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$50 Fire Tablet With High-capacity SDXC Slot Doesn't See E-books On the SD Card

Posted by Soulskill on from the things-that-make-you-go-hmmm dept.

Robotech_Master writes: For all that the $50 Fire tablet has a 128 GB capable SDXC card slot that outclasses every other tablet in its price range, and it evolved out of Amazon's flagship e-book reader, it strangely lacks the ability to index e-books on that card. This seems like a strange oversight, given that every other media app on the tablet uses that card for downloading and storage, and its 5 GB usable internal memory isn't a lot for people who have a large library of picture-heavy e-books—especially if they want to install other apps, too.

12 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. what's the problem? by farble1670 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    all of your ebooks will be stored in amazon's cloud. why would they be on the SD card?

    1. Re:what's the problem? by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm sure this is Amazon's response, that you don't need all the extra storage because it's all in the cloud, to be retrieved whenever.

      I know some people feel like they have to have their entire library on the physical device, but really? If there are 5GB of system memory, and say half of it you want to reserve for ebooks, you've still got massive amounts of space. 90% or so of unillustrated ePub books are going to be less than 5MB in size.

      I know, someone will come along and say "But I keep 5,000 picture books on my reader for my kids, and I want them all on the device at once". Well, that's not really a typical use case.

    2. Re:what's the problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about, "I have hundreds of books that I didn't purchase through Amazon, and therefore aren't in the Amazon cloud."

    3. Re:what's the problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can load books not purchased through Amazon into your Kindle and they are also stored in the Amazon cloud.

    4. Re:what's the problem? by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actual numbers indicate that typical usage (not cherry-picked, theoretical 'typical' usage) puts average storage use at ~7GB on the iPhone, meaning that roughly half of people use roughly half or less of the available space on a 16GB model, but people still claim that having the entry-level iPhone start with 16GB is a huge error.

      Could it be that people are forced to modify their habits because of the limited storage space?
      I like to store my blu ray rips on my phone. If I had a phone that didn't have external storage, I wouldn't be able to, and the storage usage on that phone would be really low.
      Change blu ray rips to videos of any sort, music, apps, photos, whatever. People won't keep in on their device if they feel restricted by the storage space.

      I'm not going to keep SOME of my shit on my phone and ALL of it somewhere else. I'm going to keep ALL of it on my phone or NONE of it on my phone (and all of it somewhere else).
      The fact that lots of people use 50% instead of 100% doesn't mean they don't need more space, it may mean that they don't have enough space to do what they want so they don't do it.

    5. Re:what's the problem? by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Funny

      How about, "I have hundreds of books that I didn't purchase through Amazon, and therefore aren't in the Amazon cloud."

      An Amazon drone strike is on its way to your location as we speak.

    6. Re: what's the problem? by Robotech_Master · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can open it, yes. But unlike for any book that is indexed, such as the books on an e-ink Kindle, it loses your place in a manually opened book from the SD card as soon as you close it. This eliminates one of the biggest advantages of an e-reader over paper--the ability to pick it up right where you left off without needing a bookmark.

      --
      Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
  2. Re:ebooks or kindle books? by amiga3D · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about when you don't have internet access?

  3. Obvious reason... by ilsaloving · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because then it would be trivial for you to also read books that you *didn't* get from Amazon. And we can't have that, now can we?

  4. Comic collector gripes about first world problems by Roarkk · · Score: 4, Funny

    Next stories: "Etch-a-sketch has poor error correction, limited pixel count" "Kindle Paperwhite web browsing experience sub-par, no Angry Birds"

  5. Re:ebooks or kindle books? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can easily have 10-100 books on your fire

    This is one of the few things ebooks will never capture. Deleting ebooks will never match the pleasure of burning heretic literature.

  6. Kobo Glo + calibre by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I converted all my ebooks to epub using Calibre and really like the Kobo Glo for reading.