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eReaders -- a hardware thread

Started by Z, October 21, 2017, 09:17:25 PM

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Z

[I guess another one could be made about specific apps and stuff people use, like]


I got a Nook ST for something like $30 about four years ago, quickly rooted it to turn it into an eInk android (1.5) tablet. Initially I only read short stories and things I couldn't get elsewhere on it. The act of changing pages was a big factor in what motivated me to keep reading. It took me a while to adjust to eReaders but starting Infinite Jest pushed me over. The quick access to the notes and the greatly reduced weight were a blessing that vastly outstripped even the freeness of my pirated copy.

Since then I got myself:
- a Nook HD+ tablet for reading comics on (9 inch HD screen for like $30 second hand); wound up largely using it for PDFs (which are unreadable on a small eReader), a portable second screen for my laptop and shitty movies from bed, one of the best purchases I've made in years tbh
- a Nook Glowlight, which is near identical to my original nook but with a frontlight built in. Passed my original on as a gift and its still getting very regular use


Pretty interested in hearing what other newer devices are like. The resolution on the Glowlight is really just about acceptable, as is the lighting; and there is a very slight lag on page changes for even the faster apps that can be annoying. For a pair of devices that cost as little as they did new at the times I got them (ST and Glowlight), they're astounding, but I can probably afford something newer and better at this stage.
Right now the Kubo H20 with it's 6.8 inch screen sounds large enough to get past some of the issues I have with my current eInk reader without getting into too large territory, I assume speed isn't an issue at all with most newer options.

One thing I want inbuilt that I feel some of the more locked devices (e.g. Kindle, dunno which other ones have their own OSes) might lack is the option to read in landscape mode. Only one of the (Android 1.7 compatible) PKGs I could find supported epubs in landscape mode.


What're your ereader experiences? What's good? What's awful? How did you adjust to no longer having an actual book in your hand? Etc?

mothman

I'm now on my second Kindle. The first, a Kindle Keyboard, got a cracked case at the edges of the screen (a known fault apparently). My second one, a non-keyboard, I forget which release it is but it's the last one to not have a touch-screen. I'm not sure what I'll do when I come to replace it; I quite like having the buttons on the side.

As for the tactile experience, it's battered and scratched from a few beach holidays but I like the solidity of holding a piece of relatively-robust electronics in my hand. If there's one issue I've had with both it's that I never know quite where to hold it using one hand, where to put my thimb especially

I've been wondering whether I need to look at non-Amazon non-backlit eInk eReaders, after all it's not like I avtually buy books from Amazon at all, whether via the onboard Store function or not. Interested to hear options.

Z

Nook Glowlight could be worth a look, it has buttons on each side of the screen for changing pages, a backlight and when rooted can be a really shit Android tablet (able to run tons of early 2010 Android apps and fuck all newer). Depending on how old that second kindle is, it might be a huge jump up in features and will only cost you like $30 on ebay (they actually cost as much on ebay now second hand as they were new a few years ago). The touch screen can be a bit janky with dust though.

surreal

Quote from: mothman on October 21, 2017, 09:43:28 PM
I'm now on my second Kindle. The first, a Kindle Keyboard, got a cracked case at the edges of the screen (a known fault apparently). My second one, a non-keyboard, I forget which release it is but it's the last one to not have a touch-screen. I'm not sure what I'll do when I come to replace it; I quite like having the buttons on the side.

I was worried about the buttons when I went from Kindle 3 to a Kindle Voyage - there are actually pressure-sensitive button areas just to the side of the screen so you don't have to actually touch the screen itself.  Only thing is they can be a bit tricky to find but they do make for a decent page-turning function.  can't speak for the very newest of the line but I got the Voyage about 18 months ago, it was the successor to the paperwhite.

mothman

Reading through the Wikipedia page, it appears I had the (3rd Gen) Keyboard (ironically getting it for my birthday in 2011 just as the 4th Gen came out), and now have a 5th Gen.

Between one breaking and getting the other I used the Kindle app on my iPad mini. That experience, with the glare playing hell with my insomnia, has left me with a bit of a phobia of backlit readers and a dislike of touchscreens. The latter I may just have to get over; but I think I want to steer clear of the backlit devices if possible.

Reading that article, it struck me how much creep there's been in increasing the tech in Kindles. I like the simplicity of my 5th Gen. I'd not considered the Voyager; the price hike makes it something I'd have to really think hard about.

Ultimately, I'm a Kindle user out of habit. I like the tech level of my current reader but know it won't last forever. It'd be nice to not have to convert every fucking ebook I, um, obtain from .epub to .mobi in Calibre. The Kindle's organisational structure for arranging books is so rudimentary as to be nonexistent, so any competing device's software would be of interest.

So I'm looking for: tactility, user experience and lifespan (a new device would theoretically last longer than second hand). I'd prefer to go somewhere to handle a device (Tesco? WHS? Curry's?) before deciding (and then probably getting it cheaper online!).

NoSleep

I bought a Barnes & Noble NOOK (Simple Touch) a few years back which I still use to read epubs and pdfs I download from the net. I signed up to B&N and bought a few books, then they decided to sell up in the UK and passed their business onto Sainburys. As there were a couple of books I had bought that were no longer available via Sainsburys (surprise) I never connected, otherwise those books would have been wiped (and I would have received some kind of recompense - can't remember whether it was credit or refund; I think it was credit). Then Sainsburys sold it on to Kobo, which I haven't bothered with for the same reason. So I'm left with a decent reader (only cost me £25) and a couple of books that I bought from B&N (plus a fair number that they had for free download). If I had acted faster I could have used the B&N app to download the books I bought to my computer, but they had already deleted the app before I realised it existed.
Fortunately there's loads of free epubs and pdfs to download and the Simple Touch has a mini-SD slot (as well as a small amount of RAM of its own that opens as a volume if you connect your computer to recharge), so no need to connect to the internet direct. So I'm still using it and it seems a bit sturdier than some of the Kindles I've seen so I guess it will probably be the battery dying that will eventually finish it off. Love the touch screen.

Z

Quote from: mothman on October 22, 2017, 10:10:39 AM
Between one breaking and getting the other I used the Kindle app on my iPad mini. That experience, with the glare playing hell with my insomnia, has left me with a bit of a phobia of backlit readers and a dislike of touchscreens. The latter I may just have to get over; but I think I want to steer clear of the backlit devices if possible.
The light of an eInk screen is a totally different thing to a tablet. There's some confusion in how a bunch of tablets were marketed as color eReaders around 2011 (including the Nook HD, which carries some similiarities in terms of how it handles standby time, but otherwise is a tablet through and through) but the reading experience is totally different imo. It feels much closer to a light being held towards the screen in my experience.

Sebastian Cobb

I've got a nook st as well as I picked one up when they were £30. Rooted it, applied some mods to make the screen more responsive and put on a specialised version of the android kindle app without the animated page turns. Does the job, I use calibre to manage it though as I still don't rate the kindle app all that much.

I mostly only use it for copyright free books, and still prefer paperbacks really (which i buy used for next to nothing off of abebooks.co.uk). I think if I was getting into e-reading properly I'd consider a kindle as it does seem like a nice friction-less experience if you're alright with mostly staying within the amazon ecosystem; especially since they now have libary/netflix style options.

The nook is pretty indestructible though. It survived being in my pocket when I forgot there was a river between the entrance of a campsite and my tent, something neither my phone or glasses managed.

NoSleep

I haven't rooted mine because of the books I've bought from B&N. I assume they'll be nuked (nooked?) in the process. Also, the instructions I've read (some while back) suggested there was a chance of rendering the NOOK unusable by attempting to root it. Works fine as a reader regardless.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: NoSleep on October 22, 2017, 02:57:31 PM
I haven't rooted mine because of the books I've bought from B&N. I assume they'll be nuked (nooked?) in the process. Also, the instructions I've read (some while back) suggested there was a chance of rendering the NOOK unusable by attempting to root it. Works fine as a reader regardless.

I've not done it as I never even registered with b&n but it looks like it's pretty easy to copy over the b&m library and strip out the DRM so you can have them forever regardless.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/how-to/how-to-remove-drm-from-your-ebooks-2938088

You probably could brick your Nook, but it's a fairly minimal risk with rooting everything. In fairness I bought it to tinker with and install the Kindle app, but typically only use the stock library and reader so it might not be worth the bother. You can use Dropbox or FTP to sync your books into it though.

The Masked Unit

I've got a basic kindle, last year's model. Completely sold on it and don't anticipate ever buying an actual book again. Love the ability to read samples of books and the immediacy of buying something and being able to read it there and then.

touchingcloth

I bought a basic Kindle a year or so ago because we had just moved house and our books were all in boxes, and I couldn't be fagged with the chore of searching through box after box to find the books I wanted at any given time, or with having to do the same in reverse when putting them away again.

I was always a bit of a snob about e-readers, and even as a frequent reader I said I'd never get one because I prefer the feel of a book, the being able to peek at how many pages are left before the next paragraph break or chapter when I'm bed and drifting off to sleep, and because of the ease with which you can grab one off the shelf to recall a certain thought or sentence or plot point. So I bought my kindle thinking of it as a practical stopgap, but here's the thing: I've bougt plenty of new books since moving house, but I find myself putting them away and opting to download an e version to actually read. I love the practicality of my kindle, how I can slip it in a pocket when travelling with it feeling much less flimsier than a real book, and the form factor is so much better to read im bed than hardbacks in particular.

I was never particularly enamoured with the display on my 7th gen Kindle - it was a bit muddy, and needed tilting to the light - but I've swapped for a Paperwhite now and it is the total shit. The backlight is totally different from that on a phone or tablet, and it feels near as damn it identical to reading a physical piece of paper, even when reading with no lights on and the backlight as the sole light source.

olliebean

But can you read CaB on any of these?

Howj Begg

I love my Kobo Aura H20, because I don't have to worry about Amazon ecology, wi-fi, messing about with programs and software. I just bung epubs on in windows explorer. And I can read it in the bath, or leave it in the garden when it happens to rain for 2 mins (which did for my old Kobo Touch).

I actually can't rhapsodise about it enough... use it almost every day, works perfectly,  great reading light and e-ink quality. Would genuinely recommend it to anyone upthread lookign for a Kindle alternative. Literally the only downside is a badly made usb coverlet.

Admittedly it is about £130, but that has been an absolute bargain for me based on the amount of use I get out of it.

MikeShaft

On my third Kindle now. It's the lovely new Paperwhite. Perfect for bedtime reading which is where I do most of my work.
I've never really tried many others so am biased, but I couldn't fault it in any way. Also, despite being sceptical about e-readers, they literally revolutionised my reading. I was always a reader, but now I'm 50 or so books a year as opposed to maybe 12.

manticore

Yes, I'm the same. I've been reading about twice as fast since I inherited my 2011 kindle from my father. I can concentrate better and for longer. It's been a real boost to me.

Z

Quote from: Howj Begg on October 23, 2017, 01:14:45 AM
I love my Kobo Aura H20, because I don't have to worry about Amazon ecology, wi-fi, messing about with programs and software. I just bung epubs on in windows explorer. And I can read it in the bath, or leave it in the garden when it happens to rain for 2 mins (which did for my old Kobo Touch).

I actually can't rhapsodise about it enough... use it almost every day, works perfectly,  great reading light and e-ink quality. Would genuinely recommend it to anyone upthread lookign for a Kindle alternative. Literally the only downside is a badly made usb coverlet.

Admittedly it is about £130, but that has been an absolute bargain for me based on the amount of use I get out of it.
How much of a difference has the increased screen size been? One of the key things for an eReader is weight in particular.

Porter Dimi

Currently have a Paperwhite 2 but thinking of moving to a Kobo Aura for various reasons (blue-light filter and custom fonts are particularly tempting). Not sure whether to get an H2O or shell out a little more for the fancy 8-inch version.

I'm very much an eReader loyalist, and that's coming from somebody who barely read anything before purchasing one. Now I'm blitzing books/magazines every week and I love it. Calibre is also a godsend for sideloading books - for Kindle, it can be a bit of a faff to convert to AZW3 but at least I can embed my favourite font that way. Also, Calibre has the wonderful feature of being able to download EPUBs from news sources/websites.

Howj Begg

Quote from: Z on October 23, 2017, 10:32:39 PM
How much of a difference has the increased screen size been? One of the key things for an eReader is weight in particular.

The increased screen size is a great improvement. You can read significantly more before having to turn the page. Feels more like an actual paperback.

Believe me, it weighs almost nothing. Very similar to the Touch.

And for me the reading light was a big plus; missed that on the old Touch, couldn't read in the dark ffs.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Porter Dimi on October 24, 2017, 12:31:41 PM
I'm very much an eReader loyalist, and that's coming from somebody who barely read anything before purchasing one. Now I'm blitzing books/magazines every week and I love it. Calibre is also a godsend for sideloading books - for Kindle, it can be a bit of a faff to convert to AZW3 but at least I can embed my favourite font that way. Also, Calibre has the wonderful feature of being able to download EPUBs from news sources/websites.

Care to expand on how you use Calibre? I'm not sure why converting specifically to AZW3 is necessary as kindles will take a .mobi format and you can select one of the built in typefaces for reading like that. I tend to find things as .epub, use one of the many epub-mobi converters online and then email the document over using my Kindle's address, but I'd be interested to know what benefits Calibre has over that method of doing things.

For news sites, I use the Mercury Reader plugin in Chrome which strips away banners and sidebars and ads leaving you with just the article's text and an option to email it across to your Kindle, and I can't recommend that plugin highly enough to other Kindle users. If anyone has hit upon a non-shit way of doing the same thing with PDFs I'd like to hear it, because most documents of that type don't look great when you have to zoom in and pan around with the low refresh rate of e-ink, and every converter I've used has struggled with stripping out images, footnotes and page numbers.

Porter Dimi

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 24, 2017, 12:54:18 PM
Care to expand on how you use Calibre? I'm not sure why converting specifically to AZW3 is necessary as kindles will take a .mobi format and you can select one of the built in typefaces for reading like that.

Obviously I'm an exception but I do genuinely find that I read more quickly when I use a specific font (Lyon, in my case). This is why I'm considering just getting a Kobo - I can whack the font on there and sideload my EPUBs straight onto it without having to convert.

The Calibre news engine is genuinely fantastic though. I can download an entire issue of the New Yorker and just send it straight to my Kindle after converting (though I do find that I have to convert to MOBI and then to AZW3 with Calibre news EPUBs, else they won't show up. A minor issue but it takes just an extra minute to get sorted).

Here's an example of the output:


touchingcloth

Quote from: Porter Dimi on October 24, 2017, 01:03:38 PM
The Calibre news engine is genuinely fantastic though. I can download an entire issue of the New Yorker and just send it straight to my Kindle after converting (though I do find that I have to convert to MOBI and then to AZW3 with Calibre news EPUBs, else they won't show up. A minor issue but it takes just an extra minute to get sorted).

Thanks, I'm watching the tutorial on their site now and I'm going to give it a go. On the bolded bit, do you mean you tell Calibre to grab a copy of the New Yorker, it downloads it as an epub, then you have to convert that epub to a mobi then the mobi to azw3? Any particular reason it won't go from epub to azw3 in one go?

Porter Dimi

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 24, 2017, 01:12:13 PM
On the bolded bit, do you mean you tell Calibre to grab a copy of the New Yorker, it downloads it as an epub, then you have to convert that epub to a mobi then the mobi to azw3? Any particular reason it won't go from epub to azw3 in one go?

Correct. I've no idea why it doesn't work when converting straight from EPUB to AZW3, but for some reason it just doesn't show up on the Kindle at all. Possibly something to do with formatting?

Regardless, EPUB to MOBI followed by MOBI to AZW3 always works for me. This also works for sideloading books with DRM.

touchingcloth

Hmm, I've just had a go at downloading a copy of the New Yorker, and it pulled it down and sent it across to my Kindle all in one go. No idea what format it used, though I actually haven't seen any mentions of the azw3 format at all so far - I tried with an epub book as well, and it gave me options to convert it to a mobi but no other formats as far as I could tell...

touchingcloth

Oh, and imagine yourself some karma for the Calibre tip. I like it already, but think I'm going to have to do some exploring and tinkering seeing as a couple of news sources don't seem to download in any kind of sensible fashion.

Porter Dimi

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 24, 2017, 01:29:45 PM
Hmm, I've just had a go at downloading a copy of the New Yorker, and it pulled it down and sent it across to my Kindle all in one go. No idea what format it used, though I actually haven't seen any mentions of the azw3 format at all so far - I tried with an epub book as well, and it gave me options to convert it to a mobi but no other formats as far as I could tell...

It may well have auto-converted it to MOBI, which is absolutely fine if you're not planning to embed your own font. If you were, you could always convert the MOBI to AZW3, plug your Kindle in, use Calibre to remove the copy from the device and put the AZW3 copy on instead, but if you're happy with the default Kindle fonts, you're all set!

Some news sources do take much longer to download. Sources like the New York Times and The Economist seem to take much longer because Calibre has to download all of the articles as well as all of the images, which also results in a larger file. The New Yorker and London Review of Books seem to download much more quickly because of the comparative lack of images.

EDIT: And some news sources are obsolete, sadly. If you wanted to DM me I could see if the creator of Calibre has posted any updates to the recipe, or try to make a custom recipe from an RSS feed!

EDIT EDIT: Kobo users don't have to convert to MOBI; all they have to do is send the downloaded EPUB to their device.

touchingcloth

Yeah, I'm happy with the built in fonts so it worked a charm for me! And thanks for the kind offer, I'm sure it's some quirk that I can workaround once I've read through the manuals, but I tried downloading a Counterpunch feed, which isn't obsolete as far as I can tell. Here's what Calibre shows in its recipe:

from calibre.web.feeds.news import BasicNewsRecipe


class Counterpunch(BasicNewsRecipe):
    title = u'Counterpunch'
    oldest_article = 7
    max_articles_per_feed = 100
    auto_cleanup = True
    language = 'en'

    feeds = [(u'Counterpunch', u'http://www.counterpunch.org/category/article/feed/')]


EDIT: I think I see the problem. The URL given in the recipe (http://www.counterpunch.org/category/article/feed/) looks like it was deprecated in 2015, as this URL only has articles up to that year - https://www.counterpunch.org/category/article/.

The recent articles are now here - https://www.counterpunch.org/articles/ - so I just need to work out how to get a feed of that working with Calibre.

Porter Dimi

Yep, was just about to reply with that! So what you need to do now is as follows:


  • In Calibre, click the little arrow next to 'Fetch news' and click 'add or edit a custom news source'
  • Click 'New recipe' on that window, bottom left
  • Change the title to whatever you want (set both Recipe title and Feed title to 'Counterpunch')
  • Copy this link - https://www.counterpunch.org/feed/   and paste it into Feed URL, then click Add Feed underneath
  • Click 'save' and close the add custom news source window
  • Click the main Fetch news button, and your source will be under Custom at the top. Click it and select 'Download now'

Then just wait for the articles to download and send it over to your Kindle. Hope this helps!

touchingcloth

That's done the trick, ta! I was already doing all the right things, just had the wrong URL down for the feed, but in future I know to trial and error it a bit, and examine page sources.

NoSleep

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on October 22, 2017, 03:37:13 PM
I've not done it as I never even registered with b&n but it looks like it's pretty easy to copy over the b&m library and strip out the DRM so you can have them forever regardless.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/how-to/how-to-remove-drm-from-your-ebooks-2938088

You probably could brick your Nook, but it's a fairly minimal risk with rooting everything. In fairness I bought it to tinker with and install the Kindle app, but typically only use the stock library and reader so it might not be worth the bother. You can use Dropbox or FTP to sync your books into it though.

I've had a look into this, but no dice; I need a version of Calibre that doesn't run on the old OS I'm using. I think there's also a problem that my purchased books (currently downloaded into the NOOK) cannot be seen if I look at the RAM of the NOOK via my computer, so I couldn't copy them from it anyway (or can Calibre "see" them?). Hmmm... I wonder if they are simply invisible? Better turn on the "make all files visible" function on my computer and take a look.