I like e-readers now | Hacker News Reader

I like e-readers now

devinlogan.org

194 pointsivanech304 comments

I finally found a way to do remote page-turning for Kindle -- something I was trying to do for years. It does mean I have to read books on my Android phone instead of the Paperwhite. With OLED and white on black, I find it's pretty all right though. But I can finally rest the reader somewhere, on my knees, on a pillow, whatever, and click a remote button to get to the next page. Freedom!

You enable volume button page turning in the Kindle app settings. This already means you can attach e.g. a USB keyboard to your device and use its volume buttons. But you can also use these tiny BTLE media control gadgets[1], meant primarily for putting on steering wheels of cars that don't have built-in media controls. The replaceable battery lasted a couple of thousand pages so far, which is kind of amazing. Note that the volume buttons of bluetooth headsets do not work.

I've never understood how this isn't a standard feature with standalone Kindles. People made it work using the USB port, but you need to install a custom ROM. It makes incredible sense for accessibility purposes, alone. Imagine a big fat button for people with limited limb control, or something based on eye movement for people who are even worse off.

[1] e.g. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32948528629.html 5.49 USD

> I've never understood how this isn't a standard feature with standalone Kindles.

Is this an accessibility issue? I work fairly extensively with ebook devices and users in my job and this has never come up, I doubt it even occurs to most people, which probably answers your question. However, I also work quite a bit with accessibility (for which the Kindle is excellent for many common challenges that come with age) and I know users that this would be quite useful for if it was a standard feature, so I'm curious what your use case is.

No, for me it's just a laziness issue. ;) I just enjoy not having to hold the device. I can just rest my arms wherever they naturally would rest. Or put them under the sheets when the bedroom is cold. Etc.

When I’m in bed I often turn the page with my nose, as one hand is holding the kindle and the other is holding hands with my SO, or petting the cat. So I understand the laziness and am interested in this but it’s a lot of work for a lazy person.

Edit: while we’re on the topic can we solve accidentally dropping phones on our face in bed?

I may be greasier than average, but if I did that there would be a pretty big smudge on the screen!

There are a bunch of bed mounts for smartphones and tablets. [1]

1: https://www.amazon.com/phone-holder-bed/s?k=phone+holder+for...

The kindle with page turning buttons (e.g the kindle keyboard) we’re ideal for this . You could hold and page turn with one hand.

I think people just think of an e-reader the same way they do a book, and so use the same solutions they use for not-having-to-hold-up books: lecterns and stands, bed/bath tables, suspended clamps, etc.

Fair enough.

I can see this being useful for someone with Parkinson's or even someone who just has trouble regularly lifting their arm (they can lift a book and place it, but flipping the pages would just tire their arm out). I now wish there was a straightforward remote control you could buy with the Kindle.

Exactly. Like I said, I'm astonished that this hasn't been a thing you can buy for a long time. The new Kindles come with a USB-C connector, maybe that changes things.

This is why I love playing games on my Switch. It's super noticeable now when I play on my PS4 that I have to think about holding the controller in front of me rather than just letting my arms fall.

I'm confused. The switch has a screen and accelerometers. How does that that result in a situation you can just let your arms drop that you can't when playing the PS4?

Joycons are the game controller equivalent of a split keyboard. If you're using a stock PS4 controller, your hands need to be close together, and your legs obviously can't be in the way.

For what it's worth, it's possible to use joycons with a PS4, if you have the appropriate adapters and chain them together just right.

If he's playing the switch docked, the split controllers mean that the arms can be moved freely. Normal controllers don't allow that

Doesn't technically have to be docked to do this. It's how I use it on an airplane often. Screen on the tray table with it's little kickstand, arms to my sides maybe in my hoodie pockets. It took a little bit of getting used to strangely but once you do :thumbsup:

Ah, I see. I really don't prefer having them split for a single game, so wasn't even thinking of that (in fact, I vastly prefer the pro controller if it's docked). Not that I've played it in quite a while. The kids usually have it and the docking capability broke a year or two ago (not the dock, other docks don't work either).

The answer is twofold:

- The PS4 controller's range is VERY limited, even playing crouched on the sofa with your legs interrupting LOS between the console and the controller can cause connection issues.

- The Switch's tiny split controllers (the JoyCons, though there is also a traditionally-shaped Pro Controller) have very good reception, and being small and split means your arms can be in different positions.

I sometimes play lying on the bed with the console on a stand in front of me, and my arms under the sheets, when it's cold, for example. It's a tiny thing but is mighty convenient when you feel like it.

> The PS4 controller's range is VERY limited, even playing crouched on the sofa with your legs interrupting LOS between the console and the controller can cause connection issues.

Odd, I’ve never once experienced any sort of issue like this with my PS4 controllers.

Makes me wonder if there could be something else environmental going on, or if I’m just lucky…

EDIT: Just double checked and they use Bluetooth with no obvious need tor maintaining line of sight? (I should have remembered this as I’ve used my PS4 controllers with Raspberry Pis over Bluetooth before). So I guess localised radio interference will have the potential to affect range.

It's probably interference then, when I had access to a PS4 I lived in a big apartment block with tons of WiFi and probably Bluetooth devices around.

In any case, the Switch's controllers fared much better, even though both consoles were on basically the same place. YMMV, I suppose?

Funny, I've never had issues with PS4 controller range but my joycons have trouble with dropped inputs if I use them more than a few feet away from the switch

Not to say the PS4 controllers are good... they just love to drain their batteries when I'm not using them, and they only seem willing to charge on the PS4 and only when its in sleep mode. TBH this hassle makes me use the PS4 pretty much never, which makes the problem worse

Another use case is musicians.

There is a whole market of foot pedals for tablets/e-readers to flip music scores and now can do so with their feet.

I'm semi-concerned about RSI from having to do the "swipe" gesture on my Kindle over and over. Maybe those fears are unfolded but I can see the desire even for abled people to flip pages more easily on devices that don't have built in buttons.

In one of the early episodes of 99% Invisible they look at the Oxo vegetable peeler. The conclusion is that by pursuing accessible design, they improved the experience for everyone, which is a theme they regularly return to. It's something I try to think about when "designing" an experience, partially because it narrows my focus quite a bit and is much less overwhelming that trying to think of the myriad ways something might be approached.

I can't believe I'm not the only one who's thought about this!! Putting my kindle on the table in front of me and flipping pages with a clicker in my hand would be such a great experience. I used to do this when reading on my phone by using the volume rockers on some old wired earbuds and it was great.

It's not even about accessibility for me, although that's probably the better way to sell it. It's also about comfort. Holding the device in one hand isn't very comfortable and already makes it hard to flip pages. Holding it like a book works, but since it's smaller it's even more uncomfortable and in general holding your arms in isn't a particularly ergonomic position. Putting it down on a table or pillow in front of me works great, until I have to flip the page, meaning I probably need to get me arm out from under a blanket if it's cold and either way it's annoying, takes enough time to break the flow of reading and is likely to jostle whatever surface I've placed the reader on, so I then have to adjust it back.

To be clear, this is a 1000% first-world problem for me. If you treat the reader like a book, the experience will be just as good as a book. But I don't just want a book, or even many books in one. I want something even better.

What is the use-case, exactly? The only real-life experience I have with wanting to turn ebook pages remotely is during the winter, when my hands are cold and even touchscreen-compatible gloves/mittens don't work well with the touchscreen sensor.

But if I ever truly got that desperate, there are several lines of Kobo and Kindle devices with physical touch buttons that would solve the problem.

For me, I'd love to use my e-reader to handle sheet music while playing my piano or cello, but the screen size means that I have to turn pages far more often than with physical sheets, and ends up being impractical in real life. I love playing around with a lot of different sheets and trying things out before deciding if I want to really spend time on it, and I hate how much I have to print to do so, and using screens for the purpose ends up being also impractical (and I much prefer how sheet music looks on e-ink vs a backlit LCD). If I could tap a button on the floor with my feet to turn pages, it would make this quite reasonable.

My partner has the foot pedals and a tablet for her violin playing. One community orchestra she plays in most people are using tablets, the other one its paper sheet music. For the tablet its just a pdf reader on the tablet and page up /page down for the foot pedals.

The tablet works, but its smaller, and there is always a question of making sure the batteries are charged up. (though with paper music it the little sheet music light needed to be charged too). Paper is pretty robust though, survives drops...

I'd imagine any ereader that can connect to a bluetooth keyboard can work. They have those bluetooth page turning pedals that's pretty much just a PageDown button.

Boox sells a foot pedal for use with 10" or 13" eInk tablets for exactly that purpose. Ain't cheap though.

I've already gone into it in a sibling comment, but basically because I can rest my arms and hands wherever I want, especially when reading a book for hours on end.

If you ever watch long-ish video content on your tablet or phone, do you keep holding the device? Or do you put it down someplace where you can see the screen? Same thing, really. Maybe it's not for you. But I've seen enough people in public precariously balance their phones on their knees while watching Youtube that I know I'm not totally alone.

It could be for me in theory, I suppose. My ebook reader does have a "stand" option built into the case. But the screen size is only 6", and so I suppose I never found a situation where I'd want to prop the device a foot or more away from me, because then I'd be unable to read the text. And if I could read the text, the font size would have to be so large that I probably couldn't fit more than a paragraph on the screen before having to turn the page!

Personally, I find that the tap or swipe to turn pages functionality is insanely difficult when I have highlighted the whole page of text. I miss the world of tactile buttons for many things - get off my lawn!

Then, again, the "premium" versions of the e-reader lines like the Kindle Oasis or the Kobo Forma should scratch that itch for you, right?

https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-forma?utm_source=Kobo...

The biggest downside, of course, being that they're each about double the price of the Kindle Paperwhite or Kobo Clara HD models, respectively. Both of those devices are perfectly serviceable to me, so I'm not yet so old or rich that I'll pay an extra $100 for physical buttons.

I got a refurb Kindle off Woot for like $40 that has forward/backward buttons on both sides of the frame - outside of the screen itself - that have tactile feedback. I think they marketed it so you can use it one-handed.

A lot of musicians these days keep their sheet music in digital formats; hands-off page turning is handy when playing. I'm sure there are many other use cases.

i didnt know that i really really want this. attach the kindle in soem kind of flexible arm on the headrest and turn the pages with a small remote control.

I already do the flexible arm, it's great for helping me to fall asleep at night! I read and read until I can't keep my eyes open.

Maybe those tiny bluetooth selfie button things work too?

They'd be even smaller and cheaper.

My next reader must have bluetooth and support remote page turn buttons. It would be ridiculous if it doesn't. I want to rest the reader somewhere and have the remote to turn pages while I'm comfortable.

I absolutely agree. I read with a mechanical arm that holds the book for me so I can read on my back while I try to sleep. I would love a way to turn pages with a little remote.

That's a great idea! Could you please link the arm you use?

Sure, it's here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P8YHKLF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

I have a shelf behind my bed, so I connect it to that. Works great.

I have a slightly smaller pad arm that I've connected to a deck (sitting) chair and now that's become my reading chair.

A remote would be really neat though.

Does anyone happen to know if this possible with a Kobo?

> I had a rather frustrating time setting up the damn device – it’s annoying to have to connect to wifi, make a Kobo account, make an Overdrive account, and search for books with a terrible response time to text input, and it’s especially annoying when you enter the wrong wifi password multiple times and end up restarting the device because you’re so convinced you have the right password before finally realizing your mistake.

The best advice I can give for the Kobo is to use all of the functions not directly related to reading as little as possible. By that I mean, don't try to search the Kobo store on the Kobo: search on the website or on the smartphone app, and just send the books to the Kobo automatically when you buy them. Don't try to search the library on the Kobo: search with the smartphone Libby app and let the Kobo sync them over when you check one out. Don't try to read Wikipedia articles directly in the Kobo's experimental browser: add the wiki articles you want to read to Pocket and sync them over.

The Kobo is an excellent reading device, but it is a very poor internet browsing device. I minimize the time I spend "browsing" on it via the methods described above, and I have a much more enjoyable experience.

> The Kobo is an excellent reading device, but it is a very poor internet browsing device.

Sounds like a feature to me - perfect!

I've found a use for the browser - it allows me to easily load DRM-stripped books from various places without having to bother plugging the device in. You can set the homepage to a server on the LAN with your books and download what you want easily.

That's... about all the browser really handles. But Pocket or Wallabag get you a far better article reading experience anyway. Any long form article on the web now gets shoved in Pocket and read on my Kobo.

The problem is you can't use the Kobo until you create an online account and connect it to the internet. After that, though, you can do airplane mode forever.

If you're comfortable working with sqlite files it's an incredibly simple process to bypass any account registration or need to ever connect the device to the internet, this should work on all models new and old.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1998068#p...

Apparently these days you can release a half-baked product and get away with it by saying "the obvious lack of features is so that you can have a focused, distraction-free experience!" or something similar.

My counter would be that it was traditionally never the paperback book's job to help you navigate the bookstore.

But yes, I'll grant that the Kobo's experimental browser (which I think is the component that powers all the pieces I mentioned above that are slow/cumbersome) is noticeably less responsive than the Kindle's. They could probably do some additional tweaking under-the-hood to make it more responsive.

Beyond a certain point, however, the only way to make it faster would be to increase the hardware specs and put a beefier OS into it. But at that point, you wouldn't really have a dedicated eReader anymore--you'd have something closer to a conventional tablet with just an e-Ink screen. And there are definitely markets for those (see any number of e-Ink tablets running Android), but then the price starts skyrocketing.

> My counter would be that it was traditionally never the paperback book's job to help you navigate the bookstore.

This is like claiming that a phone never had the job of an internet browsing device. Sure, the hardware and maybe the form factor has some handicaps, but it is perfectly reasonable hardware, if only the software was up to the task.

But the problem is people claiming the poor software is so that "you can have a more distraction-free experience". That's just ridiculous, and the net conclusion is that again I have to bring a entire backpack full of gadgets rather than just one because of _minimal_ software differences.

If I am forced to bring new hardware in my luggage, I want it to be because of meaningful differences in the hardware itself (e.g. e-Ink easier to read outdoors), rather than ridiculous differences in the software (e.g., I also need to bring another computer because the ridiculous software won't let me visit a website to download a new ePub, even on eInk speeds), most specially if these differences are explained with very dubious excuses such as "distraction-free" experience.

> But the problem is people claiming the poor software is so that "you can have a more distraction-free experience". That's just ridiculous, and the net conclusion is that again I have to bring a entire backpack full of gadgets rather than just one because of _minimal_ software differences.

Fair, I think "distraction-free experience" is a cop-out.

But I guess my point would be that there is a trade-off when you try to take a specialized gadget and make it more multi-purpose. The iPods and MP3 players of old did not have wireless-accessible storefronts, for example: you plugged them into a computer and pulled down your library, podcasts, etc. It was definitely more of a hassle from that perspective compared to using your smartphone as an mp3 player, but the advantage was arguably superior audio quality, and objectively superior battery life, since the mp3 player's OS had only one purpose compared to a smartphone's.

I'd argue the same on an eReader versus a conventional tablet. Yes, if you really wanted to browse the store / browse Libby & Overdrive library /browse Wikipedia while reading, you definitely could do all the reading on a standard iPad or Android tablet and use the Kobo App instead, and it would work. I have a 10" Samsung tablet and do this on occasion (mostly for comics, because the Galaxy Tab S5e has a gorgeous screen for a mid-range device). But I generally don't do it for any book that I'm going to read for more than an hour, because the reading experience on the tablet is subpar compared to that of the Kobo, to say nothing of the battery life (measured in hours on the tablet versus weeks on the Kobo).

And this is just me personally, but I don't think it's that big of a deal to pull out my smartphone and buy a book on the Kobo app, then click 'Sync' on my Kobo to connect to WiFi and bring it over. Or do the same with a Libby book checkout, or a Pocket article. It's not like I would've left my phone at home if the Kobo had been able to better do it on its own.

> But I guess my point would be that there is a trade-off when you try to take a specialized gadget and make it more multi-purpose. The iPods and MP3 players of old did not have wireless-accessible storefronts, for example: you plugged them into a computer and pulled down your library, podcasts, etc

But I don't see a trade-off these days. The iPods and MP3 did not have wireless radios. These devices HAVE wireless radios, and not only that, they're constantly using them. You're paying the cost in weight, size, battery life. It's just the company doesn't want to pay the corresponding cost in software.

> And this is just me personally, but I don't think it's that big of a deal to pull out my smartphone and buy a book on the Kobo app, then click 'Sync' on my Kobo to connect to WiFi and bring it over.

Then why do you read your eBooks on a eReader rather than the smartphone? Whatever answer you give here, same thing applies to why I wouldn't want to bring/use another device.

We are over ten years out from the ipad 1. it shouldn't be very costly to put in some hardware powerful enough that it at least makes it so typing text doesn't have input lag. That wouldn't even take much more beef than a $40 raspberry pi. This is like a TV manufacturer evil business genius tier move. Why spend $4 on a decent wholesale board when you can spend $0.04 instead on a terrible board and the consumers will buy it anyway?

The input lag is most probably due to page refresh on e-ink, and not hardware power.

Correct. Noticeable response lag is evident even on the HDMI e-ink panels driven by whatever you like. They have been getting better though.

> the obvious lack of features is so that you can have a focused, distraction-free experience

This means the device is more of an appliance than a general computing device.

A good example is a reMarkable 2. It is a solid, well-designed digital version of a paper notebook. (I will add paper notebooks aren't searchable.)

Yes, anything else, including search, is bolted on but the core experience it was designed for isn't half-baked.

Actually, reMarkable is _precisely_ what I had in mind. Distraction-free is just an excuse for obviously unfinished software; just go and see which con most reviews agree on.

The hardware is quite capable, but held back by the software.

Distraction-free is not just an excuse, it's absolutely a valuable feature for me and a nontrivial number of other people.

It's fine if you don't like that feature, but not every customer would like them to "finish the software" by putting a highly functional browser on every e-reader. There's room in the market for both types of devices.

And yet you serve both types of customers by, well, putting the browser.

Not every electronic device needs to run a general purpose operating system and arbitrary software! This is a big contributor to why modern electronics have high latency and frustrating UIs.

Most of them are already running general purpose operating systems, and you are already paying the cost in latency (and frustrating UI) without any benefit. This is not the 90s, everything just runs Linux, even "single purpose" devices.

I'm proposing designing more devices that don't use GPOS/linux. And do their job well, with no noticeable latency or responsiveness problems. Easy for many tasks, using Cortex-M for example.

Show me a general purpose computing device, like you are seem to be insisting every device should be, that has a month or more of battery life despite moderate to heavy usage, yet weighs as little and is as thin as the reMarkable. Products necessarily have trade-offs due to current technology limitations, so it's not just about "excuses".

Well, that is easy: the Remarkable has one the shortest battery life amongst ALL the gadgets I own. Even Remarkable reviews promise short of 20h, and I'd be lucky if I get 10h. I have laptops that get better battery life. Most of the problem is that it just keeps the Wi-Fi radio on constantly and tries to phone home way too frequently; see Reddit discussions for workarounds.

The hardware already has Wi-Fi, it is powered on almost constantly, and the builtin software is constantly polling it in order to "sync". Let me know how much extra battery life would it kill for it to ship a browser.

My reMarkable 2, using it for it’s designed purpose of note taking, lasts for weeks (month+?) on a charge depending on how much I write each day, but it averages 3-5 or more pages consistently 5-6 days a week and the battery life is long enough I never think about charging.

It's not a technology limitation to withhold root access from the user.

Kobo can get away with it because their product is hackable. It's fine to release a platform with slightly too limited functionality if other people can then build on it.

They half-assed the capability to mix two liquids with my Kindle, as well, IPX8 certification nonwithstanding. Useless. I'm sticking with spoons.

Do you complain about knives because they're not good at scooping? When something does one thing well, I don't care if it does auxiliary things poorly, or at all.

I feel the same about my Kindle Paperwhite— I just buy stuff on the Amazon website or sling mobis/epubs at it from Calibre. Zero patience for the on-device interface other than using it for reading.

While I try to do that as much as possible it does not work with my country's version of overdrive. I have to use my e-reader and its awful browser to search for books I want to read. As the website is not even optimized for mobile devices the whole process is rather painful. But this is not the fault of the e-reader.

Amazon has their hooks deep into Overdrive in exchange for supporting Kindle delivery for library books, so I doubt this will ever get better. Overdrive has moved its focus to its mobile app. I hope Kobo support will improve, but I am not optimistic.

It seems like they have deprecated their OD branded app in favor of the "Libby" app, right? Which does have better UX. It is really gross how Amazon feels the need to control the means of delivery used by most library systems :facepalm:

Yes, it's Libby going forward. It fairness, Kindle delivery is very easy if you are not a tech savvy person, which a lot of library users are not. They have a Kindle because they desire the accessibility tools (larger printer, lighter weight) or their kids bought it for them or whatever. Being able to do delivery just like they would buy a book is great. But Amazon requires prominent Kindle branding and locks the Libby app out of their app store, so it's also somewhat annoying if you are a librarian who doesn't want to promote a specific brand. But the Kindle is such a huge part of our user base, it's hard to go back now. Other methods work, there's just nothing as smooth as the Kindle.

This is fair, and a good reminder for me that a Librarian's prerogative is to follow the means, mode, and preference of the readership with the goal of enabling folks to read. This is a noble goal and it's good that Amazon has contributed something to "accessibility" via a smoother delivery mechanism.

Mine was a disaster to type on. Slow, unreliable, and for some reason the closer to the right edge of the screen you got, the further left on each key you had to touch, until finally you would have to touch the key to the left of the one you want. But it was a great reader until a kid stepped on my bag a couple weeks ago. I ordered an Onyx Boox Nova Air, in hopes the software will be better. I also hope it's anywhere near as good and durable a reader.

I've had my Boox Nova Air for about 10 days now and it feels like a great piece of gear. Loving it so far.

That sounds like a faulty digitizer.

It sounds crazy but I actually see this inconvenience as something of a plus. Getting out my kobo means that I will commit to reading for a while, similar to when I pick up a physical book. The fact that all other functions (like Web browsing) are so inconvenient help reduce the distractions for me.

Yeah — I get my ebooks DRM-free and manage the contents of my Kobo through Calibre. It works great; I'm happy using my Kobo as little more than a screen for Calibre.

I long preferred "real" books, despite having an e-reader for over ten years, but the e-reader has a killer feature: the backlight. Having a backlight means I can turn the light off on my nightstand, and read at night without keeping people up. (Yes, I know they make reading lights. No, I haven't tried one. They look like they're a pain.)

I also realized after looking over my (physical) bookshelves that I don't actually care about most of the books on there. This is after multiple rounds of clearing out the shelves and making trips to the secondhand bookstore, free library, etc., so it's not a matter of cruft. If I'm honest with myself, most books are "read once and discard," though there is a small collection that it feels distasteful not to keep copies of. Certain classics, or books with particular personal significance, for instance.

The cost of ebooks is an issue, as is the DRM. I haven't experimented with digital lending from libraries so I don't know if that's a solution to the cost problem, but it could be. DRM is... well, a perennial problem for digital media. And it does feel like something is missing in a world without secondhand stores and free libraries.

(Edit: It is in fact a frontlight, not a backlight. Duh.)

I read a lot during late evening / night, and for me personally, the best device for that is an Android smartphone with an OLED screen. This last bit is crucial, because OLED blacks are "true" in a non-emissive sense, so if you set it up for white-on-black (or better yet, orange or some other warm color), and dial the brightness all the way down, it is easy on the eyes even in an otherwise very dark room.

Unfortunately, some reader apps won't let you dial the brightness down enough - Kindle, most notably. "Screen filter" apps help with that.

BTW, I forgot to explain why Android specifically. On that OS, the apps can override the function of the volume key, and most readers - including Kindle - use it to flip pages. So you can hold the phone with your thumb on volume down, and read with minimal movement after finding a comfortable position. Ideally, this also needs a phone that is small enough to be held comfortably in one hand.

There's no similar feature on iOS, so you need to flick the screen to flip pages.

Note: Check is the OLED uses lower PWM frequency for lower brightness if you sensitive for flicker. It's significant on darker situation.

https://www.dxomark.com/flicker-the-display-affliction/

The backlight was a game changer for me too. There were times I used to use a headlamp to read when I'm hanging out at the porch to read.

I went through the same process about my dead tree collection, and shrunk it down to the ones that I either will read again, or keep around as a legacy. These days, the main criteria I use for getting a dead tree book is, "is this worth keeping and preserving in a zombie apocalypse?"

I'm 100% the same way in preferring dead tree books over my kindle. I almost switched over to kindle over the bedside table lamp keeping up my spouse until I got into very high end flashlights.

One quality of a high end flashlight is the ability to go very low in addition to very bright. Also they have high CRI and different reflector patterns. My preference for bed time reading is a Zebralight H503c. Goes down to .01 lumen. I usually keep it at 1 or .1 which is about the same contrast as a kindle on 2/10 backlight level. It has a "flood" reflector, meaning no reflector. Just a uniform wall of high CRI light from the LED about a 170° viewing angle with no hot spot. It is small, a single AA, and has runtime of months on low mode. I recharge the battery once or twice per year.

All e-readers can read DRM-less books. It's trivial to convert from a DRM free epub on calibre to a mobi or azw3 to use on a kindle, even. I've never felt too restricted unless I buy books directly from Amazon, because their DRM is far more strict.

I guess my point about DRM is more that the books I want to read are generally only available in DRMed formats. But maybe that's not true? I don't use an Amazon e-reader, for what it's worth.

There's a calibre plugin that removes DRM from most epubs and some Kindle books. It's a pain to set up, because you need old versions of Adobe Digital Editions and/or Kindle, and those run on Windows (I haven't tried them on Wine). But once it's set up, it works fine.

If you live in the US then you might check your local, public library. They've often got volumes of e-books (pun intended :) ), and you can borrow them for a while. Still DRM'd but an easy and free way to access books

It's going to largely depend on the publisher. The publisher, not the platform, controls whether the book is sold with DRM or not. The majority are, yes, although the one genre where that's generally not true is Sci-Fi. There was a time, at least, when most of the major sci-fi publishers opted not to sell their books with DRM, because they thought it was an abuse of technology. Not sure how much that still holds true, but publishers like Tor still sell all of their stuff DRM-free.

I've tried reading lights, but the backlight on my kindle is much better for preserving night vision. I think it may also make less of an impact on ease of falling asleep... just to add my $0.02!

I would definitely encourage you to try digital libraries. I’m in the LA area and have access to both the LA county and LA city libraries, and between those two I have access to the vast majority of books I’m interested in. It’s easy to connect to a kindle as well; I use the Libby app which connects to those libraries, and I can send books that I check out to my kindle in one click. The main downside is that popular books sometimes have a wait time, sometimes for several months. This happens somewhat often, but not the majority of the time.

I'm the same, I very rarely read a book twice. I think some of the Pratchett books are the only ones. Perhaps if I had a lot more time, or was a faster reader, I might, but for me there's always a new (for me) book that I would rather read.

I can see why people keep lots of books, but for me a book on a shelf is just a wedge of paper, I'd rather give it away and let someone else read it.

For me most of the books I keep are one of two things: - Books I want to lend to people - Books with visuals/ other weird structural things that need to be books

A few examples of the second are House of Leaves, S., and Understanding Comics

Ok, House of Leaves looks really interesting, I think I might have to make some time for that.

This is pretty similar to my POV. The front light is huge for reading in bed (or anywhere dark, like a plane). Also, you carry essentially every book in print with you, everywhere. But the biggest reason I find myself reading on my Kindle despite preferring real books is that on a Kindle, I can start reading that new book now.

I've never been able to do a backlit screen in an otherwise unlit room. I get eye strain so fast. The litte reader lites are great. $5 and clips to your book or headboard or nitestand or wherever you want, and the light is pretty focused on your book.

Technically ereader screens are frontlit: the glass in front of the e-ink display refracts light across the display evenly. So instead of looking right at a light source, you're viewing refracted light scattered across the entire display.

I also get a headache from backlit screens. Frontlit e-ink is much better.

The Kindle Paperwhite uses flattened fiber optics to bounce the light from the edges off of the epaper, so it is still more like indirect lighting than reading on a phone. In a darkened room, or when I am reading outside at night, it works pretty well. When I'm on a plane, or when I'm in a resturant, I don't have to fiddle with an external lighting device to read.

Frontlight!

Right, of course - silly mistake!

no, it's a backlight, the screen is lit from behind, backlit.

the light on your nightstand frontlights your paper bound books

Worth highlighting the Open Book Project [1], an open source e-reader hardware design and software stack.

The design is open, and you can make your own with commodity parts. People are starting to sell PCBs, and complete devices.

It has its own open software stack, and I hope will have a variety of vendors in the coming years.

Ofc the e-ink patent issues remain, but this goes some of the way to solve things at the e-reader level.

[1] https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book

Another open-source e-ink book reader is PineNote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28190756.

Super cool. I feel like the bigger struggle will be getting actual books.

Unless you pirate them, most books are encumbered with DRM.

There are plenty of DRM unencumbered ebooks around if you look. But if you do find yourself dealing with DRM there are a number of methods of removing it.

Personally, if I already own the book in question I pirate the e-book, I don't see anything wrong with this as the author has already received equivalent royalties for the book. In the cases that I do not own a physical copy, I will generally buy a physical copy and then pirate the e-book. In some cases it is impossible to find a pirated e-book in which cases I will search for a DRM free option to buy. And in the event that I can't find the DRM free option I will resort to an Adobe Digital Editions DRM version (which I will promptly turn into a normal copy). This has worked out well for me and I have a pleasant library of books on my e-reader.

(Unlike the author, I find the idea of e-book "borrowing" to be completely ridiculous (as ridiculous as spotify or netflix). I would rather just check the book out of a library, or outright pirate it. At the end of the day, the author is not making any extra money out of my inconvenience of having a proprietary management software which stores a book locally on my device but doesn't give me direct access to the data.)

It's very easy to remove that DRM. Personally I don't log in to my kobo so library books get stripped before being copied over (the kobo acts as a usb storage device).

The most recent version of DRM used by Amazon hasn't been cracked yet (AFAIK) and the workarounds get you a version of the file missing a lot of recent typographic improvements.

Interesting. I didn't realize they had their own. Thanks.

> Unless you pirate them, most books are encumbered with DRM.

Depends on the publisher/genre. Tech books (from O'Reilly/PragProg/Apress/Manning anyway) for example are most often not encumbered with DRM.

I appreciate companies like Packt who supply credits to download DRM-free versions of the books you read. I get a free credit each month to download any book from them, DRM-free.

i bought everything for this but got overwhelmed and haven’t tried to put it together. it’s all been sitting on my shelf for like a year. maybe one day! too many dang projects.

I prefer reading on my e-reader for a number of reasons you’ve probably come across elsewhere. But the most underrated thing for me is that I can read large books. I feel they’re too unwieldly to carry around and also heavy enough that I feel too much friction actually starting to read. I had The Gene on my shelf for 3 years before I realised this was why I hadn’t even read 10 pages of it. I bought the ebook and finished it within 4 days.

This opened up a side benefit. I find that my enjoyment of things is enhanced when I can share it with someone. Since I have the ebook, I can gift the physical book to a friend who I think will like the book. That’s what happens to most of the physical books I receive as gifts - I buy the ebook, read it, then gift the physical book so I can share the joy with someone else.

There seems to be a weird reluctance in the American publishing market to split larger books into volumes. "War and Peace" editions I see on Amazon are typically single-volume; Russian editions are either two or four volumes.

Unfortunately, translated books are (in most cases) published in the same way as the original, so the tradition of multi-volume editions is dying out, being replaced by these awful bricks you can't properly hold or keep open, all set in tiny type with narrow margins.

I think part of that is the fractured expectations that publishers have set upon readers, especially of these longer classics. You have all these editions, translations, etc., sometimes of dramatically different page number lengths, with no standard or clear way to differentiate between different printings without diving into some literature forum where the users have read both copies and can summarize these differences for you. It can be hard to know you are actually getting the whole thing without buying a huge tome explicitly.

Nah, it’s just cheaper to print (small type), bind (once, and badly), and to manage inventory in some edge cases.

I agree about large books. I bought my first Kobo specifically for reading Alan Moore's Jerusalem (1400 pages). It went great.

Once I bought a used copy of a 1200+ page book and took the binding off so I could carry a couple of chapters at a time back and forth to work to read on breaks. Luckily it was a 10+ year old history book that was available shipped for under $10. But I can't really do that for a library book, so I agree ebooks are the way to go.

> The Gene

I read this book but i had to take huge amounts of notes/scribbles on the pages to keep track of various acronyms. I go back and lookup stuff that i forgot about. I thin an ereader is less amenable to going back forth and refer things. I feel like ereaders are designed more for linear reading .

Look into Kindle X-Ray [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Ray_(Amazon_Kindle)

X-Ray is great, if your title supports it. I did find it to be a bit of a spoiler, since it shows you all the occurrences of a character in the book - including in the future (?) - at least this is how I recall it.

I really like e-readers and e-books, mainly for the reasons commenters pointed out (much lighter than physical books, configurable font size, etc..).

But there are big downsides too. Mainly the market discourages ownership on the one hand and encourages piracy on the other hand. The result is that DRM protections are everywhere and some authors like Jonathan Lewin were burned up by e-book piracy and reverted to only physical copies. Also for some reason e-readers perform badly with technical writing (many references) and math formulas. It's not a technical barrier, it's just that the software is not optimized for these use cases.

Also showing off huge book shelves is impossible with an all-digital model. Some people care about that.

I wish there were a Netflix like model for books. I think Amazon has a service like that, but without very much content (last time I checked). If the selection was good I would be happy to pay monthly for what is effectively a library card (which is basically how you do that today with ebooks but for free. Much worse user experience than piracy unfortunately)

I too love ebooks by the way. Between that and audiobooks I now consume more books than any other kind of content. It has been pretty amazing, highly recommend it.

Amazon has two services like that with different content; they used to have three!

For kids, there's Amazon Freetime Unlimited, which has a catalog of younger people stuff. This one needs a newer kindle --- if you've got a Kindle Keyboard or similar, no go.

For adults, there's the more expensive Kindle Unlimited? or Prime something which has more older people stuff, costs more, and may have the first book of a kids series, but not all of them.

The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is now gone. It was a lot smaller catalog.

A lot of libraries offer ebooks at no cost to patrons, so maybe check your local library to see if that's an option for you. It does come at a cost to the library (which is worthy of its own discussion, but probably not in this thread), so consider a donation if you can.

It's Prime Reading which is like a light version of Kindle Unlimited. It's, as best I can tell, meant to entice you into the higher cost subscription. Particularly since it usually only offers the first book in a series, you either pay for the rest individually or get goaded into paying for Kindle Unlimited. Or go to your local library.

> If the selection was good I would be happy to pay monthly for what is effectively a library card

Libraries offer this service for free. Our local library has a huge and increasing number of ebooks available.

They do, yes. However, libraries typically have a very small number of "copies" of ebooks available to loan, which means there can be quite a queue. Add to this that there is literally no incentive for the person who checked it out to "return" it when finished, which means ebooks are always kept out for their maximum borrowing time. As a result, it can be months before a popular book is available to borrow.

It's a very frustrating situation for an artificially-constrained supply.

Putting physical books on hold at the library is a much faster experience. You can still initiate it online, but you get your copy much faster. And you naturally return the book when finished because this lines up with when you go in to get your next book.

I use Overdrive for both ebooks and audio books, and I really appreciate the service, but it's really not a "Netflix for books". This is like saying Visual Source Safe, which prevented you from editing files a coworker had "checked out", is just as good as git. :-)

> However, libraries typically have a very small number of "copies" of ebooks available to loan, which means there can be quite a queue. Add to this that there is literally no incentive for the person who checked it out to "return" it when finished, which means ebooks are always kept out for their maximum borrowing time. As a result, it can be months before a popular book is available to borrow.

My public library network has reduced the number of holds & checkouts of ebooks since the onset of the pandemic - 3, down from 10. I personally return audiobooks & ebooks immediately once I'm done since it frees up my slots. My holds get delivered semi-chaotically, so I checkout requested books as soon as I can. So holding on to digital books I don't need anymore comes with a tangible downside for me. If I had 10 digital slots I might never deliberately return books either.

Good, I'm glad your network is trying to fix this.

The other thing I do is return whenever, and just put my Kindle in airplane mode and read the book at my leisure. Sure, I can't add any content for a bit, but they can't remove anything either.

Also keep in mind that your local library may be in a larger system. My local library can borrow books from almost the entire state (minus from the largest city in the state, for some reason). If you're willing to wait a week or more, you can put books on hold and get an email when they arrive to your local branch.

Amazon's service IS a "Netflix like model" - like you note about Amazon's model, neither are a comprehensive solution.

The model I want (and presumably you would as well) is a Spotify/Apple Music model, where the vast majority of all books are available for a single subscription. Audiobooks are even worse! Audible's consumer hating model still treats digital media as something you purchase one at a time (or rather two a month).

> The result is that DRM protections are everywhere

Not everywhere, in Poland ebooks are only watermarked, there is no DRM protection and you get epub/mobi/pdf copies of every ebook you buy.

Ditto in Russia, e.g. https://www.litres.ru/. They know that if they don't do that, people will just pirate en masse - they had to compete with pirated books for convenience.

Manning books in the US watermarks their ebooks too (each page have a "property of XYX" on it). Its not DRM or even unsharable, I think it just makes you think about who your sharing with...)

From which reseller / publisher?

It probably won't surprise anyone that the vast majority of ebook sales are for genre fiction and light, nontechnical nonfiction. I work for an academic publisher and we do ebooks (I wrote the code spec), but it is suboptimal when you start getting into large tables, charts, math, etc. on smallish tablet screens. Yes, better software support for these things would help. Apple iBooks isn't terrible. But there's not so much incentive for the vendors.

Anyone know why ereaders are so bad with this stuff? Rendering latex math is like 40 year old techology. You'd think there were a dozen open source libraries that these companies could utilize to do this. Maybe they figure only 1% of readers look at math formulas and its not worth the developer time to make a reasonable solution.

The best thing about an ereader for me is, I can read it lying down on my side. I wear glasses, so if I'm reading a real book I need to have them on, and lying on my side crunches the frame up. But with my kobo, I can crank the font up to baby book size, then take off my glasses and read lying on my side.

I fell into a phase of reading free e-books (I love amateur authors and fan-fiction generally) on my phone and that lasted about a year but the constant charging and eye strain was a pain.

So I finally got an e-reader (the cheapest simplest Kobo) and I've had it nine months now. Oh what a difference the screen makes! Completely transformed how much I read and for how long I read.

The software on the Kobo sucks, and even with a builtin web-browser there is no good way to get free e-books onto the device without a cable to a laptop with Calibre. But once you have your books on the reader, it's super easy and nice.

I still love browsing old second hand book shops (they are dying) but I'm thinking there really isn't much future for commercial fiction generally. The chances of authors 'making it' is so slender and when its accepted it isn't a job, it can be unleashed as a hobby and they'll reach bigger audiences and get more interaction with readers by giving their work away. And that's what you see when there are over 800k Harry Potter books on fanfiction.org, and perhaps 50k are fantastic and fun to find. The 50k I like might not be the same 50k you'd choose, but its there.

Any leads on where to find similar other sources of amateur fiction appreciated.

Definitely install Koreader!

http://koreader.rocks/

I can't even begin enumerating the features. It really rocks!

Came into this thread looking for anything to make my Kobo more tolerable. Gladly going to give this a go. I had an original Kindle and it felt just seamless at the time. I broke the screen and had to migrate to a Kobo Touch. It does the job but it's not nearly as responsive and the battery life is abhorrent.

Gonna install this just to get screen rotation on my Clara HD.

Thanks!

> The software on the Kobo sucks

The best thing to do with a kobo (if you have a modicum of technical interest) is to install koreader and use it instead of the default.

koreader is pretty great specifically for reading epubs. It lets you specify almost anything about how they are rendered even letting you easily create your own css modifications, and lets you fairly easily get books on and off whether by opds or even ssh or whatnot.

If you are a bit anal and like your margins just so and paragraph indent just so and line spacing just so and you want it to left justify and do word breaks just so then koreader is pretty hard to beat.

> I fell into a phase of reading free e-books (I love amateur authors and fan-fiction generally) on my phone and that lasted about a year but the constant charging and eye strain was a pain.

Have you read Worm? [1] There are tools available to convert the whole thing to an eReader format, and it was the best work of fiction I've read in a long time.

1. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

The Kobo reader is fantastic for writing amateur fiction, or at least for self-editing it, because amateurs can only pay one or two editors instead of the small army that "professional" books require.

You could head to the free section of Smashwords.com to get some free ebooks, but I know there are quite a few platforms. Also tons of people are always asking for beta readers in goodreads (check the forum section), there you have a chance to get close and personal with the authors while doing a great service to the community.

I may feel about this differently in the future, but right now I prefer to rent access to entertainment media (books, movies, etc) rather than try to maintain ownership. I find it difficult to even maintain digital resources, but physical media is especially challenging.

Most books I read just once, so being able to check an e-book out of the library is perfect for me. Even if I bought a book on the Kindle and Amazon ripped it away 5 years from now, that would suck but it would probably not make too big a difference.

I appreciate the argument about ownership vs DRM, but at this point in my life I would rather just have less stuff to worry about!

>I’m still not into the prospect of purchasing books on the e-reader – it’s something I’ll probably avoid

Agree with most of what the author (including a preference for physical books) says but this. I must have spent close to USD 2k on various e-books (I use Amazon because of legacy reasons .. availability of e-readers in India around 2013 etc ) and the joy these purchases have given me can't compare with what I might have gotten with Overdrive etc. YMMV but I like to be able to go back and refer a passage I read 5 years ago.

Also, I've come to realize that physical books are heavy and take up more space than they're worth, for me. I have probably about 50 books that I value most (mostly novels), but the rest I own as e-books or audio books. I used to have more. It's one thing if you have a permanent home with space for a large library, but when I've had to move my books, and try to fit them into small living quarters, I decided to pare them back a little and keep only what I value most. I haven't regretted it.

My favorite part about ebooks, and specifically Kindle/Amazon is that you can flip through your highlights. I will highlight parts of a book I really enjoyed and sometimes write personal notes about them as I read.

I enjoy going back and spending 15-30 minutes going through my highlights and notes on books I previously read and re-reading sections around highlights. It brings back a surprising amount of memories and emotions from the book that get lost over time. Now Amazon lets you read these with read.amazon.com and offers some export features. The export features are still not perfect, but are better than they were.

I also like the sheer number of books I can keep on my Kindle and they don't take up physical space in my home. I don't want hundreds of books stacked up that i read once. So instead I find that I read on Kindle first. Then if I REALLY enjoy the book, I will purchase a physical copy for my bookshelf. So my bookshelf becomes a physical embodiment of my curated favorites. I also have an obsession with old books, so I enjoy hunting down cool copies at used bookstores to get the right one for my bookshelf.

Here is the tool I use to get highlights and notes off my Kindle and onto Notion, which allows multi-device syncing and web-access to my notes and private storage.

https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion

i am a pirate and i extensively use a borrowed overdrive. i still buy kindle from olx because i can get them on the cheap, much more than amazon itself.

Ebooks are so cheap these days, that it's a shame to pirate them.

I'm not sure what you mean by "cheap". A lot of nonfiction is $15-50.

Also, when I buy physical books, I often buy used ones. At local used book stores, I can often get them for $5 or less.

I mean, while the prices of paper books and ebooks don't differ much after release, the discounts on ebooks, are often much higher than on paper books. I've seen great books for a dollar more than once.

That's true, with some big disclaimers:

1. You won't see those discounts in certain categories (e.g. full length Stephen King novels). Whereas with physical books, you can expect to find cheap used ones no matter the author (unless it's a rare book or something).

2. You have to time purchases to the discount availability. With used physical books - as long as the book is popular enough - you can get that discount at any time.

cheap? amazon india at least has ebooks priced equal to or more than paperbacks which makes no rational sense other than that amazon is price gouging. for a physical paper back, i was told that the author is lucky to get 5% of the sales price. Would it be hard to price an ebook lets say 10%, 20% of the paperback with 100% of the proceeds going to author. or does that price canibalize the paperback industry so they price match it to keep the demand of paperbacks alive. ?

Printing a book is cheap. Very cheap. Most of the cost is prepress, proper typesetting, proofreading. There is no reason why ebooks should be noticeably cheaper than paper books, because the costs are not where people expect them to be.

I realize it's irrational given the price of ebooks, but the lack of "ownership" of the books makes me a lot less interested in buying them.

Personally I very rarely re-read books so the concept of owning them just doesn't really matter to me. If my ebook collection suddenly disappeared I wouldn't particularly care, I already got the value out of them I was going to get.

As for physical books, I'm trying to get rid of 200 or so I bought pre ebooks and damn it's a pain.

I love lending books to friends without the expectation or need to get them back, and ebooks often make this impossible. I also love perusing used book stores, another sad casualty of digital formats.

It depends on where you buy the book. Many stores will just send you a mobi or epub file so you can archive that yourself. If you buy through amazon, you are tied to that store unfortunately, but the situation is similar to games. It is very rare now to buy a game that is not part of some account.

> Many stores will just send you a mobi or epub file so you can archive that yourself.

Do you know what stores offer that? Last time I looked around it was mostly small shops with very minimal book offerings.

I've used https://pragprog.com/ for programming related books and they send links for mobi , epub and PDFs IIRC

I can name two (never used any of them, I'm going full Amazon)

ebooks.com but you have to look if the book you like has an unencrypted epub versions

smashwords.com

i tried once to find paperbacks of my favourite books i have heard over the years, like louise penny or henning mankell series in thrift book stores mainly in Delhi (sunday market) but havent been there in a couple of years because of the pandemic but i would like cheap paperbacks on the shelves but not all the books i have heard over the years.

i borrow from overdrive. i wrote that. i pirate stuff not on overdrive because buying from amazon ties me to their devices and they give me a "license" to read on their devices only. i want mp3 of ebooks. i pay for an ebook and get a epub file. is that too hard?

> buying from amazon ties me to their devices and they give me a "license" to read on their devices only

This isn't strictly true since you can also read Amazon ebooks on 3rd party android devices that have the Kindle application installed.

It's true in the more general sense that the Amazon ebooks have DRM that limit interoperability.

So don't use Amazon. ebooks.com sells epub files. Was that too hard to find?

"Cheap" is very relative depending on where one lives.

I've been a Kindle user for a long time now. I love reading and I love books, but I also used to be a high-travel kind of guy, and the Kindle is lighter than carrying even ONE book.

The travel stopped, but the Kindle stayed. I buy MOST of my books in physical form at a great local shop, but I still also use a Kindle for some things -- mostly genre, or for the inevitable moments of "I don't feel like starting any of these books I already have so what can I have NOW via Kindle that appeals to me?"

The Kindle is also great for reading in the bath, and is honestly BETTER for reading in bed than a real book for me now -- I'm 51, so my eyes aren't as great as they were 20 years ago. The lovely cool backlight of a Paperwhite, together with the adjustable font, make it a pretty pleasant experience.

I have ZERO interest in a Kindle that does anything other than "be a reader." I've read on my iPad in a pinch -- multi-device sync for Kindle books is handy -- but it's heavier and the light is harsher in a dark room. A Paperwhite is a very lovely well made and not expensive device, and it's one of the relatively few gadgets I have that I would immediately replace without a thought if it broke or was lost. Probably with overnight shipping.

>The Kindle is also great for reading in the bath, and is honestly BETTER for reading in bed than a real book for me now -- I'm 51, so my eyes aren't as great as they were 20 years ago. The lovely cool backlight of a Paperwhite, together with the adjustable font, make it a pretty pleasant experience.

The Oasis (and the brand new Paperwhite) both have adjustable color temperature. I've found the warm light is much better for my eyes, and feels more natural. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that you can choose your font as well as install your own fonts on the device, so you have a significant amount of control over what the text looks like.

I've found that e-readers are perfect for novels or nonfiction books meant to be read linearly from beginning to end. I don't buy paperbacks anymore because the experience is superior (lighter weight, backlight, word definitions).

But I do still buy physical copies of technical textbooks or reference-style works. Ebook formatting is still just not good enough in my experience for things like code blocks and math formulas. Also, for those types of books, the ability to quickly scan through the pages to find something is important, and e-readers still do a very poor job at this.

eReaders are awesome. I used to read so many physical books but the physical space that they were taking + needing to carry the books around was a barrier.

I tried reading books on my phone but it just destroyed my eyes. I got a super old Kindle Paperwhite and it has been super enjoyable. There are times I just throw it in my pocket now I will end up reading on the go.

It took me a while to discover Calibre but once I did the management of ebooks became really so easy. I am 41 books in this year on my goal of 52.

Yeah, personally I find e-readers significantly more useful than physical books for casual reading anyway. I might prefer a physical book for reference work but otherwise I find using an e-reader much easier overall. Calibre is great, I would second your recommendation.

I'm not sure how many authors are aware when writing books, but it changes how you read it. With physical books I often peek a few pages ahead to the end of the chapter or just by the weight of the book know when I'm near the end. Sure, there are progress bars, but they're way more subtle. Knowing when something will wrap up I tend to have an expectation of what might happen. Without those cues I have a different experience.

Similarly, my wife can burn through thick books without realizing it for the same reason. Previously, you may even be intimidated by how much is left, but now it's one screen at a time.

I bought a Kobo Aura in 2013 or 2014. It handles epubs/mobis perfectly while PDFs are a terrible experience, but what impresses me is that the device works just as well as it did 8 years ago. The battery life is weeks or a month, the (modest) performance feels as good as when I bought it and no updates has screwed it up. I guess it is because it specializes in one specific task and tries to be nothing else than just that.

I have the exact same experience. Like many readers here on HN i love to get new gadgets. I've been looking for an upgrade for several years now just for the sake of it. But, the device is still rock solid and newer ones don't add any relevant additional extra value to motivate the decision. Since I read several books per week my Kobo Auro One is the single best purchase I've ever made. :)

For what it's worth, KOReader does a much better job with PDFs on Kobo than the stock reader (Nickel). PDFs with large page size and complex layouts (like multicolumn that's periodically interrupted by images not in the text flow) are still Not Great, but more manageable.

I replaced a Nook with an Aura One after the page turning buttons started failing. On the one hand the main thing I miss is the page turning buttons, which were great in the winter because I could read a book with my hands under a blanket and the book above it. But on the other, the Kobo should last longer without that failure point.

It's waterproof too, though again being touch only and no buttons it's not great to turn pages if it's wet.

As someone who's reading a lot of technical material, I'm on the fence about e-readers.

On the one hand, many technical books are thick and heavy, and can benefit from having a search function. But on the other, e-reader screens tend to be small and require a lot of scrolling back and forth (like between a code sample and an accompanying explanation).

Does anyone have experience with reading technical books on an e-reader? Any suggestions?

I think e-readers are awesome for linear, text-based material. I don't think they're great for reference or things that need specific formatting or have a lot of visual data; like textbooks, something with code snippets, cookbooks, or newspapers. But tablets or desktop computers work fairly well. Since those aren't single-use machines and don't have great vertical integration they can be cumbersome (and a bit of an eye strain for long sessions).

The smallish size and slow screen loading make it really hard to skim (and requires decent search and UX). Because of the small screen info can get reflowed, making code snippets or charts very awkward--if it even renders.

Basically, I'm just reiterating what you're saying. I haven't found a solution to what you're describing. In an effort to minimize physical books, I try to utilize the library as much as possible and buy digital versions to reference on the computer months or years later. I've seen solutions like putting pdfs into Dropbox. Sadly, a lot of the reading software that allows highlighting or writing in margins don't sync between a tablet and desktop (at least last time I investigated). Academics seem to have the most motivation for finding a solution to something like this, but that may be tailored to their own needs.

>Academics seem to have the most motivation for finding a solution to something like this, but that may be tailored to their own needs.

The solution is screen real estate. Everyone I know in academia has at least one monitor in an office somewhere on campus. The standard monitor you get from the IT department pretty much anywhere is a 27" 1080p dell. Big enough to fit two PDF pages side by side with no scaling. I have also seen people with two monitors turn one vertical. A lot of people just opt to use the free printing from the department and print something out if they really need to read something on the go.

I have a Kobo e-ink reader. The small 6-inch screen has a 300 PPI (Pixels Per Inch) resolution and does not fatigue the eyes for extended reading sessions. The e-ink screen easily beats a LCD high-resolution or retina display for reading books.

However, e-ink readers are only suitable for paperback-sized fiction or non-fiction titles. Everything else simply isn't suitable for the small 6-inch e-ink screen. PDFs at A4 (or US Letter size) are not suitable, as is any title with a lots of graphics or a complex page layout. Most academic or research papers are still in PDF and are rarely converted to ePub format suitable for reading on a e-Reader.

Note: When I say paperback-sized, I'm referring books in the approx. 6-inch (15cm) size ballpark. Anything above A5 size is likely unsuitable for small e-Reader screens unless the book is text-only (or predominately text).

Finally, if you are think of buying an Amazon Kindle 6-inch e-Reader, be aware that a lot of print books with graphics, charts, tables etc. have been poorly-converted to e-books and are unsuitable for small e-ink screens. Despite this, Amazon continues to misleadingly promote these titles as suitable for Kindle e-Readers when they are not.

I use my Kindle Paperwhite everynight, because I just love the reading experience on it.

But I have to agree that technical materials are still best consumed physically. Novels and even non-fiction stories are great on the kindle. But if you need to frequently stop and take notes, analyze diagrams or figures, reference illustrations or sidebars, which are all common in technical books, then the physical book is the way to go.

An acceptable alternative is a PDF copy on the iPad paired with an app like GoodNotes or ReadWise. These allow highlighting, notes, and other tools to improve the experience. I still prefer digital books, but this is an acceptable alternative. I recently bought a book set from CiscoPress (Cisco technical manual) and got the eBook + Physical combo. Well after I spent $100+ then Cisco sends me an email that the book is backordered for several months. So I only have the digital versions for a month or more until the physical one arrives. So these apps make for a reasonable alternative, but I am waiting to really dive into the content in detail until I get the real thing because it is just the best way to consume technical information, even though I am a heavy Kindle user for normal books.

The screen size is important, as you say. I use a 9" reader and it is large enough, but it is a 7-year-old device. I got the impression that those larger screen sizes later disappeared from the market.

As for the back and forth scrolling, again correct that it is much slower than with a physical book.

You can pack a lot of technical books in your device but, in my opinion, the best ones it is a good idea to have them printed as well.

The Kindle Oasis is probably large enough at 7" to make it work. If you're reading PDFs, you probably want something that's 10" or so -- I believe Kobo's Ellipsa fits the bill. Or you could end up in-between with a Forma or a Libra, which I believe are both 7.8".

As someone who used a 6" e-reader for years and switched a few months ago to a 7.8" e-reader... it makes a massive difference. Technical material is actually readable on the larger screen, the CPU is faster so I can actually search larger texts in reasonable time, and PDFs display pretty well (though still a bit small).

My advice: go with 7.8" if you want to read fiction and carry it around a lot, but also want to read some technical material. If you just plan on writing notes and reading technical stuff, 10.3" is the way to go.

I have an Oasis and think that an iPad would be a better choice for content with a significant number of diagrams or where color is important.

Definitely true on color! I think the long battery life of an e-ink device at 10.3 or 13.3 inches would give the iPad a run for its money in terms of usefulness, but totally agreed -- if you need color, e-ink is probably not the best choice.

You can go up to 13.3" eReaders. These are direct out of Japan--I think this might be the only US source that isn't a re-ship service or random eBay?

https://goodereader.com/blog/product/gen-2-fujitsu-quaderno-...

Even if the e-reader supports pdf, I think it's a much worse experince than even reading on a big computer screen(which doesn't work for me either). Physical copy of techincal books are way superior than e-book version. It's way easier to study in a physical book from my personal experience.

This is the one thing that's been a deal-breaker for me with ereaders. I still love physical books and the interactivity with a laptop or desktop, but always saw ereaders as filling a gap neither really address, where you want to read material on a eink-style screen without worrying about the sun or batteries, but don't want to lug around a large number of texts.

However, for me reading material goes back and forth between relatively simple text and things that require pdfs, and I always had trouble with pdfs. They've never displayed correctly and have been ridiculously slow on top of it.

My dream ereader would have an eink display (preferably color but it's not a necessity for me to be happy with it) that is optimized around displaying technical pdfs, like math-heavy scientific articles with lots of images. If it could do that and display simple text well, I'd probably use it a lot, probably next to my laptop sometimes even.

I read a lot of maths and have ended up for the most part using a 10 inch Fire tablet. I then tend to prefer them in their original typeset PDF format that way and am able navigate them with the sort of speed you need. It'll depend on the particular technical content but I tend to need to jump back and forth and zoom in and out and it never seems pleasant on e-ink.

I've been seriously tempted by splashing out on a BOOX 10.3 (https://shop.boox.com/collections/eink-tablet) - but don't think I can really justify it to myself and from what I gather the refresh rate is still not going to be anything like a tablet.

Get the 7.8" screen. It was the savior for technical books, especially in PDF, even though the Kobo I used had a terrible PDF reader. I tried a 6" version, and it was just not the same.

The reMarkable is pretty big, maybe that's the key?

The Remarkable is the device that convinced me of the value of e-readers, but it's not so much the screen size as it is the ability to just scribble notes in the margins, and underline, circle etc. easily. You can install Koreader on the Remarkable, but then it's just another ereader without a frontlight, rather than something more tangible like a book.

I convert everything to PDF before moving it to the device though, for a lot of reasons, some aesthetic and some related to lack of functionality in the built-in epub converter. It's a shame there is no software that does a perfect job at converting epub to PDF though. I use one of three different workflows depending on the source material.

One tip for those using the device: the built-in margin trimming feature for PDFs also lets you add margins on whatever side of the document you want, which is a bit counterintuitive but really useful if you like scribbling in the margins.

How suitable is it for reading PDFs with code/diagrams?

Basically the best thing I have ever used for PDF's with graphics/formulas/code. I am a very happy user.

It's excellent, with one important caveat: provided the text size is not too small. The way small font sizes (<=8pt on an 8.5x11 PDF page) get rendered/antialiased on the device reduces their contrast a little -- they end up a little more grey than pure black, which isn't ideal.

I’ve tried to read tech books on kindle, but 6 inches is too small. I’ve had better luck reading them on an ipad. The screen is just big enough, but navigating between the book and my notes proved cumbersome. Mostly I read tech books on my laptop and desktop because it’s easy to flip between book and notes. In the grand scheme of things it is the best trade-off for me.

An ebook device can easily hold many books and makes it equally easy or difficult to switch chapters or switch books. I think that is the very reason I still much much prefer physical books. Picking up a physical book confines me to a set of hierarchic contexts -- the book, the chapter, the page. The contexts helps me to read and enjoy the book.

One of the things I like about my eReader is that it has a "minutes left in chapter" feature. It knows roughly how fast I read, and how long it will take me to get to the next logical break in the story.

This is really nice, because I tend to read in bed, and knowing whether the next chapter is going to be five minutes or twenty-five minutes helps me decide when it's time to go to sleep.

Of course I used to do this with physical books, too; flipping forward until I saw the next chapter. But I like having the little number at the bottom of the screen.

That's pretty much my experience with ebook readers years ago. I still love dead-tree books, but I find it easier to use the ebook reader in places I normally can't, or shouldn't:

- Reading in places without a lot of light. It is that or bring my headlamp.

- Travel, definitely, but also while running errands

- Reading while eating (not healthy)

- Reading while smoking (also not healthy ... )

- Trying to search for keywords in a book

Most recently, with having to help take care of an infant, I find myself unable to put in long, uninterrupted hours to read. It was easier to read a ebook on my phone or on my Kindle. And if my son spits up, it is easier to clean a device than it is my dead tree books.

However, I remember growing up with my father's library filling up an entire wall, and my mother regularly bringing my family out to the library. That's an experience I'd like my kids to have. I have a wall of books, though these days, I am much more mindful about curating them.

On the topic of e-readers I just want to share these two resources for free e-books. I am pretty sure I originally got them from HN and I have been reading almost exclusively from their collections ever since. So if someone can have the same enjoyment from them as I had then they do really deserve a re-post:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/

Personally would love to use an e-reader to read lengthy blog posts, but last time I tried it was very tedious. I converted the post to PDF using firefox's reader mode and uploaded these to the device. Are there any e-readers with something like firefox's reader mode integrated?

A long time ago, I used a service where you subscribed to any number of blogs via their RSS feeds and the service created a daily or weekly e-book for you with all of the new posts, complete with a table of contents. If you had a Kindle, you could have it automatically sent to your device via the device's email address. It was wonderful, but eventually shut down - probably due to fewer and fewer blogs offering RSS feeds.

Kobo's stock reader has integration with Pocket: you add an article to Pocket on your desktop/phone, and your reader pulls queued articles when it's on WiFi. You can read them offline, and they're basically like reader-mode.

KOReader, which you can install on several ereader devices, has similar integration with Wallabag. I find it extremely convenient to read lengthy blog posts and news articles this way.

I use Kobo with Pocket integration for exactly this! Just install the extension, click the button, refresh on your e-reader and get reading :) It doesn't work for every page but it has been really useful for me.

I use a Boox device (see my top-level comment in this same thread for a breakdown of my experience), it runs Android with some light customization on top. So you can just install FireFox right on the device. Or you can use EinkBro, an e-ink optimized fork (of FF, I think?) that has paging built right in to better work with e-ink.

No one gave the answer that's worked for a decade: Calibre has a "Fetch News" option. You can customize it to any RSS feed. Calibre can then just download posts daily/weekly and make ebooks out of them.

Not sure if it still exists, but when I had a kindle, I had a virtual printers you'd print documents to, and it would automatically appear on the kindle. Very good experience.

you can still email documents to your kindle

Kobo has Pocket integration.

Yep, it's super convenient for storing up long-form articles.

If you are looking at the big names (Kindle, Kobo, Nook), I doubt it. The devices become far more open elsewhere. I have a Boyue Likebook eReader which has unfettered access to the internet via built in web browser and Chrome.

Pocket or Instapaper work well for this.

I spent three hours the other night trying to get my kobo glo HD to work with Adobe Digital Editions. I've tried multiple different computers, multiple cables. ADE fulfulls the book OK, and my Kobo can read books from the store. But trying to copy them from ADE to the device hangs forever, then eventually crashes. The Kobo is too old for the built-in overdrive/libby integration. I used to like e-readers, but now I just want to throw it out the window.

I’ve given up. I buy ebooks but never download the official copy, if you know what I mean.

Kobo is quite friendly with 3rd party software. Both Plato (in rust) and KO-Reader (in c/lua) are excellent alternative to builtin reader app, the only drawback is they can't open DRM-protected books.

https://github.com/baskerville/plato

https://github.com/koreader

I have ended up with Onyx Boox about a year ago and it is awesome. Being an Android tablet opens up space for a bit of customization. For example, I am running syncthing on it keep book collection in order without any 3rd party...

I like e-writers even more, I have a Remarkable 2. It's a great writing tool.

I'd had Ratta Supernote A5x for an e-writer. Really loved it. Bigger storage than reMarkable 2, better software and cloud integration than reMarkable 2. The pencil response time is somewhat slower than reMarkable 2 though.

I'd used it extensively. And lost. I instantly changed my Ratta cloud password. But any taker can see my notes in the device. No way to block the access remotely. The only protection from theft is to set the 6 digit PIN.

Now, I am hesitant to buy another Supernote A5x. Maybe I just admit the device can be lost, so that I just copy old notes and delete from the device regularly.

Their return policy is insanity. While I was okay with the device itself, the lack of search-ability in the notes (GoodNotes on iPad can do it just fine) was a deal breaker for me.

The return process is just stupid. I had about a dozen different issues with the return process and their support is simply awful.

I would not suggest getting one unless you plan to keep it, or write it off as a $600 mistake and keep it anyway.

One thing I noted after using a Kindle for the first time (about 10 years ago) is that I was reading without a constant physical sense of how far I was through the book, to the point that the ending almost caught me off-guard. It was certainly an interesting experience, I'm still undecided as to whether it's a pro or a con.

Kindles have an option to turn on a time estimate for progress through a book which sort of simulates this, but I don't really like it (the constant changing/recalculation is anxiety-inducing).

Really wish they had an option for a small low-resolution visual indication of progress, like most devices do for their battery indicators.

For me personally that's a con. Not specifically being caught off guard when the book ends, but not being able to physically tell how far along I am.

I am currently reading "the way of kings" which is a very thick book. My progress is very slow, but I really really enjoy my bookmark work its way down the stack of pages.

Having had a large-format e-book reader since March, I'm largely convinced that most of the unsuitability of reading to screens isn't document formats, but screens.

I picked up an Onxy BOOX Max Lumi, with a 13.3" 220 dpi grayscale display. It's virtually indistinguishable from paper in terms of print quality. Contrast is somewhat lower, though this increases readability under direct sunlight (lower glare). The frontlight makes indoor reading quite pleasant.

The device is large, and I thought it might be too big. My use case was reading older scanned-in journal articles without having to rely too much on in-page zoom and navigation, and to be able to read most books in a 2-up format. It excells at both.

It's also a remarkably effective Android tablet, almost too much so (I'd prefer fewer distractions).

But yeah: the reason that reading on desktops, laptops, and smartphones is such a poor experience has much less to do with digital file formats, and far more to do with displays and devices that are too cumbersome, poorly-sized, or poorly-suited to reading.

I could still see some improvements. I've yet to find a device that has good library manangement on the device itself. Many have far too little storage (the reMarkable inexplicably has only 16 GB total storage, most of that is utilised by the OS itself). I'd consider 128 GB a minimum and would be far more comforatable with a 512 GB -- 1 TB storage (books plus podcast audio downloads). Costs are low and falling.

My other principle concern is that many ebooks are very poorly designed, typeset, and structured for digital devices. This starts with filenames themselves, metadata, tables of contents, typography (I vastly prefer serif to sans serif fonts), and more. It's often much more aesthetically pleasing to read a scan of an older book than a direct-to-digital publication (though of course there are numerous exceptions in both cases).

The trick for me to like e-readers was threefold:

a) the new ~300 dpi eink screens

b) never, ever connecting it to any network for any reason ever

c) a microSD card slot that i can put a huge library of pirated books onto.

No distractions, no notifications, no web, no apps, no phone home, no update treadmill. Just books.

Which one did you go with that meets all of those points?

Likebook Mars. It's android and has wifi, just don't ever connect it to network.

I got the same. But I gave it local network access so it could syncthing my files for me. I should have locked it out of LAN access but the cat is out of this bag.

+1 Although I would like SFTP support to avoid moving the SD card.

If you connect it to the network even once, it can phone home and do all manner of Android spyware update bullshit. Popping out the card a few times per year is no biggie, I have a card reader permanently connected to my iMac anyway.

Seems like for this and maybe a few other products, it might be useful to set up a local wifi network that doesn't connect to the internet so you could at least use tools like ssh or even operate an iot home network without worrying about phoning home.

OK but can you list the actual models that fullfill these requirements for your fellow avid readers? This features will sell me and others too!

I've been using an iPad Mini for the last few years, for my reading. I have about 400 books on it.

I needed to get used to it. Now that I am used to it, I actually have difficulty with paper books.

My wife is the opposite. She doesn't want to use an eReader.

The battery life of a Kindle is what draws me there, along with the lack of distractions. The screen looks like paper and has no glare like an iPad Mini does. If I were reading reference manuals with either color or a lot of diagrams, though, the iPad would be preferred.

Either way, the best feature of eReaders is that you don't need a bookmark and you can carry a lot of books with you. It's perfect for traveling.

> has no glare like an iPad Mini does

Unless you use a PaperLike screen protector. I don't like glossy screens, so I get matte protectors for all my i-devices (except the Watch).

I didn't even know that these were available. I'll have to check them out. Thanks!

My wife is a big reader and used to be pretty deep into the Barnes and Noble Nook ecosystem, but we found the Nook hardware to be pretty lacking.. loading a book onto a GlowLight was not a good experience, and that's from their shop directly, not even side loading.

After her 2nd GlowLight stopped working reliably I gave her my iPad Mini 4 that I wasn't using very much. She proceeded to kill its battery in about two years after countless books.. (it was already a couple years old) and was happy to be able to read Kindle now.

Apple gave us about $100 for it towards a Mini 5, she still seems happy with it. It's the perfect size for purse duty. I think the True Tone display helps with eye strain a little.

I read on an iPad Pro a decent amount but nowhere near as much as her.

I really like e-ink, but the ability to fiddle with page corners & edges in the iOS Books app means it's the only way I actually get ebooks read. Mini's perfect for fiction, 12.9" pro's amazing for PDFs (say, textbooks) or other work that needs large pages (comics, too—it's close enough to the size of a two-page comic spread, in landscape mode, to be entirely readable that way, at least until my eyesight gets even worse)

First time I thought reading books on an iPad was actually not bad is when they added true tone. It's been a while I think but it's just much easier on the eyes.

I wish Amazon would offer e-readers with larger screens again. Better yet, it would be nice to have a large Amazon tablet with an e-reader where I can surf the web. Soon I won't have a choice, but to buy a Boox

I stopped using readers after the open ereader maker alaratek stopped making them. The brands left are twice the cost and do not support as many formats.

If anyone knows of a good non-amazon, kobo brand is please share.

I have an Onyx Boox Note Pro that I have had for about two years now. Not cheap (was $500 when I purchased it) but well worth it for me, given how much time I use it and how much space it saves.

I only use it for reading, so I can't attest to its writing capabilities. Or all the other crap that it technically supports, as it is an Android device.

Once you make peace with not being able to have bookshelf full of paper books that, books, which, if you are honest with yourself, you:

- will only read once

- simply want to keep to fill up the bookshelf to let other people know that you read a lot

- have no intention of lending to people

- have no people who could / would inherit them

then it's nice to not have so much clutter and convenience to read from one device and at night.

Yes, the DRM issue sucks for the Kindle, but, again, when you don't tend to re-read books or lend them then it's not that noticeable an issue.

I really like the Kindle Oasis for things that can be read sequentially and where the formatting doesn't matter (e.g. plain text) but as soon as you fall off those rails it turns into a nightmare. You can't flick through the pages easily, draw on it, jump back and forth easily, and all manner of natural things you can do with the physical book.. so they'll never go away, IMHO.

If you’re looking for a good source of ebooks at sensible prices and without DRM, check out Baen’s web store. Their prices went up quite a bit a few years ago because of some marketing deal, but they’re still pretty good, they’re still DRM free, and they often have a “webscription” of the month with a collection of books at a fantastic price.

As someone who tried e-readers back around the original Kindle launched, I ended up just giving it to my grandmother because it wasn't as satisfying to read as an actual book.

Recently however I gave them another shot (specifically the Onyx Boox Nova) because I started trying to refresh my Japanese and reading manga was easier than other forms of media (lots of pictures rarely wall of texts). The problem is buying manga from Japan and shipping it across the world was a pain and after reading on my tiny phone and that really straining my eyes, I decided to invest in an e-ink tablet. (Partially to use kaku on it but that did not work, however the ability to switch to a dictionary is nice).

I also used kobo similar to the author for my app because apparently their DRM was the easiest to break out of everyone which means if they go down at least I still keep my e-books.

All I want is an e-Reader with USB-C. I refuse to buy any device which require me to use another charging cable.

The new Paperwhite coming in october has USB-C

Onyx boox note air is USB-C.

Thanks. Will check it out.

I bought a Kindle in 2012 but I think I'm finally done with it. I don't have any problem with the device or the format, I'm just tired of all the typos in ebooks.

Yes, printed books have the occasional typo, but they seem much more prevalent in ebooks. I think there are just a lot of books out there for which the only electronic copy is an optical scan, and as good as OCR is, the process still introduces errors.

I feel ripped off when I come across a typo an ebook that's not in the printed version. It already feels like a stripped down version of the product—I'm only getting the text, not the material assets of a real life book—and now I discover it's an inferior version of the text to boot? No thanks.

I've almost exclusively switched over to a Kindle now as well (occasionally get physical books that aren't available electronically), and the one experience/workflow I haven't been able to re-create with the Kindle is very easily going back a few pages (or maybe more) for things like timelines in novels (i.e. with historical dates per chapter or something) to re-gain context.

With a physical book, you just stick a finger between the pages of where you are, and start going back pages until you find what you're looking for, then switch back. With the Kindle, the best I've found is using bookmarks, which works to a degree, but isn't as easy...

I bought a phone sized ereader and it has really amped up how much I can read. Now when I have a moment to spare I can decide to pull out my phone or my ereader and after a certain time in the afternoon I plug in my phone and leave it so I only consume books or saved items in pocket.

My device of choice was the Inkpalm 5. Some setup instructions :https://github.com/philips/inkpalm-5-adb-english

I also highly recommend readwise.io: a super polished service for collating and reviewing highlights from books.

Why Inkpalm rather than a Hisense or Kingrow eInk phone? It seems to amount to more or less the same thing, running Android, so I'm assuming some hardware differences?

I didn't know about kingrow.

And the Hisense Touch was released after I bought the inkpalm. It looks like a great device though!

Lol I like your unvarnished criticism embedded in encomia. But I share it...as soon as I started thinking...I can use it in the bathtub...and with my OverDrive account?? I want one. I started reading real books much more frequently this year (my #1 childhood pastime) after yearssss of basically only "reading" audiobooks besides books for grad school. So maybe I want one. Hardware experience sounds annoying AF, but that's nothing a shitty/lazy Linux user can't handle, right? And as others have said...a natural deterrent from doing anything but reading, woot.

It should be noted, for the author of the article, that Libby works really well with the Kobo reader. So, for instance, I will use Libby on my Android device (signed into my overdrive account), search and borrow books through there. Then, on my Kobo, I only need to press sync for the books to appear. Much better than using the Kobo to search for books.

I should also point out that signing into Libby and Kobo is somewhat annoying. You need to sign in to both using your overdrive in some specific way. I found the answer in some Reddit thread after some Google searching.

As reference data I find e-readers are hard to beat. I've got my entire library of No Starch books on my iPad and it beats trying to find some obscure command on the Internet. It also wins when I'm "off grid" and don't have access to the Internet. I also use a ReMarkable 2 with PDFs of data sheets for reference material as well. When doing embedded programming its like having a third screen dedicated to holding the page in the datasheet that describes all of the register bits.

E-readers and books both have their strengths, but these days I read 95% on my Kindle. Things I like: - instant look up of words and vocabulary builder - highlights and notes - I would find it very onerous to keep a paper notebook to the same level of detail (I know some do - kudos) - search across books. For history books this is brilliant: 'Hmm La Mettrie, rings a bell ... oh yeah him'. Like having your own mini, super high quality wikipedia (or indeed www)

As well as usual gubbins about convenience etc.

I'm thinking I'd much prefer a non-internet connected ebook reader. Something that might have wifi but only for transferring books. The problem with a reader that's essentially an android device is that it's much too easy to become distracted as you go off to look up something that's come up in the text - and then an hour later get back to actually reading the book.

That’s exactly how I use my kindle. Keeping the wifi off saves battery life and the web browser is terrible and the eink screen isn’t color so it’s not like you want to do web things anyway.

I share the mixed feelings about e-readers. It would appear these mixed feelings predate even the invention of e-readers, as humorously presented in this (politically incorrect) short story "The Holmes Ginsbook Device" by Isaac Asimov in 1968.

http://sfwritersworkshop.org/node/1232

Is it really true that eReaders are easier on the eyes than comparable displays? (It seems true to me, anecdotally, but I'm curious if this is just a marketing campaign playing tricks on me).

The PPI of eReaders don't seem that much higher than comparable high quality phones/tablets. Is there a theoretical explanation for why eReaders could be better for eye health?

The main difference is they use e-paper displays which reflect light rather than emit it. Less eye strain due to less difference in amplitude to ambient light.

At least in the case of the new ereader amazon just released, some of them include LED backlighting.

There are no e-ink devices with backlights. It doesn’t make sense for the technology, which is purely reflective.

There are plenty of e-ink devices (like Kindles) that have frontlights. Even better are the ones that adjust frontlights based on ambient room lighting. Ambient light adjustment (and lighting warmth adjustment) is what the new Kindle Paperwhite has.

LED backlights have been available in ereaders from Amazon, Kobo, and others for a while now. The first kindle paperwhite with LED backlights came out in 2012.

So in some sense do eReaders with backlights defeat the whole purpose (i.e. increase eye strain back to normal display levels)?

I like reading, but I've found audiobooks really good and tend to get through more books these days through listening as I can consume it in situations where I couldn't read (like walking). Also, quite a lot are read by their authors which often gives it a nice quality (even if you do listen to it at fast speeds).

I read technical books on the e-reader. It's annoying as the diagrams are not as good, but so much nicer for that sort of thing. I still buy a lot of general reading books from bookshops though. Partially because I like paper books, but also because I like bookshops and find they improve the areas where they are found.

The only e-reader I've had is an old Kindle Paperwhite I got secondhand. It's dumb enough to not get in my way and lets me transfer all my various pdfs and mobi files from my PC via cable. It's due for replacement but I have zero trust that newer models would let me use the thing how I want.

I find my iPad bigger screen works better with PDFs for technical books. And if I want the Kindle /e-reader feel, I can just map accessibility greyscale shortcut. Reduction of colors actually makes a huge difference for eyestrain problem for me.

i listen to audiobooks. come to think of it, i have been doing that for the last decade and i recently found out that i do not sleep well if i do not have some book speak to me while i fall asleep.

How do you remember where you left off?

Not OP but Librivox has a bunch of Lovecraft, Howard, HG Wells, Mark Twain, etc that I use. I often listen to books that I've listened to before, or that I don't really care about.

I turn it down low enough that I can barely hear it anyway; just enough to provide a mild distraction. Now I can fall asleep in less than ten minutes like clockwork.

cool. the mild distraction is what i am after and as i said in the other comment, i usually fall asleep within 3-4 minutes. then there are books that i aggressively listen to and can take up to a few hours for me to sleep but i like it even then

the audible app has a sleep timer you can set that will turn it off after a specified period of time. 15 mins is usually enough for me.

voice. android app. does what i want. auto sleep timer bookmarks

what kind of audiobooks you enjoy for that purpose?

i like to listen to detective fiction, louise penny, henning mankell, my favorites, then books like jusse adler olsen and lars kepler, johnathan kellerman series also.

what i do is, i put on the audiobook on play with a 10 minute timer. voice app on android has a shake to play again. so if i like the book, i can finish the 10 minutes and i shake to start playing again. right untill i fall asleep. that way the next morning i have to go back within the last 10 minutes to the point i can no longer remember what was said. that is where i continue

I resonate with the author preferring to read an e-reader than a book when their mind is more amped up. Why is it easier to read from a mutable screen than paper when I'm frazzled?

Screens wind you up, pages wind you down. I've ran this experiment on myself plenty of times. If I'm scrolling on the internet and reading articles there, I can be up almost indefinitely without getting tired. The mind keeps going with the screen. If I sit in the exact same chair at the exact same time of day with the exact same amount of rest the day before, and get into a book, I might last 13 pages before I nod off.

If you like to read to help get tired for bed, I would think a book is the best method. Certainly works that way for me. I can't even read in the middle of the day because it makes me too drowsy and sometimes knocks me out entirely, then I lose like two hours before I awake from that unintentional nap.

In my case, because the typography (except for some very obnoxious excceptions) is always the same. Same font, same font size, same margins, just different text. A book cannot distract me anymore through mediocre or awesome typography -- the text is on its own.

I've had a Kobo Glo HD for the past 5 years or so and it's been a very functional device. This looks like a compelling upgrade (I like that it's waterproof).

I'd like them more if they'd implement any of the UI suggestions I send them, but no response from any of the e-reader companies.

Grump grump grump :-)

I buy print books for those I value and probably want to read again or share with others; otherwise it’s e-reading (especially tech/learning books).

E-readers can easily be converted into Crypto wallets and used by using steganography to hide data within pdfs.

Fun thing to consider.

I recommend a Kindle and using the computer program Calibre to put free books onto it.

The best thing with Kobo is the Pocket integration

I definitely understand where the author is coming from, with his stance on not liking ereaders until now. I got my first Kindle back in 2009 or so, and it took me a couple of years to truly convince myself to use it instead of paper books the majority of the time. It really took going to college a couple of years later to push me all the way into ereading, where I discovered that lugging books around for all of my classes was a huge pain and I didn't want to deal with moving pleasure reading books in and out of dorms every few months. Well, that and public domain/pirated books -- it's a very cheap way to entertain yourself when you don't have much money.

I got a Boox e-reader with a 7.8" hiDPI screen earlier this year (my old Kindle was 6"), and let me tell you, it's been transformative. My biggest nitpick with the old kindle was the screen: it was a little smaller than the average paperback book page, which meant that I was constantly turning pages to read anything of significant length. With a 7.8" screen, ebook pages are almost precisely the same size as pages in a traditional hardcover book. So if you're used to that kind of reading experience, it's an easy transition. Oh, and the screen is also big enough and high-res enough to display tables and images at full size, without awkward multi-line clipping. So you can actually experience books as they were meant, instead of dealing with issues in anything that isn't just a stream of text.

I've also really enjoyed using Android (albeit in a modified form) so I can use torrent clients, FireFox, an email client, an Airdrop knockoff, and an RSS feed reader to get content onto my device. You'd think it would be distracting to have all of that at your fingertips, but the limitations of e-ink really rein in the desire to mindlessly browse HN and reddit.

And the WACOM layer that's integrated into the display is truly awesome to use for notetaking, drawing, and even keeping score when I play card games. I've basically moved all of my notetaking over to my ereader. And I don't even have to charge the pen.

One big issue, though? There are a million cases out there for Kobo and Kindle devices, but nobody makes them for Boox devices besides... Boox. But if you're willing to DIY a bit, it turns out that the Nova 3 is almost the same dimensions as the iPad Mini 4/5... so just buy a case for that, and if it's a snug-fitting case, make a couple of cuts in the case to let it stretch over the ereader, cut out a hole for the power button, and you're golden.

Disclaimer, though: Onyx/Boox, the Chinese company that makes my Nova 3 device, is in flagrant violation of GPL with their Android modifications for their ereaders. So you should be aware of that before you decide to buy one -- if you're cognizant of that kind of thing, I assume you don't want to give them money. I figured that it's at least better than giving money to Jeff Bezos and locking myself into another walled garden (that can't even read epub files!). YMMV.

My problem with e-readers is that they don't look that good when most of your reading is scanned books, e.g. from archive.org But if one only reads common e-books, they seem way better than a tablet.

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