Not buying another Kindle

This is inherent to DRM, and the reason why I would never have considered buying one in the first place. The eReader I have is a PocketBook Versa. Same price as a Kindle, extensible using microSD and I can add my non-DRM books however I want. Fortunately, Apple Books ePub FairPlay DRM is fairly easy to remove, so that's where I buy them.

I don't love having to replace them, but paying €120 every five years is probably worth it. I mean that's €2/month, and I have a huge library of books which I load via calibre.

I read daily, on the bus to work, at home in bed, and while there are "more free" ereaders I've become accustomed to the kindle and have no complaints. If I were not so clumsy they'd last longer, so that's on me.

My physical library is pretty big, but being able to carry 50+ books at all times? And have a battery life of a few weeks? (I stay in airplane mode, as I transfer books via the USB cable). It's hard to complain.

In fact all Kobo e-ink devices, except the Kobo Mini, wifi, and the original one, are still getting firmware updates.

Their android-based tablets with IPS screens are all discontinued though (as far as I am aware).

This is more than Amazon ever did. They haven't updated the firmware on some of their devices that are officially "supported" in years.

I don't have that faith either, but it still irks me when good hardware has to get chucked for software reasons. And this goes double for when those software reasons are about stupid-ass DRM.

But in this particular instance I don't consider it to be that bad for me personally, since I don't rely on being able to access Amazon DRM books. But a lot of perfectly working devices are going to get landfilled for this.

AFAIK it's still possible to authorize ancient supported ePub readers with Adobe Digital Editions and load up DRMed books from providers like Google Play even with devices like the Sony PRS-505 (e.g,https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/reader-digital-book...), despite them exiting the market over a decade ago. Kobo also has continued providing firmware updates to devices from 2011, and even their unsupported devices can still load books via ADE or the Kobo Desktop App.

Amazon is offering a 20% discount to owners of those devices to switch to any other modern kindle.

On top of that, their aftermarket and open source situation is pretty good.

They're not ideal e-readers though, but if you're in the market for a good e-ink device with long-term support and that works well with calibre? Might be worth a look.

If you want greater security, substitute Graphene for Lineage.

These will not be e-ink displays, but the longevity is perhaps the longest available from independent vendors.

KFX is the modern kindle format, AZW meanwhile is heavily PDF-based. KFX was designed ground-up by Amazon, supports every modern feature they could think of, and presumably couldn't be backported to 2013 and earlier Kindles; AZW meanwhile was basically a wrapper around a subset of PDF. KFX is a complete redo, notable enough it's what "Enhanced Typesetting" on every Kindle product page means, not a small DRM upgrade.

By doing this, all authors will soon receive guarantees that they will have the full KFX feature set when designing eBooks, and won't break AZW by accident. Trying to point this out though to the "it's about DRM" or "it's about obsolescence" crowd will get you downvoted to oblivion before the truth is even considered (speaking from experience, -4 when I dared suggest legitimate reasons exist) and is a prime example of echo chambers and deeply ingrained bias on this forum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Sales

[0] https://allthingsd.com/20130812/amazon-to-sell-4-5-billion-w...

[1] https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/articles/amazon-unveils-kindle...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/06/three-in-...

Edit: also MSRP on ebooks is lower than for print versions (very roughly 50%, based on a couple randomly checked books)

Ebooks have always been priced this way. How can it contribute to its dying when it was this way during the "glory" days?

Paper is cheap. Shipping is cheap. The incremental cost of making a physical book is so small as to be noise in the overall book price.

This is such a non-issue. Whether my device phones home to the US or to China makes no difference at all to me (as a on US / China citizen). Boox devices do not serve any kinds of ads, are fully Android, you can customize your starting screen however you like, read every format (including amazon. kwx), have great battery life and I own what I put on them and nobody bricks them for whatever reason. Even better: I can buy wherever I want from* and download directly from the store to the device.

*Edit: except amazon, of course

Of course, the general state of e-book devices is pretty abysmal. There are no good options I'm aware of.

Two tabs, which one do they default you to? Which one do they default you to?

Such claims make me think that this post is biased.

I bought the Verse Pro Color. It doesn't require an account, it doesn't require wifi. I transfer epubs via USB and the pocketbook works on device without ever logging into a Pocketbook account.

There are other reasons not to like the device, but it's refreshing not to need to login to even use the device.

I personally was fine with the limitations, after all I'm only one person and I would only ever read books on my ereader.

From the Libby web page, you have an option to download the ASCM. Load that onto ADE, and you have the book. Then plug in your Kobo and transfer the book. It even respects the loan duration!

This isn't perfect, but it works, so I can't agree that Libby and Kobo are absolutely incompatible.

I’m still using my Kindle Oasis 2nd Gen, plugged off and jailbroken, side loading my old collection or public domain books. No one has made something remotely as nice to use as the Oasis, including Amazon themselves. Jailbreaking was quite easy. The only thing that will kill my Oasis is the battery being nearly impossible to change.

The screen's got some little black dots where it fell out of my laptop bag in the back of the Landrover and got squashed under the spare tyre and a toolbox. Even that didn't kill it though, it just gave it a couple of little black dots about the size of a lower-case "o" in the smallest font. I can live with that.

For me, I've mostly switched to reading on my phone. Dark mode, plus OLED, works very well for my needs.

Some of this post just seems that an "Android Authority" only just now realized there are less-forked Android-based e-readers versus Kindle and they feel happier with the Android ecosystem (and its DRM) than Amazon's. To me it feels a bit like a choice between Purple Drazi and Green Drazi. Many of the same problems but a different ascot color.

I haven't had a job that requires travel in a long time, so looking at it from that perspective, having my library also require some kind of additional device maintenance cycle or whatever really adds a layer of complexity I don't want to deal with, so depending on what options I have and what I'm buying, I'm finding myself these days purchasing physical books more frequently just to avoid the hassle for future me.

The weird thing is how huge Calibre is considering, I'd wager, 90% of people (myself included) just use it to convert books and never touch 1/100th of the tools and functionality in it, not touching on the fact that it's not a shining example of intuitive software. But once you have it setup, using it as a middleman is pretty straightforward and easy.

Is there a simpler conversion tool that does as good of a job? I've literally not looked in a decade plus.

- Built-in dictionary - Being able to read anywhere, even when light is not available (on a taxi, for example) - Can fit it in my pocket - Less annoying to read while lying down in bed, and the page is automatically marked when I fall asleep - Adjustable typeface and font size

- If you like long books, an e-reader is much lighter than a tome. Not only more portable, but also easier to hold when reading.

- When lying down you don't have to fight the cover 50% of the time. Easy to read one-handed too.

- The new ones are water-resistant.

- You can have multiple books available, in case you switch it up or just finish them quickly.

- Search feature.

- Built-in bookmark.

- Time estimates until end-of-chapter and end-of-book.

- The e-ink screen doesn't feel like a screen. Not really a plus on top of paper books, but just because you mentioned.

I still read physical books when they're gifted or the medium requires it (House of Leaves being the latest example), but otherwise I'm 100% on e-readers. Previously Kindle Paperwhite 6th Gen, and since a few weeks, Kobo Clara BW.

If the book is not written in your native language or you like to read books with unusual vocabulary (e.g. historical books), it's an absolute delight. So far, a concise dictionary like Oxford has worked the best for me, while Wiktionary or similar always came short.

The other is heft and handiness. If you read anything that is larger than a small notebook, an e-book is much more practical. You also don't have to hold it open all the time.

I have a 40 minute drive to work each way, and I find audiobooks the best way to pass the time. At night if I want to read the same book from my drive, Kindle picks up exactly where I stopped listening. And does the reverse the next morning when I get in the car.

If any else is doing this, I am unaware. But it's AWESOME.

My main complaint is Amazon has discontinued Kindle devices with physical page turn buttons. Whoever made that decision should be fired.

That said, I have a jailbroken Kindle, but I am not giving a cent to Amazon. Should it break I'd just get a Kobo.

Then I switched to the Kobo Libra Colour. The weight and portability make a huge difference. Having my entire library with me means I am no longer stuck with whatever I decided to bring before leaving home.

The color display is not amazing, but it is good enough for comics. I have been reading things like Attack on Titan and Spider-Man on it. Reading tech books has been great too, especially those with graphs and images.

If I had to sum it up in one word, versatile.

1. if you factory reset a device after May 20, you will not be able to sign in or use the device at all.

2. if you have one already you can use it with your downloaded books but you cannot use the official store at all.

You might not have a problem with #2, but #1 is a dealbreaker imo

[1] https://github.com/ZlibraryKO/zlibrary.koplugin

The X4 is so small that I can throw it in my pocket and read a page or two when I'm waiting for something instead of doomscolling on my phone. I love that little thing. I've read two books since 3/27 and I'm halfway through my 3rd book.

[1]: https://daylightcomputer.com/

It's not that large of an impediment if you're modestly technically savvy.

Depending on your model or version, it's not hard.

I'm rocking a newer Paperwhite Special Edition, with KOreader installed.

https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x4

https://www.boox.com/

I have a kindle, but have never used any of the amazon specific functionality and don't plan on it. Stays permanently in airplane mode. I have no complaints and find the software more "refined" but not exceptional. I just convert everything to a mobi file.

My partner has a kobo and it seems just as serviceable. Out of the box it supports more file types, but it can be iffy on formatting sometimes, so I've had to fiddle with some stuff in Calibre to make stuff display nicely. I'm sure sticking to epubs would resolve that issue though.

TBH, I find all of the mass market e-readers to all have pretty comparable displays. I used to use a 20 year old kindle and don't find newer ones wildly better. The tech seems pretty stagnant. You're usually picking between things like backlights or light-temp now.