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Comment by ipsum2 | Hacker News Reader

Have you looked at https://remarkable.com/? It's a little smaller, 12" diagonal.

Dasung sells a 13.3" e-ink monitor: https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Paperlike-13-3-E-Ink-Monitor/d...

Can anyone comment on the difficulty (for a hacker) of using Remarkable with Kindle books? I have a Kindle already, if that makes a difference in generating DRM-free files of content I already purchased reading rights to.

It is trivial to convert DRM'd Kindle e-books you own into epub or other formats. Check out Calibre and the Apprentice Alf plugin.

https://calibre-ebook.com/

https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/

has something changed? it used to be easy but looks like there's a per-device encryption support in new kindles.

AFAIK drm version 3 still isn't cracked, but there's some epubs without drm, and most with drm is possible to get with older drm for backwards compatability reasons.

I'm not sure what the status of drm circumvention for fair/own use is in the US - I think there was a case that opened up for viewing/backing up dvds, but if not - this is still illegal, which partly defeats the purpose of buying through Amazon.

I think as long as there is no copyright infringement involved (i.e. as long as you don't redistribute it) it's ok. IANAL.

Possibly. I vaguely recall this... But I'm not sure if there's been other rulings, or if ebooks or media-as-a-service has been in the courts after this.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/07/court...

it's interesting but some kindle books I've purchased have a little blurb at the beginning of the book that says something like "the publisher has distributed this book without DRM"

I always wondered if the kindle file was actually unencrypted.

You just need an older version of the Kindle desktop app that doesn't support the newer (uncracked) DRM. Then you just download the books you've purchased in the app, load them into Calibre, and De-DRM them.

I have never been able to get EPUBs to reliably work on remarkable. My solution is to convert them to PDFs.

You can also install KOReader on remarkable as a reader. Works better IMHO. https://github.com/koreader/koreader

If you do it, do you lose the ability to annotate?

I use them all the time. Never had any issue.

I also use reMarkable as a (pretty good) EPUB reader, but it is really slow when opening the book for the first time or changing the rendering settings (font size, margins, etc.).

It can sometimes take a minute or two and sometimes it just hangs completely and you have to close the book and re-open it. I assume it's because it has to somehow render the whole book, to support the handwritten annotations and put them in correct places.

I love reading on my remarkable but using it with Kindle books has been a pain. You can break the Kindle DRM but it’s cumbersome.

Though my main pain point is that you lose the book position syncing you get with the Kindle hardware/apps.

The Boox Max 3 seems to be a better option for the OP. [0]. It has a 13.3" screen, runs Android, and also functions as a monitor for your computer. The refresh rate doesn't seem to be the best, but it looks like a pretty good solution given what is out there so far. I've been looking at it for a while, but I haven't bought one yet. I would love to hear opinions by people who have one. [0] - https://www.boox.com/max3-3/

I would buy the reMarkable in a heartbeat if it was indeed a 12" display. Alas, the screen is only 10.3".

Does 2 inches really make that much difference?

Depends on who you ask... ;)

Kidding aside, my primary use case is reading and annotating pdf textbooks and legal documents. I used a 10.5" iPad Pro for over a year for that and, while doable, not very pleasant for my eyes after a couple of hours of reading. Upgraded to the 12.9" iPad Pro this year and my eyes felt noticeably more relaxed even after 4-5 hours of reading and working on the iPad.

Ideally, reMarkable would make an XL version that closely resembles the aspect ratio and size of a 8.5x11 paper, but I'd settle for something slightly smaller with that aspect ratio.

Looks like I can get the Dasung for $1200 used...

It’s a pity because I’d love that thing to read the web on actually.

They might be out due to COVID-related supply issues, I remember seeing them in stock a few months ago. You might have better luck ordering from the company directly.

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