Good to bad
Kindle and the kindle experience has deteriorated a lot in the last 15 years.
Amazon now uses it to push ads and suggested books. I fired up my old Kindle 3, and it is a better book reading experience.
Owners of Amazon's Kindle e-reader devices looking for something new to read may have had to pick up an actual book – the old-school kind, made of dead trees – for a day or so this week, as their devices would not download content. User complaints emerged on July 3, and reports suggest Amazon responded with a suggestion that …
when I bought my Kindle last year, I got a tenner off for agreeing to them putting an advert in the form of a book title on the screen when its off. That I immediately swipe to unlock the screen giving it no more a glance than if it was in the window of a bookshop seems to have done neither of us any harm.
Not had any ads here. Only two changes are that books don't seem to download until you tap them and (probably a fault with my Kindle) tapping to turn a page can be unresponsive for a while.
Otherwise it continues to be an excellent experience.
I'm currently enjoying Kindle Unlimited. Good value for money (I get through two or three books a week).
In my case the page turn physical buttons always work it's just the forward screen tapping that doesn't. A longer press and hold or 'exasperated prodding' will often wake the forward page turning back up and it'll jump several pages after which it's fine.
It has the feel of a software issue rather than a physical one. Something to do with coming out of sleep.
I have about 400 books still to read stored on the Kindle itself, I suspect they'll have it fixed by the time I'm through those :).
My only worry would be their web reader, because I have a new Volvo EV (not my choice, idiotic car company policy) and although it runs Car Android to ensure every erg of my life is sent to Google (no, it doesn't have my name but given that it runs the whole platform I'm pretty sure that one of the mandatory extra logins has already provided it - I'm in a country where the mandatory "I'm going to tell on everything you do" phone SIM requires ID), the one and only app it does not offer which you really, really need when charging is the Kindle app because they want you to use Youtube to sell more advertising.
So I installed Vivaldi and use the web reader for when I forget my Kindle.
My thoughts exactly. Unlike other media such as videos you don't stream books. You download them and then take anything from days to weeks to read them. They're remarkably small files as well -- "War and Peace", thought to be the standard bearer for really long novels, is only a bit over three megabytes with most books clocking in at under a megabyte.
Agreed. Just wish the Kindle was so horrible and irrelevant. Then I could hate a product from a hate-able company.
But the Kindle is very, very useful and easy on the eyes. Works at night in pitch black (can your dead-tree book do that?) with built in back light. After suffering a career in IT and 10cm think reference or text books, the Kindle has resparked my joy in reading. Even when studying at The OU, could load my textbooks on and study on the plane.
Not I feel torn, that I have a great product from a horrible company in my hands.
Calibre and Gutenberg do ensure that money going to AMZN is minimal to non-existent.
My feeling entirely. Kobo here, using EPUB only via Calibre.
Plus, if I already own a paper copy of a book, I have no qualms either grabbing a scanned copy, or in many cases scanning it myself (though I don't think I have anything electric that I don't have in paper, the possibility of course exists.) A number of published author friends have stated that they're happy with that approach.
You’ve reminded me of the old joke that the most popular themes for literature are: religion, the aristocracy, sex, and crime-solving.
…On which basis, runs the joke, the ideal, guaranteed-blockbuster-sales first sentence for a novel would be:
“ ‘Hell!’ said the Duchess, ‘I’m pregnant. Whodunnit?’ ”
I do the same with my Kobo. The software on Kindle is very poor compared with Kobo or PocketBooks but people seem to prefer convenience over quality or reliability all the time. I buy my ebooks from a reputable store, strip DRM if there is any, and put them in Calibre. This lets me edit them to fix the errors they invariably contain and remove the increasing number of ads for other books. If I come across typos, I fix them and inform the publishers. Fortunately, most German books are being issued without DRM: I suspect the costs and hassle aren't worth the potential lost sales. People will "lend" friends and family books like they like, just as they always have done. In my experience, however, this leads to more book sales if people get hooked on authors, series, topics.
If you buy your books direct from Kobo then you get all the same conveniences as Amazon/Kindle (ie, download direct to your reader without needing a computer), whilst not giving your money to Jeff. They also sell books from some publishers (eg Tor) as a DRM free epub.
Or I suppose you could buy your books from Amazon, and deDRM them with Calibre if you really wanted. (My first reader was a Kindle, so I did have a bunch of books in Amazon's ecosystem which I had to download and crack in order to switch to Kobo)
Hmmm... Amazon has its quirks.
A client rang me one day to say all her books had been wiped. Turned out that she went on holiday abroad, couldn't read the book she wanted (a country licensing issue, I believe), but then was able to buy it by logging in to amazon.com, rather than .co.uk. I got her to visit .co.uk and hey presto, everything came back, except the book she'd bought on .com.
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