again."
|
| Versus... something to do with trying to download mobi files
| (from where?), starting calibre, starting an import process,
| locating said files (this is seriously harder than you think
| for most people), plugging your reader into your PC, running
| a sync process...
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| - turn up e-reader
|
| - click apps (if it's not the default screen)
|
| - click "whatever has store in the name"
|
| - buy the book
|
| - rinse and repeat
|
| I'm sure anybody can learn how to do it, even if the brand
| it's not Bezos's.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| 99% of this difficulty goes away if Grandma uses her phone
| or tablets browser to download unlimited free books from
| zlibrary and reads them on the same device.
|
| Honestly the grandma example is starting to feel dated.
| When I was born in 1980 a 50 year old grandma was born in
| 1930 and probably didn't own a TV until they were raising
| their own family.
|
| The same 50 year old today was born in 1972 and would have
| been 5 when the Apple II hit the scene. At what point do we
| realize that eventually old folks will be those that only
| grew up with iphones and stop assuming that anyone with
| grey hear needs to be assumed to be technically
| incompetent.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| I highly doubt that people are thinking of 50 year olds
| when they're talking about grandmas.
|
| But in answer to your question, I suspect the cliche will
| slowly die out when most of the 60/70/80 year olds we
| meet are tech savvy.
| another-circus wrote:
| A ton of kids these days aren't that tech savvy. I work
| with high school kids and many have a real lack of
| understanding about how things work. A large number have
| no idea how to much with software outside of browser,
| believe that internet traffic travels through satellites
| to get between continents, and can't even debug simple
| printer jams.
| corobo wrote:
| High school kids have a lack of understanding of how
| things work? We should put them in a school or something
| :P
|
| It sounds like you're the person who could be the one to
| teach them this stuff, is that not an option?
| ev1 wrote:
| This is my gen z experience, I hope you find it somewhat
| insightful:
|
| - Your first computer given to you was probably a
| Chromebook at school. It is your browser. Every app is a
| web page. Docs, Sheets are all web pages. If you were
| rich or privileged you might have gotten a Macbook at
| school instead. But nearly everything is a web page. You
| use Google Docs with your friends and for group projects.
| I can count the people that had desktop versions of Word
| or Excel on one hand. You upload your videos to YouTube,
| presentations to Canvas or Google Drive, you don't bring
| in a flash drive. If you plug in a flash drive it might
| just show up as "External Storage (128 GB)" and not
| /sdcard or /media/USB0 or whatever. Even then, you don't
| really folder it up. You might use it to copy one file or
| a ton of images from one thing to another, then you
| format it when you're done. You don't just keep one
| around to build stuff up on, why bother, it's on The
| Cloud.
|
| - You grow up with no hierarchical file organization.
| Imagine mobile. You have a "Pictures" tab I guess, and a
| "Downloads" tab? What else is there? You don't have album
| folders with FLAC files or anything; all your music
| streams, all your content streams, none of the apps that
| serve that content allow you to download them into the
| filesystem, if anything they do their best to prevent
| that. You don't have a filesystem path on iPhone. You
| have maybe tags and categories on Google Drive and you
| don't keep anything on it other than Sheets and Docs
| stuff that is listed by name, sorted by recent usage, and
| do not physically exist as files on the filesystem. Tap
| to select by thumbnail and Most Recent do an insane
| amount of work to hide what a folder is, nearly nothing
| but F/OSS f-droid apps on Android will expose things like
| /sdcard/Something or /sdcard0/emulated/Downloads. You get
| a selector of thumbnails.
|
| - Mobile is first, always. Phones are cheaper than
| computers. Every kid has a phone, whether it's for
| legitimate use or for parents to abusively track them and
| monitor and record everything they do. Internet is always
| just kind of around you in the air, magically. You've
| never really had to think about how continents were
| connected, there never was a time in your life where the
| internet wasn't just magically all around you apart from
| during no signal areas. If you go to a location you ask
| for the wifi login. You don't ask where you plug in your
| ethernet cable. When you sign up for internet, unless you
| are specifically an enthusiast, your ISP gives you mesh
| wifi pods/gateway/whatever as the default. When you
| travel, hotel, coffeeshop, class, library, you get a wifi
| login. If you don't have wifi you use your phone or
| tether your laptop to your phone wifi.
|
| - Rarely have a printer. If you print in class you
| weren't allowed to resolve paper jams yourself, and pro-
| tier laser printers almost never jammed even if you were
| doing 50+ pages at a time. When was the last time I had
| to print something? Your presentations are on Google
| Classroom/Google Drive/etc. Your homework is turned in
| online. Your concert tickets are on your phone with a
| moving barcode to prevent screenshotting (hope you have
| mobile service and it isn't too contended). Amazon
| returns are just dropped off and show them QR code, you
| don't print a label and they actively discourage you from
| choosing an option where you have to print a label.
|
| You have to very actively seek out these things and want
| to learn, you can't passively pick it up like presumably
| in the past you had to tinker at least a little - tablets
| and phones are meant to force you to shut up and consume,
| not know about it. Chromebooks are intentionally locked
| down as hard as possible. Every app you use is probably a
| web page or a web page in a CEF wrapper.
| themadturk wrote:
| Thank you for this. I've heard little bits and pieces of
| it before, but I think you've done a great job of
| summarizing modern "computing" for the vast majority of
| people.
| ev1 wrote:
| Thanks, I hope it was useful! The printing thing is an
| interesting point, because I hear from older people that
| everyone used to have to type up and turn in their
| assignments printed out, and handwritten items were
| refused.
|
| For a long time now, they don't want typed and printed
| assignments; in fact some of my instructors in primary
| school would actually look upon these suspiciously - the
| default assumption is that if you are printing it out you
| are trying to bypass the anti-plagiarism system. That's
| also partially why every assignment is turned in online:
| your writing is run through one or more anti-plagiarism
| systems (and saved for later use against yourself and
| others).
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Larry Ellison is 77
|
| Bill Gates is 66
|
| Jeff Bezos is 58
|
| I think they're doing ok.
| [deleted]
| trebbble wrote:
| > But in answer to your question, I suspect the cliche
| will slowly die out when most of the 60/70/80 year olds
| we meet are tech savvy.
|
| Most younger people are also really bad at using
| computers.
|
| No, not because they're ruined by smartphones--because
| most people seem to find most current operating systems
| and computer systems in general unintuitive and hard to
| understand. They always have and seemingly always will,
| unless/until UIs and core metaphors in computer
| interfaces change significantly.
|
| The typical experience of most non-nerds using a
| computer, no matter their age, is repeating some steps
| they memorized and hoping the right thing happens. They
| don't make connections between functionality (say,
| thinking to try copy-pasting a _file_ , not just selected
| text), they don't experiment because it usually gets them
| in some state they don't know how to get out of without
| help, and any change to UI layout or any kind of pop-up
| notification confuses the hell out of them. Desktop
| computers are mysterious, frustrating things. Observe
| some workers in a non-tech office using their work
| computers for a while and you'll see what I mean.
| scarygliders wrote:
| Don't know why you're being downvoted.
|
| This born in '69 53 year old right here is programming
| backends and frontends for websites, and PySide5/6 Qt5/6
| applications.
|
| I'm still sharp as a pin.
|
| Like you say, there has to be some point at which those
| younger than I stop thinking someone in their 50's isn't
| as hopeless with technology as they assume.
|
| Of course not everyone in my Gen X'er group will be like
| me, then again, I know of folks in their 20's who
| struggle with anything IT.
|
| Quit with the ageism, people. It's getting old ;)
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Yeah. I was born in 1957 and took my first programming
| class in 1973, assembly language on a PDP-8. Admittedly
| I'm not a typical 65 year old.
| themadturk wrote:
| Pfft. Youngster ;). I was born in 1955, I didn't really
| learn to program until 1980 (and have never programmed
| professionally), but am plenty tech-savvy. People just
| have to have the need or interest to be "good" at tech,
| no matter their age. My mom, who is now in her mid-80s
| and in memory care, was able to keep up a very active
| life via email well into her 70s; my wife, who's a couple
| years older than me, knows enough to use her iPad to
| read, research and buy stuff online, but hands the device
| to me for anything more.
| josephg wrote:
| I got yelled at at a conference for using my mum as an
| example of a user who wouldn't use some complex software
| solution. I was told off for being sexist, or ageist or
| something.
|
| They didn't get it. My mum is super smart and prolific.
| She has a PhD in international development and has helped
| tens of thousands of disadvantaged kids go to school.
|
| It's not that she's not smart enough. She just doesn't
| care about the technology. She's not going to
| spontaneously get comfortable with the terminal and learn
| rsync. But she can install Dropbox no problem. If a
| kindle just works and has all the books in easy reach,
| that's what I'll recommend to her. She's too busy to
| bother with software that's not user friendly.
|
| That's not ageism. I think about her a lot when I build
| software because I respect her. She deserves to spend her
| day thinking about her job, not thinking about stupid
| tech problems.
| scarygliders wrote:
| I agree with what you say. I've witnessed more than
| enough software with absolutely abysmal UI/UX and don't
| have time for that myself - except for when I really need
| to, like this one truly abysmal phone app for an energy
| company which I need to use to pay for my energy.
|
| It looks and acts like it was designed/coded by idiots;
| additional popups to remind me to rate the app (already
| did and it was very negative!), a popup with an "okay,
| got it" prompt - the only prompt - which instead of
| setting that yes, I actually did get it, just pops up
| again the next time reminding me to use some feature I
| don't want to use.
|
| And so on.
|
| That's obviously the fault of the people involved in
| vomiting out the abysmal application(s).
|
| But yes I agree, most people simply don't care about the
| technology, they just want a Thing to do the thing they
| want it to do, no muss no fuss. This situation has always
| been the case and I can't envisage a time when it will
| change.
| another-circus wrote:
| Back when Netflix first started, and they were sending
| out DVDs instead of doing streaming, my stepdad, who is
| now in his mid-80s wanted to get his money worth. So, he
| started ripping the movies immediately and returning them
| the same day, ordering more as quickly as he could. When
| I went to visit he'd always have added more to his
| bookcases of DVDs. He recently setup a NAS and Plex and
| copied them all over. They, my parents, have a streaming
| service, but they live in the boonies so the connection
| isn't great, and having thousands of movies and shows
| ready to go is great for them.
|
| Some old people know a thing or two.
| scarygliders wrote:
| "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are
| subtle and quick to anger."
|
| Your stepdad sounds awesome :)
| briHass wrote:
| I remember Netflix quickly putting a stop to that by
| delaying sending out new discs when you got above some
| weekly threshold. I would drop off my Netflix returns at
| a huge, regional post office sorting facility, and I knew
| the discs got back to Netflix in less than 24 hours, yet
| they would claim they did not receive them for days.
| Instead of admitting to throttling, they played a shady
| game.
| krageon wrote:
| Grandmas are 70-90, not 50. At that point we're still
| close to the second world war, which is a very different
| path. Those folks simply cannot be expected to have any
| competence.
|
| As an aside, I work with _many_ folks around 50 and most
| of them are functionally technologically illiterate. It
| doesn 't seem like such a strange assumption to make from
| where I'm sitting.
| colomon wrote:
| If you're just talking about old enough to have a
| grandchild, 50 is plenty old -- indeed, old enough to
| have gotten married after college, had a kid who got
| married after college, and that kid now has a kid of
| their own. At least one of my high school classmates did
| that. (I'm 51.)
|
| If you're talking old enough to be, say, a college
| student's grandma, then obviously your 70-90 estimate is
| much more likely.
|
| (Bigger picture: I've been professionally programming for
| three-and-a-half decades. I find myself more and more
| annoyed by the user-unfriendliness of tech as I age. As
| an on-topic example, earlier this month Amazon's mail-to-
| Kindle feature rejected an EPUB I sent it, and when I
| used Calibre to convert it to MOBI and sent that instead,
| lectured me that MOBI was obsolete. I guess this is
| especially annoying because it seems like they're
| replacing a service which basically never failed with one
| that is failing like 10% of the time I try to use it...)
| tbihl wrote:
| My son's grandparents are 55-63, and his one great
| grandparent is 76
| quesera wrote:
| > Grandmas are 70-90, not 50.
|
| To a reasonable approximation: -
| Grandmothers of infants are between the ages of 40 and 80
| - Grandmothers of HN commenters are between the ages of
| 55 and (dead for decades)
|
| > I work with many folks around 50 and most of them are
| functionally technologically illiterate
|
| Most people of all ages are functionally technologically
| illiterate.
|
| Many people around 50 are functionally literate in
| different technologies than you are. Those may be less
| relevant, or merely invisible to you as a user.
| input_sh wrote:
| You're presenting it as if Kobo doesn't have its own store.
| It does: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebooks
|
| You can access it via Kobo e-reader, same as accessing
| Amazon's store on a Kindle. Somewhat more limited
| selection, but both contain Big Five publishers (Hachette,
| HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon and
| Schuster) that own hundreds if not thousands of imprints.
|
| Calibre/OPDS server/custom software (like koreader) are an
| added bonus for the techies, but it's absolutely not a
| requirement. If your requirement is ease-of-use, there's no
| difference. If your requirement is a hacker-friendly
| device, you can do it on both, but it's in my experience
| somewhat easier to do on a Kobo.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| A grandma might be pushing it, but my SO learned how to use
| Calibre and she isn't very tech-savvy.
|
| Also, Amazon isn't as easy as it sounds - I used it a few
| times and found it quite confusing to get it on my Kindle
| after purchasing on Amazon. And its a nightmare as I moved
| country and would prefer to purchase a larger selection of
| ebooks in English from my home country etc. but I have a
| separate Amazon account and stuff.. that was even more
| confusing.
| anakaine wrote:
| 1. Turn on the reader.
|
| 2. Go to "Kobo Store".
|
| 3. Look for a book.
|
| 4. Click "Buy".
|
| 5. Click the book to open it.
|
| Thats about my workflow in the kobo, assuming I didn't drop
| a file on there via usb.
| vanchor3 wrote:
| Not to mention books available exclusively on Amazon due to
| KDP Select.
| zzzbra wrote:
| Kobo's iOS and desktop reading experiences are very subpar
| (although they seem to be fixing that with new experimental
| features for iOS)and there's no cloud sync for the most popular
| ("cheaper") models.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| It's trading customisation/flexibility for ease of use, at a
| (potentially) higher cost.
|
| The older kindles with 2G/3G "Whispersync" functionality had
| another major drawcard of working just about anywhere, even if
| you didn't have wifi coverage or a phone with data services. I
| have in the past used this to load several more books while in
| an airport in a foreign country between flights.
|
| Many people if you hand them a Kindle can easily navigate the
| store and buy a book.
|
| Without that built-in store, then they're now going to have a
| bunch more hurdles: they need a computer, internet access (or
| an offline store), the skill and ability to run and use
| Calibre, the knowledge of where to get eBooks from, how to get
| them in the right format (or convert them), etc.
| pantojax45 wrote:
| The Kobo Store is really easy to use - plus Overdrive
| (library ebook software) is natively integrated into Kobo as
| well.
|
| It's basically equivalent to Amazon and when you purchase
| from Kobo (or check out from local library) it shows up
| automatically when you sync via wifi.
|
| They'll even price match Amazon (credit for difference in
| cost +10% bonus) just by filling out a form.
| innocenat wrote:
| Kobo doesn't have wireless sync for third party book.
| That's a killing feature for many people on Kindle.
| relix wrote:
| Kobo's default OS has Dropbox and Pocket support. You can
| just drop a book in your Dropboox and it'll appear on
| your Kobo through wireless sync.
| innocenat wrote:
| Dropbox is only available on Kobo Forma, Sage, and
| Elipsa. It isn't available in more popular Libra 2 or
| Aura HD.
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| It's not native, you're right. Many of us have been using
| Kobocloud for years to automatically sync to cloud drive
| services: https://github.com/fsantini/KoboCloud
| krageon wrote:
| I won't lie, I was excited to see the technical solution
| here - but this appears to be a stack of horrific shell
| scripts fixing everything via curl. Is it dependable, in
| your experience?
| RainaRelanah wrote:
| koreader really is the way to go.
|
| https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-
| on-Ko...
| sobkas wrote:
| You can use KoReader built in Calibre remote push, or you
| can try https://github.com/fsantini/KoboCloud/pull/35
| There is working tgz but you will have to find it on your
| own.
| andrepd wrote:
| But the Kobo _does_ have a built-in store. And it does
| support WiFi sync. I don 't see any way how a Kobo is harder
| to use for a non technical user than Kindle. No trade-off
| there x)
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Well, there is also price and features. I've got a Kobo
| Elipsa, it was an impulse buy at a book store and I regret
| it because for just a little bit more you can get a
| Remarkable 2. The Remarkable is lighter, less bulky,
| faster, and has this fantastic warm backlight. The Elipsa
| felt like outdated, heavy tech from the start, isn't
| waterproof, and its notetaking functions are unusable (it's
| just too slow). The OS is rarely if ever updated.
|
| Equivalent Kindles seem to be much cheaper cheaper, though,
| and with overall better features and maintenance. And the
| store is much larger. The downside is obviously that you
| make yourself dependent on a fairly evil company that
| destroys culture and the lives of many aspiring authors.
| But most people don't care about that.
| goosedragons wrote:
| The Remarkable 2 also isn't waterproof and also doesn't
| have a front light (warm or cold) at all. That's how they
| got it so thin. It's also awful at reading ePubs but I
| guess better at note taking.
|
| Kindles aren't much cheaper. Compare the Kindle Oasis to
| the Libra. All you really get is a metal case for an
| extra $100. And the stores are pretty similar in size
| with the exception of like self published books which IMO
| are worth stripping out of search...
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > The Remarkable ... has this fantastic warm backlight
|
| It doesn't have a backlight at all!
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > functionality had another major drawcard of working just
| about anywhere, even if you didn't have wifi coverage or a
| phone with data services
|
| I have around 50 books and a dozen of comic books on my
| e-reader.
|
| It works perfectly without any connection whatsoever.
|
| I'm not sure that being able to download a book while sitting
| on top of Mountain Everest it's a such an important feature,
| but YMMV.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Ha, funny you say that. Last time I was at Everest Base
| Camp nearly everyone had an e-ink kindle. The long battery
| life and light weight are ideal for long isolated stretches
| in the Himalayas.
| vertis wrote:
| Check and Mate.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Last time I was at Everest Base Camp nearly everyone
| had an e-ink kindle
|
| that's not surprising.
|
| it's the most popular e-reader.
|
| anyway, base camp is not the top of the mountain :)
|
| where they downloading e-books with the device 2g
| connection from there?
|
| > The long battery life and light weight are ideal for
| long isolated stretches in the Himalayas.
|
| modern e-readers last weeks on battery and weight less
| than 200 grams.
| themadturk wrote:
| > where they downloading e-books with the device 2g
| connection from there?
|
| Someone able to prep for Everest knows to load all the
| ebooks they want on their Kindles before they leave home.
| themadturk wrote:
| I was really sorry to see Whispersync disappear in the the
| most recent Kindle Paperwhite. I was more than happy to pay
| extra for it.
|
| However, I've never had the kind of battery life I'm seeing
| on my Kindle these days. It was always good (until my
| previous Paperwhite suddenly went toes up) but now it's
| amazing.
| wy35 wrote:
| Back when I was shopping for an e-reader, the Kobo was more
| expensive than the equivalent Kindle for the same price. Plus,
| Kindles go for very cheap on Prime Day.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| I don't have a kindle but its value to me is that my 84 year
| old Mum can use hers without needing to call me for technical
| support.
| gommm wrote:
| It's more convenient to send an ebook via calibre to my kindle
| than to my kobo. I configured send to email on calibre, so it's
| just one click to send via calibre. On the other hand, I love
| the pocket integration on kobo whenever I want to read articles
| and the overdrive library integration is great. It's why we
| have both a kobo and a kindle shared between me and my wife.
|
| Besides this, from an ergonomic point of view, the kindle oasis
| is better than the kobo sage, it's lighter, feels better in
| hand. The Kobo forma is better than the sage in term of
| ergonomy but when I had mine it broke after 13 months.
| frown_away wrote:
| Removing support for a file format must be one of the dumbest
| things you can do in software. Congratulations!
| CallMeJim wrote:
| I wrote myself a tool to monitor the RSS feeds of a bunch of web
| serials, and send any new chapters to Kindle.
|
| Using Calibre CLI, adapting to send EPUBs instead of MOBIs was as
| easy as changing from:
|
| ebook-convert chapter.html chapter.mobi
|
| To:
|
| ebook-convert chapter.html chapter.epub
|
| Calibre is incredibly powerful.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| I am interested in which web serials you follow and what you
| tool looks like, if you are willing to share!
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yep, it's the ffmpeg of reading!
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I have a very old Kindle (3rd gen, ~12 years old) and I am unsure
| how it will be impacted by this. My understanding was that
| Kindles didn't support EPUB files. It seems that Amazon now
| intend to roll out support for EPUB, but I highly doubt a model
| as old as mine will get an update.
|
| So it seems that for now, while Amazon are just converting EPUBs
| to MOBI behind the scenes, everything will continue working. But
| if down the line they update their more modern devices to support
| EPUB and then stop converting to MOBI, I won't be able to email
| devices to my Kindle anymore and will have to sideload them via
| USB.
|
| Is there anyone else in a similar situation who can tell me if
| this is true?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| My understanding is that Amazon already crossed into that
| "mixed" state you are worried about: after a certain OS version
| Kindles natively understand EPUB (and can be sideloaded via
| USB, not just emailed). This was rolled out relatively quietly
| and the Send to Kindle tools have been taking a lot longer to
| update to support the .epub file extension even when the
| devices support it. We have something of an idea of when it
| rolled out in that it is noticeable the current "modern" KFX
| (?) format is a light tweak of EPUB.
|
| But there are indications that there are probably still active
| kindle devices which Amazon is converting AZW3, KFX, and EPUB
| behind the scenes still. I still have a 3rd gen kindle keyboard
| myself that I use rarely and the outward differences between
| its OS and the OS on my other two more recent kindles are
| growing increasingly stark (and not entirely for the better,
| Amazon's recent cover focus even in list views have made the
| device's library a much bigger chore to navigate with no more
| than 6 books displayed at a time in either grid or list views).
| Easy to imagine nearly as many inward differences, including
| format support, between the OS versions.
|
| So far, Amazon seems to want to support any active kindles for
| the long haul and I would be surprised if any behind the scenes
| converters get "turned off" without notice, _but_ because they
| don 't tell us where the exact lines are in which devices
| support which OS versions and which OS versions introduce which
| feature support, it's a strange gamble with not enough
| information.
| hollandheese wrote:
| No Kindles actually support reading ePub.
|
| All that's happening is Amazon is retiring MOBI support.
| Since Send to Kindle only supported MOBI, they are
| transitioning Send to Kindle to support receiving ePub which
| then gets converted to AZW3.
|
| So the only Kindles losing support for the Send to Kindle
| stuff is the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and Kindle DX. Since those
| ones never got AZW3 support.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Anecdotally, I _have_ sideloaded via USB EPUBs and it works
| on two of my three kindles. Again, I don 't know where the
| OS line in the sand is for EPUB support, but kindles seem
| to have quietly updated to directly support EPUBs. Amazon
| could do a much better job of communication here. I assume
| they aren't communicating this well because they don't want
| to encourage people to use non-Amazon bookstores.
| hollandheese wrote:
| If this is true you should report it to Mobileread,
| because this would be a giant story. I have never heard
| of that being possible, nor has anyone else there. Are
| you completely sure that you actually sideloaded the
| ePubs and not AZW3 or KFX files?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I feel somewhat certain I spotted people already doing it
| on a forum like Mobileread (or maybe it was Mobileread)
| and that is what encouraged me to try it as I was
| fiddling with something in Calibre conversion that wasn't
| working right and searched for "obvious solutions" one of
| which was a nonchalant "just try to copy the EPUB file
| over USB". I don't know what to tell you about why it
| isn't a bigger "story" other than "it seems to be
| intentionally quiet on Amazon's part" and I guess it is
| the sort of thing people just kind of do and don't think
| to talk about?
| loeg wrote:
| You can always convert EPUB to MOBI yourself using Calibre. I
| often have to convert the other way (EPUB to AZW3) with a newer
| kindle.
| Elidrake42 wrote:
| I personally use `ebook-convert` (comes with Calibre) with a
| simple script that'll capture anything in a drop dir, convert
| it, and email it off.
| xvilka wrote:
| It's sad that leaner and better designed FB2 format (or helped to
| improve it) didn't gain support from vendors. ePub format is just
| a bunch of HTML without meaningful semantics.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| God Mobi is so frustrating to deal with. I batch add books to my
| old kindle paperwhite once a year. It's a nightmare everytime.
| Sometimes emails to my kindle works. Sometimes it doesnt.
| Sometimes their official app works. Sometimes it doesnt.
|
| Sometimes Everything needs to be mobi. Sometimes other formats
| will be accepted but then look like shit.
|
| I love the hardware of my paperwhite and its by far the best
| ~$115 I've ever spent on a device but getting books onto it,
| other than buying through the amazon kindle store, is the worst.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I'm confused, my Voyage just accepts PDF files, no issue. For
| anything non-Amazon purchased, that's the format I use.
|
| It is annoying that other common formats (epub, particularly)
| are unsupported though.
| shuntress wrote:
| I know you and everyone else reading knows this but this is by
| design.
|
| Amazon wants it to be as difficult as possible (if not
| impossible) to buy _anything_ (not just digital books) from
| anywhere other than Amazon.
| Markoff wrote:
| getting files to kindle for me this summer vacation 2-3 weeks ago
| was major PITA, I took kindle for kid and first USB cable in
| drawer unaware that this particular USB cable is only for
| charging and can't do data transfer, since i use only USB C and
| kindle doesn't support it
|
| my kindle has no amazon account, because I am sideloading
| everything offline, prety much not using anything online on
| kindle
|
| so when I figured out the problem is USB cable and registering
| amazon account would be too troublesome I discovered you can't
| send files to kindle simply over wifi direct or bluetooth or
| other simple way and I end up downloading legally obtained books
| from my library first to my laptop from where I connected to FTP
| server launched in Mixplorer in my Android phone, transferred
| through there books to phone, then again launched in mixplorer in
| phone HTTP server since kindle doesn't support FTP connection,
| typed IP address in experimental kindle browser and et voila I
| could finally see files I wanted to read on Kindle, only problem
| was despite the format supposedly supported by Kindle, when I
| tapped on file it shown me error the file is not supported for
| download through kindle browser (despite supported if you
| sideload it through data cable), so I had again convert these
| PDF/EPUB/AZW or whatever files in calibre to MOBI, again transfer
| to phone, then again transfer to kindle, where finally after
| tapping files were downloaded and I could finally read story to
| my kid, can't imagine how regular user would be able to transfer
| books to kindle without data cable and amazon account and if
| their transfer service stops supporting certain format then only
| option for regular user is data cable
| Markoff wrote:
| TIL Calibre has own web/content server which should be
| accessible from Kindle experimental browser, so could save
| myself trouble transferring files back and forth through mobile
| pseingatl wrote:
| This is proof that we are still in the digital incunabula.
| powersnail wrote:
| My biggest confusion about Send-to-kindle, is that you can't send
| an `AZW3` file. It's the format that Amazon uses; it works if you
| transfer it by USB; for some reason, you just can't send it by
| email. Makes no sense to me.
| innocenat wrote:
| AFAIK iOS Kindle App can't read AZW3. It's converted to AZK.
| Amazon probably don't have AZW3->AZK pipeline.
| powersnail wrote:
| That just sounds even more curious to me. How can a company
| make an app that doesn't read a format it invented? AZW3 has
| been around for years. There's got to be enough time for them
| to implement it.
| innocenat wrote:
| I heard that it's because Amazon don't want to use WebKit
| for HTML rendering. AZW3 is mostly EPUB in different
| package.
|
| Don't quote me on this though.
| wtallis wrote:
| Why would Amazon have to use WebKit for HTML rendering?
| Does Apple have rules about that which apply to more than
| just web browsers? (IIRC there's also some restriction
| against JIT, but that would only matter for JS-heavy
| stuff, which the web is but ebooks definitely aren't.)
| brewdad wrote:
| I honestly think that Amazon can't fathom a world where you
| could end up with an AZW3 file that wasn't purchased, and
| therefore directly downloadable from, their store.
| longrod wrote:
| Finally! Amazon should have done this long ago. ePub v3 supports
| everything MOBI does and it has really extensive support across
| platforms. This is HUGE for people with a big eBook collection.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I mean, given that Calibre can convert from anything to the
| reader's native format I couldn't care less what kind of format
| any eBook I get is in, as long as it's not PDF.
|
| Still it's a good thing to move to a common standard to
| simplify things.
| swyx wrote:
| as a self published book author, i have to worry about
| formats that my readers use to give them the least hassle.
| unfortunately kindle is 1/3 of my readership.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well if you're selling you really ought to provide it in
| all available formats, especially with how easy it is to
| convert between them. Should take you a total of what, 10
| mins?
|
| Kind of like us devs that have to deploy code for various
| platforms, which is arguably an order of magnitude more
| complex in some cases. You're lucky that the Kindle doesn't
| support 3 OSes with each its own proprietary formats lol.
| swyx wrote:
| the devil is in the details. try getting
| formatting/images/code displays right on all 3 platforms
| when the test/iteration cycle is minutes. not saying this
| is the biggest problem in the world, just explaining why
| even if amazon discontinues mobi i still have to support
| mobi.
| Markoff wrote:
| Yup, less options is win for users! Why not just add more
| supported formats instead doing mess with removing and ading
| formats?
| teraflop wrote:
| Note that the Kindle devices themselves still do not support
| ePub files. (EDIT: as of the last time I checked a month or two
| ago, but maybe this has changed?)
|
| Previously, you could send a MOBI file to your Kindle email
| address, and it would be delivered to your Kindle. Now, you
| have to send them an ePub file, and Amazon will convert it to
| an AZW3 file (which is structurally very similar to MOBI) and
| send _that_ to your Kindle.
|
| If you have an ePub file and you want to read it on your Kindle
| without going through Amazon's servers, you have to convert it
| to AZW3 (or MOBI) yourself, either using Amazon's Kindle
| Previewer GUI software (only available for Windows/Mac) or by
| using a third-party tool like Calibre.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Hasn't changed. Amazon has demonstrated some intent to do
| this in the future though, by deprecating MOBI and enabling
| the EPUB-over-email thing. The Pearson post mentions:
|
| > Amazon has announced the retirement of its proprietary MOBI
| file format for eBooks, and a transition to the EPUB format
| for use on Kindle devices and apps.
|
| which makes me wonder if they know more than we do?
| qumpis wrote:
| Does this mean that the formatting due to conversation might
| change? Aren't the features of azw3 lacking compared to mobi:
| can this also result in unwanted changes?
| wyldfire wrote:
| Aside: what's the best e-reader device (ignoring cost)? I'd like
| to invest in one soon, something robust and durable, good
| contrast. I kinda like the idea of running open source software
| on an ereader but I'd probably consider it merely nice-to-have.
| pantojax45 wrote:
| Kobo has some fantastic ereaders (and the premium kobo is
| cheaper than equivalent on Amazon). They also natively support
| Pocket and checking out books from your library via Overdrive.
| Jedd wrote:
| 'best' is a tricky adjective to satisfy.
|
| I have a Pocketbook HD3 Touch, and really like it. It's a 6"
| monochrome model, with white-to-red-tint backlight. Previously
| I owned their 360 model - with a clip-on cover and at 5" size,
| it was perfect to slip into a jacket pocket for bag-less
| outings. Sadly ebooks in that size are rare now.
|
| Pocketbook are known for supporting lots of formats of ebooks,
| and being 'pretty open', but your expectations will vary there,
| I'm sure. They did bring out a similarly sized colour eink
| model about 2 years ago which looked tempting, though I
| personally don't have much material in that size that'd benefit
| from colour, and moving around text book, let alone A4 sized
| material on a 6" screen would be awful.
| huimang wrote:
| I love my kobo. It's more open than kindles (you just mount it
| and shlep books over), and I like the kobo bookstore. That
| said, I had a kindle paperwhite and it was nice as well.
|
| If you want to run android apps then check out Boox. I
| immediately bought one after playing around with one in person.
| But that's more of a tablet that can be used for reading than
| just an ereader.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Can you use Calibre to strip the DRM off Kobo e-books?
|
| Being able to own my books outright is the only reason I went
| with Kindle over Kobo in 2014.
| wishfish wrote:
| You can. It's slightly more involved than the Kindle DRM
| stripping, but it's not bad. I was able to do it and I
| don't even own a Kobo. I found a book I wanted that was for
| sale on the Kobo store but not offered by Amazon.
|
| For those who want to try this at home, you're looking for
| the Calibre Obok Plugin. I think it's usually part of the
| DeDRM package which you probably already have. I can't
| remember where I found instructions but this page seems
| more or less accurate:
|
| https://www.epubor.com/calibre-kobo-drm-removal-plugin-
| obokp...
|
| There is one simpler way of accomplishing the same thing:
| just go to LibGen and look for the book you bought. And
| download a fresh copy from there. That might be the best
| solution.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I just discovered libgen... interesting.
|
| Okay, relevant to the discussions of e-reader formats:
| Why, on my 2014 kindle, do MOBI files converted from ePub
| not support all the fonts on my Kindle? A native
| purchase, or even at times a non-native MOBI direct,
| looks better than an epub->mobi conversion. I had to
| create a new preset on the Kindle for font and margin to
| make it look tolerable.
| wishfish wrote:
| Good question. I don't know the answer. I think the 2014s
| supported AZW3 so you might want to try that as your
| output format from Calibre. I say that because I've never
| seen any unavailable fonts in an epub > azw3 conversion.
| innocenat wrote:
| Kindle Paperwhite (2021) is one of the fastest E-reader
| available right now (in term of responsive ness). Kindle device
| have excellent dictionary too, especially for non-latin
| language. (Japanese dictionary implementation on Kobo is not
| very good).
|
| Kobo is more open and is price competitively with Kindle. It's
| also much more customizable if you are into that.
|
| There are also a lot of Android e-ink tablet like BOOX. These
| are more expensive but a much, much more customizable as it's
| basically an Android reader.
|
| Contrast shouldn't be a problem with any recent device. But
| anything release in past 1-2 years are excellent.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| What about battery replacement?
|
| Seems like no matter how good the display and build quality,
| all eBook readers are bound to stop holding a charge after
| 3-4 years. I feel like the ongoing availability of newly-
| produced replacement batteries and the difficulty of
| replacing them are the primary factors in choosing an ebook
| reader.
|
| My 2015 Paperwhite barely lasts 20 minutes after I pull the
| charging cable, even back in 2018 it was down from two weeks
| to two days per charge.
|
| It's not like you can avoid the problem by loading up on
| extra batteries. A replacement battery manufactured shortly
| after the reader is going to be as bad as the one that came
| installed by the time I need it.
|
| All the other problems I worry about like responsiveness,
| display quality and defects apply early on when a refund or
| warranty replacement is a solution.
| innocenat wrote:
| > What about battery replacement?
|
| I don't think any e-readers are designed to be user-
| replaceable except the very first Kindle. As for DIY
| replacement, I don't really know, sorry.
|
| > A replacement battery manufactured shortly after the
| reader is going to be as bad as the one that came installed
| by the time I need it.
|
| Is it? I was under impression that battery mostly degrade
| with cycle count. At least, there are plenty of people
| still use Kindle from 10 years ago.
|
| > [...] warranty replacement is a solution.
|
| Then I think you are mostly limited to Kindle or Kobo. Most
| other e-reader or e-ink tablet are mostly shipped from
| China so warranty and replacement are going to not be as
| good.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| I also have 2015 paperwhite, and 3 days ago I charged it
| from 0 (where it was for few months, which isnt healthy for
| battery at all) to 46%, and today I finished a book with
| 34% left. I only used backlight for about two hours, the
| rest was with backlight off. First half of book was with
| wifi on, before I realized that (I tend to keep it in
| airplane mode whenever possible for battery savings,
| dictionaries work offline too)
| Mildlypolite wrote:
| My kindle 4 is from 2012 and still holds a charge for 2
| weeks if I use it for 20 minutes a day.
|
| You must have had a heavy use of your kindle. Even if the
| battery is not new they consume so little that I am not
| having any problems.
|
| Having said that, every electronic should have user
| replaceable batteries instead of being a programmed
| obsolescence nightmare.
| helpfulmandrill wrote:
| Still not buying a kindle until they retire the DRM too.
| neves wrote:
| Would I be able to just copy a epub to my Kindle Paperwhite 7th
| Generation? Or it will work just using "Send to Kindle"?
|
| I've just generated a personal e-book in epub and it was really
| annoying to convert it to Kindle to load in the device.
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