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Comment by trey-jones | Hacker News Reader

For those who bought these devices or used them regularly, what do you use the internet connection for?

I've read on a kindle very close to every single day for at least 10 years (Kindle Touch first, now Paperwhite), and I keep it in airplane mode 99.999% of the time or more. If I buy a book from Amazon, I'll put it on Wifi until it's downloaded, then back to Airplane Mode.

I know that I can look something up on Wikipedia were I online, and this is the only feature I know of that I might sometimes be tempted to use. It's difficult for me to imagine a scenario that I would want to buy a reading device that could connect to the internet on cellular data.

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When I used a Kindle, I didn't carry it with me all the time. Sometimes I'd pull out my phone and continue reading my book if I had a long wait.

If I'm doing a lot of reading while sitting upright, I'll open Kindle on my laptop so I can have the giant screen and bigger text.

If I read in the hot tub, (my favorite place to read,) I use an older phone or a cheap tablet. This way, if it gets wet I don't break my primary device.

I brought my kindle with me on international trips because back then it wasn't so common to have a smartphone/wifi everywhere. I used its browser feature all the time when traveling. I even used it for texting people, gmail, etc.

Yep, same here. It helped me out in a pinch many times, even though that browser was excruciatingly slow.

This, that browser was excruciatingly slow!

It was great for when I was at the airport and I found out I needed to buy an onward ticket to appease the airline.

Ultimately the lack of a backlight made me sell it off within a year.

In 2013 there was a massive snow/ice storm and power outage here in Ontario, Canada lasting multiple days [1]. Having the paperwhite was amazing, because it had near-unlimited battery, and I used the 3G to buy a few books. Nearly every other portable electronic device was useless, since most phones at that time had maybe 12 hours of battery life. That event made me truly fall in love with the kindle.

8 years later, it still works wonderfully.

[1]: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto-ice-storm-2013-...

At this point I usually only use my DX for reading textbook-like content where being able to have a large visual field matters.

But for the first few years I owned it, I actually used it to read nearly all of my ebooks and do a significant amount of web browsing and communication, including HN, Gmail, FB, and anything else. The e-ink + physical keyboard made it my favorite web mobile device.

Somewhere between 2012 and 2015 sites stopped working as well and I realized it was because of https requirements which the experimental browser wasn't supporting, and I stopped using it as much, and then not too long after became a less frequent user of it to read ebooks -- my iphone was always with me and almost as good for most ebook content.

Cellular can be used to buy and download books while travelling without having to connect to random WiFi APs. It could also be used for email, if you were patient enough.

I used a Kindle keybkard for a long time to read all sorts of text based websites on the experimental browser as well as sending emails. The screen Refresh times weren't good but for text stuff it was alright. At the time I had an extremely limited data plan that still cost $40/month and provided minimal data so offshoring anything to the Kindle was a benefit. I took it travelling to the us and the middle East a handful of times as well.

As the unit aged, more and more I would also leave the wireless on my DX disabled. I would turn it on when I needed it which, as you mention, has become more and more rare.

My real use-case for the DX was textbooks because the screen was large and it was easier to read code snippets. Back in the day I bought a lot of those from Manning or O'Reilly directly and then loaded them onto the DX via USB. Reading PDFs was nicer as well, but again, I loaded them over USB.

I keep mine connected to the internet so that it automatically updates my reading place because I frequently switch between reading on my phone and my kindle.

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