Slashdot Mirror
Is Amazon Harming the E-reader Category? (teleread.com)
An anonymous reader sends a story from TeleRead which argues that Amazon doing harm to the e-reader category of devices it helped create. The company has been aggressively pushing adoption of its Kindle Fire brand of tablets, dropping the price for the cheapest model down to $50. Compare that to the basic version of the e-ink Kindle: $80 if you don't want it cluttered with "special offers." If you care enough about an e-ink screen, you might still buy it, but most of those people probably already have e-readers. The general populace, when looking at the tablet's color screen, app ecosystem, and access to forms of entertainment beyond books, will probably consider the tablet a no-brainer.
This is in Amazon's best interest; if you buy an e-reader, you're only going to be buying books for it. If you buy a tablet, they can sell you videos and software, too. Amazon has succeeded in pushing several competing e-readers out of the market. They also refuse to experiment or innovate on the design; there have been no significant changes since the Paperwhite's backlighting technology in 2012. Given that ebook sales are no longer growing explosively, this could be a sign that the e-reader category of devices is stagnating.
This is in Amazon's best interest; if you buy an e-reader, you're only going to be buying books for it. If you buy a tablet, they can sell you videos and software, too. Amazon has succeeded in pushing several competing e-readers out of the market. They also refuse to experiment or innovate on the design; there have been no significant changes since the Paperwhite's backlighting technology in 2012. Given that ebook sales are no longer growing explosively, this could be a sign that the e-reader category of devices is stagnating.
The dedicated ebook reader is for people who - you guessed it - read books, so the economies of scale and marketing opportunities will always be smaller. My prediction (hope, really) is that in the next few years someone will have a Kickstarter ebook reader that makes the Kindle ebook reader look like a child's toy. Personally, I don't like touchscreen devices that require reflected light, as I tend to pay too much attention to the smudges, so I haven't been interested in upgrading from my ancient, but 'works fine, lasts long time' Kindle 3.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I've never been fond of e-readers. I like the feel of the book in my hand. I've tried a few (starting with the Sony way-back-when) and moved to a kindle. I ended up still buying paper-books.
Maybe it's my age (upper 40's), maybe it's nostalgia or maybe it's something else entirely but I ENJOY it more when I'm really flipping pages.
My kids on the other hand have no trouble. My son likes paper books more but has no issue reading from his kindle-fire.
Note: I've over 3000 books dating from the 1930s to present. And that's after donating about 1000 to the local book-bank for hospitals. Oh how I miss hitting the many used book shops that used to exist.
While Amazon is on the right track, in that the device should be a very inexpensive commodity. But the fact the Amazon owns the content I "purchase", keeps me from ever buying in. On top of this, eBooks are way overpriced. I've wondered if both these issues could be solved by selling content on a per-device basis instead of per-user. As long as the devices have long lifetimes (40+ years), then it seems a reasonable business model. Content once installed on a device would be permanent and not transferable to any other device, in return the content could be (I estimate) a quarter the current costs.
Wait, was there supposed to be discussion on this? Ok...
Welcome to every niche product, ever. It's like asking if Apple killed the mp3/flac player by making phones. If you're market is 1% or less of the mass-marketed product, you really can't expect to get rock-bottom, high volume pricing. Does it suck? Sure, if you're an aficionado of the niche. For everyone else they just odn't have to pay for two devices.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Amazon recently upgraded the paperwhite Kindle. Amazon recently (well, last year) released a premium $200 version of the Kindle. Amazon recently released a Kid's package for the Kindle.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I love my original Kindle e-ink and the Android 7" tablet I bought later to supplement it.
First up - I'm a programmer, so I read a fair amount. That said, I'm un-employed so I prefer to read on the cheap. Years back I drank the Cool-Aid and bought an e-ink Kindle. I still love it, though I don't use it often, because these days I often need to read web pages.
When I "buy" a book, I can DL it onto my PC, the e-ink Kindle, my Android tablet (and since I love my mom, her ipad too for some books). That's a pretty good deal. Yeh, it's a hard limit of 5 devices, but that's also a pretty decent limit.
These days I purchase pretty much everything as an e-book, and almost always from Amazon. So yes, I guess it is hurting some people...those bookshops that used to charge me $50-60 USD for a single tech book, which was often out of date and (for many publishers) a pile of steaming and poorly researched shite.
The world changes...and in this case, for the better. I'd like some more competition for Amazon, but I in no way believe it should come from old, outdated bookstores. The future isn't written yet...onwards and upwards.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Almost as stagnant as book technology. Give me a huge break. Show the text. Provide a way to turn pages. The current Kindle is great and does a simple thing well.
RM
I am also in my 40s and have a huge library of books (including a roomful of books on shelves from my Ph.D. years). And at this point, I can't *stand* paper books. They're heavy, have slow page turns, are not searchable, can only be carried in small numbers, are difficult to use (no changeable font, low contrast, drop it and you've lost your page), take FOREVER to find (Not at the bookstore? And let's face it, what's at the bookstore any longer? Then you'll have to wait days for the book to arrive in the mail, no impulse buying/reading), use up space in your house, and so on.
I am basically ebooks only these days. I buy and read probably 3-6 ebooks a week. If it's not available electronically? I've probably bought four paper books over the past year, if that. I have to really, really want it to put up with paper and the inconveniences of buying/reading paper.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I bought a cheap Kindle Fire HD ($189) on sale a little over a year ago, and paid extra ($15) to get rid of the ads. I use it to mostly to surf the web, which I do from a sideloaded copy of Firefox. As for ebooks: I buy directly from O'Reilly's website. O'Reilly's books are DRM-free and available in many formats, including the Kindle's preferred .mobi format, and in O'Reilly's case I'd rather the money go straight to the publisher without the middleman. I'll grab a freebie title from Amazon now and then when they're offered. Otherwise, I buy digital music from Amazon occasionally, but having their branded tablet hasn't changed my buying habits at all. For me, they just subsidized my tablet back when 10" tablets were all $400 and up.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
It's not "cluttered" with special offers. It shows you a full screen ad before you unlock it, and it shows you small banner at the bottom of your home screen. They aren't obtrusive in any way. When you're reading, they're not there. LCD screens are cheaper than e-ink because they are produced in such higher quantities.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
The market for ereaders is saturated. So Amazon has to try something else. Luckily they still sell normal Kindles.
And about the buttons: I have the last buttoned Kindle and I was sad to see it go. But I guess I can get used to a touch screen.
What about colored e-ink? Is that just around the corner like it was in 2011, or is there some progress there?
-- Cheers!
Personally, I have no interest whatsoever in buying a Fire tablet, but I love my Paperwhite. TFA only makes sense if the market segments for tablets and e-readers overlap substantially. Maybe they do, but it's not necessarily so.
I've owned a couple kindle fires and a few kindles. At this point my remaining kindle fire is a game machine for my daughter, my wife has a paperwhite, and I have a voyage. I specifically opted for the e-reader experience because i wanted a standalone reading device with a backlit screen and e-ink. I read on my ipad for a long time and it just isn't as comfortable on the eyes.
Point being: People will buy what they want based on their personal taste and needs/desires. What Amazon did isn't "hurting" their e-reader sales. It's "helping" them appeal to more customers and deliver specifically what people want. In short: everyone wins.
Actually, yes. e-readers are limited functionality devices that take up the same amount of space as a tablet that can serve as a reader, and much more. Unless the e-reader offers something unique (e-ink...) that the tablet cannot (an e-ink tablet would be pretty crippled in the color display space, at least, commercially available e-ink as I have known about it thus far.)
OTOH, if the tablet can't do what the user needs -- for example, present a readable page in full sunlight -- then the tablet isn't impinging on a putative e-reader's earned-by-actual-capabilities market share, is it?
And if something can't survive in the market, it's now a question of do we have to have it? Because if it can't survive on its own, and we don't have to have what it offers, then who is going to step up and make the things? It becomes a buggy whip. Rightfully so.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...Amazon's ecosystem. Both the tablet and the eink based Amazon readers are geared to you buying the content from them.
What the ebook world needs is a universal, non-intrusive, DRM system (if such a thing can actually exist) or no DRM. Then we'd had the digital audio situation in which most stores just sold you mp3 or other non-DRM'd format and thus you can choose the device where you consume that media.
There're some nice ereaders outside of the Kindle but they're harmed by the shortage of legal content for them. And that's a pity because they give you options the Kindle doesn't like: Exceptional PDF support, PDF scribbling and annotating, large screens, Android OS, etc.
In particular, having an eink device that runs Android is actually pretty useful, because, while you're not going to be playing videos o games on it, you can easily use it to read email, webpages or ebooks and in the software of your choice.
It really is a shame. Eink, for textual media, is superior in many ways to LCD. Before Amazon released the Kindle Fire there was rumor of them developing a color eInk reader. Amazon was the driving force behind eInk screen development. I am not saying that the eInk Kindle was open. But, now Amazon is just another multi-media pusher trying to get you to lock in to their bastardized Android tablet.
Even with the super cheap kindle fire I got a Kindle reader for my kid. I don't want it to do apps or video or anything. Only books.
I don't see why we should care about the "e-reader" market; the market for e-books themselves is far more important. The sales are still growing, if not as quickly as they were.
(Also, despite all the ribbing Amazon gets for them, the "Special Offers" aren't the least bit intrusive. They appear on the "sleep" screen and about the bottom 1/3" of the Home screen. They are not visible when you are actually reading, which is what most people spend the most time doing.)
I tend to read a book and then lend it to a friend. I find this almost impossible with DRM'ed ebooks. So much easier with paper.
Good luck lending those ebooks to a friend, or reading them by candle-light after a week-long power outage.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I know what you mean, but at the same time I have a hard time being angry with Amazon because they serve me so well.
Like the MP3 player, an e-ink device is a niche application and will always exist, even when other devices can integrate other functions for the masses.
I'm a long time e-reader starting with the the PC, then the Palm Pilot, the Sony E-reader, Amazon Kindle and various phones. I like paper books for reading where a reader could get damaged, Kindle paper whites for reading novels and tablets for reading larger sized books with color illustrations. Generally if the size of the paper book is the size of a magazine or larger, It is better to have the larger book as I find the size reduction to a tablet a limitation. Also a lot of older books have not been put into E-reader format, and some have just been clumsily converted as to make them useless. So all of them have areas where they excel. Since Amazon has their kindle app on all major devices, it is not hurting the category. B&N has a similar strategy. Apple has its own too. None of these are "hurting" the Ebook/ereader category they should support some kind of DRM where a package like Calibre could convert to each format with the DRM so that the book could be read on any major app.
5) Color e-Ink has been around for a looong time but it's still not in any of the mainstream e-book readers. Why? I don't care that it's not as good as LCD, it's not supposed to be. But color does improve the experience when reading books with technical diagrams or illustrations.
I think the resolution on Color E-ink is still not good enough for prime time, and due to that the color range is also very limited. I agree it would be nice. One of the new Pebble smartwatches has a color E-Ink screen, and if you look at the pictures , shapes have jagged edges. Not very impressive.
if you buy an e-reader, you're only going to be buying books for it. If you buy a tablet, they can sell you videos and software, too.
Which is exactly why I got a Kindle instead of a Kindle Fire. I knew I'd never use it to read if I got the Fire.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I'd like a tablet with an e-ink screen in addition to the color display. My Fire HDX is excellent for watching movies and TV when away from home via Netflix and Plex, but e-ink is a lot more readable. A tablet with an e-ink display cover would be cool. The e-ink could display message notifications in addition to being a reading surface. It looks like a lot of people have been working on this concept, and a phone was released with an e-ink back, but it doesn't seem to be taking off. I guess most people are probably fine reading from a regular tablet.
Non e-ink tablets tend to be glossy.
That may be good in moderate light to see movies, but is horrible to read.
And forget at sunshine.
I have an e-Ink Kindle, but that's been sitting in a desk drawer for the past 9 months as I've switched over to using a Nexus 7 tablet for reading since a tablet can do much more.
I don't read (even books) in bright sunlight, so that aspect of the e-Ink doesn't matter to me, the tablet works fine for everywhere I use it: at home in the dark, in the train, in the office. And if I want to switch gears and send an email, read an IM or browse the web, I don't need to switch to a different device.
I have a first generation Kindle and it still works great. I also have a first generation Kindle Paperwhite and it also works great.
It's hard to imagine either of the devices ever breaking down, especially the Paperwhite. I think the reason nobody buys them anymore is because of their long operating life, and the lack of a compelling reason to upgrade.
Amazon should have made them flimsier I suppose.
The first Nook reversed this and had a tiny color screen at the bottom to go with the main e-ink reading surface. All your navigation used the color screen, it could show thumbnails of covers, etc.
They dropped it after one iteration though. I guess it wasn't very popular.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
I want an E-Ink reader. I have tablets available (don't use them), and I have my phone which is what I do use. The biggest reason I don't have an E-Ink reader is the software. Kindle sucks, Nook doesn't even have E-Ink anymore, Kobo... I've heard lots of negative about their hardware, mostly short lifespan so I've never even checked out the software.
Find an E-Ink reader that can run FBReader and I'll jump on it.
Your assessment is right on the money. I do think that e-Ink reader absolutely can survive in the market, though the market landscape will likely change over time. Amazon has a corner on the market for eReaders right now, but mostly because they're selling them cheaply and hoping to sell content. If that stops being profitable, I don't think it means the death of eReaders, it just means that those of us who love the experience of reading on an e-ink screen will have to pay more for the privilege. I'm a prolific reader, and I love my Kindle but most of my eBooks come from the public library. I also use their "Send to Kindle" feature to read a lot of long-form articles on there. When I do buy books, I first try to find them from a source that will sell them DRM-free. So, of the hundreds of books I've read on Kindles over the years, probably less than a dozen were purchased from Amazon. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I feel way more comfortable spending my money on a tangible thing than on intangible digital content, especially an eBook, which I'll read once and probably never re-visit. So, I get that I'm not really the cash cow they were hoping for when they sold me the device, but I've bought a half-dozen of the devices over the years, for myself and as gifts, and I think I'd have probably paid more for them than I did if given no other choice. I have an 8" tablet as well, but it mostly stays home as a toy, while the Kindle comes with me pretty much everywhere. I think the market is there for these things, they may just need to change their approach.
And if something can't survive in the market, it's now a question of do we have to have it? Because if it can't survive on its own, and we don't have to have what it offers, then who is going to step up and make the things?>
Reality isn't an ideal, theoretical market where products compete on their own merits. Success is not driven by the products. It is driven by the ability to keep competitors off the market, e.g. by subsidizing your devices to a point where entering the market isn't viable for anyone else.
"have slow page turns"
See there? That's one of the things I LIKE. Slowing things down. I have a quasi-useless super power: I can read ungodly fast. I can down a 300 page book in 15-20 mins if I let myself. But I don't ENJOY it any where near as much. How can I run through an emotional chapter in 10 seconds? Or something humorous? There's no time for reflection. I just 'digest' the material.
Maybe thats it -- I might just naturally start flying through the text on an e-reader.
I've found a quite deeper element to the audiobooks I "read" (and recently re-read having previously read on dead-tree). The narrator dwells on things I would have glossed over, taking time I would not - but it makes passages that much more interesting at times, and culminations of chapters more profound.
Plus you can do it while you're commuting/cooking/shopping - activities where you're otherwise not talking to people, you can now digest a book at the same time (I still can't listen to an audiobook while jogging - just doesn't work... but other monotonous workouts may be spiced up with a book in your ear)
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I switched from a Kindle 3 to a tablet for reading books, largely because my favorite reading location was kind of dark and I got tired of futzing with clip-on lights. But my tablet is heavy and not very easy on the eyes for heavy reading. So I got a Kindle Voyage and it's so much better. Obviously there are lots of things a tablet can do that an e-reader can't, but IMO nothing beats an e-ink reader with an edge-lit screen for reading books.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
I love my kindle. It's one of the original models. I see no compelling reason to upgrade it. It's not like I need a feaster processor or more memory or anything. So if most kindle owners are like me, kindles won't be replaced very rapidly like the more power-hungry tablets. I think there are enough kindle users that the product won't go away -- it just won't have super high-volume sales.
And now that it's proven its worth to me, if I do ever have to replace it, I'll be willing to pay the extra cost over a tablet because I know it'll last for years and years.
Try Twilight on Android - it will dim the screen and tint it red to help alleviate circadian rhythm interruption caused by full spectrum (particularly high end like blue and violet) light.
The best solution is "warm" light (dimmed incandescent or special LED but not CFL or white LED) and dead trees for before bed reading.
The first Nook reversed this and had a tiny color screen at the bottom to go with the main e-ink reading surface. All your navigation used the color screen, it could show thumbnails of covers, etc.
They dropped it after one iteration though. I guess it wasn't very popular.
It's a pain to use. Because ONLY the small strip of color screen was touch-sensitive, the web browser was almost useless and selecting books to read from the e-ink listing meant scrolling a lot. And, of course, the power-saver always switched it off just before you needed it again, but that's hardly a nook thing.
Still, it was a pretty decent reader and it could easily play music while you read if you wanted it to.
Sony was making (they actually pioneered the market) e-ink readers.
They were making money on actual devices.
Then came amazon.
Amazon couldn't care less about making money on hardware, prices go down.
Sony exits the market.
Did we, customers, really benefit from the fact that only major book stores can actually compete, since devices are subsidized?
If you're ok with a smaller form factor, you could get a YotaPhone. Android phone with a 5" AMOLED screen on one side, 4.7" e-Ink screen on the other.
Given the trend in larger and larger screen sizes on phones (which I'm not a fan of but whatever), I wouldn't be surprised if the next iteration of their devices is 5.5" or higher.
www.gaiageek.com
If not, where's the Kindle Reader open-source, like ones for PDF for Windows and other platforms?
I DO like some things in electronic form, 'cause I can store them for future reference. Books aren't just for entertainment, ya know.
I recently purchased one and it's great. I still prefer my Sony Reader for reading on the train and my 8" tablet for PDFs, but then I've only just begun to explore what the Yotaphone can do.
What it already does better than the Sony: it lets me read RSS feeds on e-Ink, and when I stumble upon multi-coloured graphics or photos in an EPUB, I can just flip it over and look at that on the OLED screen. Perfect!
It needs a lot more developers' love, though, because you do need specialized apps for displaying web content. The built in browser (Chrome and Firefox do the same, FWIW) just mirrors websites onto the e-Ink display, which makes them display all grayscale and washed out, just like the browser on the Sony Reader does. I'm still looking for a convenient way to read slashdot comments on e-Ink.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
... an e-ink tablet would be pretty crippled in the color display space, at least, commercially available e-ink as I have known about it thus far
I'm not absolutely certain on the exact specs, but here's an example of an always on color e-paper display in commercial use: https://www.pebble.com/pebble-...
(I can't find a "hardware specs" sheet/page, but this page makes not of the e-paper: https://www.pebble.com/watches)
It's also used for their Pebble Time Steel and Pebble Time.
It's used on a watch face that can display a second hand, so I'm assuming it can do at least 1 refresh a second.
I doubt it'd be able to handle video, but that would be more than capable of handling the majority stuff that people do (slashdot, news sites, wikipedia, image sites, spreadsheets, word processing, data entry, etc).
I'd pay a premium for an android tablet with a decent color e-ink display and google play store (so I know i can get the Kindle, Nook, FBReader, and other standard apps). It may even be enough for me to consider entering Apple's walled garden.
So would I. A considerable premium. I'd even accept considerably less-than-good color, as long as I could tell one thing from another. The battery life benefits alone would make it worth it to me. Reading in sunlight is also something I do, but I never seem to remember to have brought the e-ink Kindle along with me to wherever. So I end up reading in the Kindle app on my Galaxy Note 3 phone, which I like and am 100% comfortable with, except in daylight, where it can do the job, but the battery gets used up in a fraction of the time because of the maxed out brightness setting.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Nooks with eInk are still available (I was in a B&N this week and saw it on the display). It's not what they put up signs advertising, but they def. have the backlit (togglable) eInk screen version.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Nook does still have an E-ink reader, and, IMO, it's the best bang for your buck unless you're already heavily invested in Amazon's proprietary library.
http://nook.barnesandnoble.com...
The specs are very similar to the latest Kindle, except the Nook supports the EPUB open format, while Kindle has their proprietary format of MOBI.
Pebble isn't using e-ink screens in any of their watches. They are using something they call "e-paper screen" which is a misleading marketing term for a type of ultra low power Transflective memory LCD display. The original Pebble used this (calling it "e-paper screen"): http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com/...
Thanks for correcting me. They fooled me. Now I hate them.
Perhaps they "tend" to be, but I've never seen one with a reflection problem myself. My phone (phablet, I guess) isn't noticeably glossy.
My phone (Galaxy Note 3) is just fine to read on in moderate light. So's my iPad. It's a little heavy though, so I almost always use the phone.
I can read in sunshine just fine. I have to turn the brightness on the phone up to max, but when I do, it's perfectly readable. Battery life suffers, though.
I should also mention I read a bit. I read about a novel a day, worst case one every two days. I've had no reading problems worthy of the name on tablet or phone that are display-related. Brightness is fine, contrast is fine, detail / legibility is fine, available font range perfectly satisfactory. Dimming the display at night seems to result in high quality sleep -- not really seeing that problem, though I do not doubt it's a real one for some people.
Got anything else?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I "own" the audiobook. It still appears in my "library" and if the ever re-license it I'll be able to download it again. If I still had the file Audible would authenticate it for me and I could listen to it -- or if I had converted it to some other format I'd still have it. I just can't download it again because THEY can't provide it.
So you own the audiobook but Amazon can't give it to you because of licensing issues? Will all due respect, that doesn't sound like ownership to me. I use Audible every day, and I've never encountered this, but the ramifications longer-term are pretty shitty.
It'd be nice if we had a consumer and citizen oriented society, it looks like if you're not a corporation, you're a 2nd class citizen these days.
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since a tablet can do much more
This is an excellent reason to have a reader specific piece of hardware. I use a first gen. paperwhite. Put aside for the moment that it's smaller, lighter and has a backlight that goes dimmer than most tablets making it better hardware for holding up in the dark for long periods. When I'm reading I DON'T WANT to be notified of the latest spam I just got. I don't need the option of browsing some web site and I certainly don't want to watch a movie or listen to music.
I want to read a book. This is a purpose specific device that is excellent at its job. I own a couple iPads, iPhone 6+ and a Surface. If my paperwhite died this moment I'd go buy another one without hesitation because to me there is no overlap in functionality between my book reader and those other devices.
When you're in the store and looking at that black and white e-ink screen and comparing it to the full color display of a standard tablet, there is only one winner. Add in that your e-ink reader only displays words vs. everything a tablet does and any reasonable person would decide a full tablet is a much better way to go. Should you get the chance, borrow a backlit e-ink reader and try it for one night. You'll find the reader is a completely different device than the tablet and those weaknesses are actually strengths.
since a tablet can do much more
This is an excellent reason to have a reader specific piece of hardware. I use a first gen. paperwhite. Put aside for the moment that it's smaller, lighter and has a backlight that goes dimmer than most tablets making it better hardware for holding up in the dark for long periods. When I'm reading I DON'T WANT to be notified of the latest spam I just got. I don't need the option of browsing some web site and I certainly don't want to watch a movie or listen to music.
I don't see notifications while running the Kindle app unless I go look for them, so I only know an email came in if I want to.
When you're in the store and looking at that black and white e-ink screen and comparing it to the full color display of a standard tablet, there is only one winner. Add in that your e-ink reader only displays words vs. everything a tablet does and any reasonable person would decide a full tablet is a much better way to go. Should you get the chance, borrow a backlit e-ink reader and try it for one night. You'll find the reader is a completely different device than the tablet and those weaknesses are actually strengths.
I have a backlit Kindle (that's the one gathering dust in a drawer) yet still choose to use the tablet.
Erm, ok you win?
my kindle 3g keyboard model is perfect for my sailboat. free connection world wide, weeks of battery life. very good sailors companion. niche i suppose, should buy a backup and put it away somewhere.
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
Are you reading outside in the daylight on your device? If so, you need an e-ink e-reader to see the screen. If you only read inside or in the evening, any regular tablet screen will do.
Amazon is completely aware the market for e-ink is for those who read outside in the day and that is about it. But the market for their Fire line is far larger.
I understand your use case. For me however, e-reader (also Kindle paperwhite) is a clear win on any trip that I take.
If you fly for anything longer than 4 hours apiece then any sort of tablet will be useless, since I won't be able to rely on the battery to get me through the trip. One of the reasons, ironically, will be because it will be a tablet. I will inevitably want to fire up a game a sometime and that will drain the battery.
Also, if you go on a vacation and don't want to be bothered with a need to charge it as well as being able to read on the beach, then e-reader is a clean winner again.
If I had to use it like you do, though, then tablet would be a better option for me as well.
How about reading a long time, without ability to charge? Let's say a few days or a week? Buying a book on a whim, when you're somewhere abroad and there's no wireless that you can access?
I would gladly buy a new e-reader if it offered significantly improved capability like improving note taking and annotation by using speech and speech recognitioin and integrating the notes and annotations with my laptop.
Exactly. I have a paperwhite that I take on flights to read. The battery lasts weeks; a phone or tablet invariably runs out in a few hours, and in 2015 power outlets of any kind at seats are still unicorns. It's a fraction the size and weight, a quarter the cost of a tablet and being rubbery and cheap with little personal info I don't have to be as paranoid about theft.
i got a kindle paperwhite a couple years ago and it's literally seen daily use since then. i also bought and sold a tablet during this time. there are lots of hacks for kindles (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150) including third party reading software. add to that calibre's ability to do whatever you want with an ebook file, and you're good to go.
PocketBook uses FBReader as a default reading app. Plus, you can install Coolreader.
Firmware isn't what it used to be in earlier models but PocketBooks are still pretty capable devices. The new generation of firmware programmers didn't manage to screw up [yet] all the cool features built into the legendary models, such as PocketBook 360Â.
They support hierarchical directories in library, *lots* of configuration options for reading, there is limited number of third-party apps, such as Coolreader, ftp server [so you can rummage inside the filesytem and send in books without cable], terminal emulator, a few simple games and even Vim text editor.
Certainly Amazon's domination of the E-Reader category has stifled innovation. But, in my opinion, the real root cause of the lack of E-Reader innovation isn't being highlighted: E-Ink. They've maintained a near complete monopoly on the electronic ink display market and have behaved accordingly. They have not produced any significant improvements in the technology in many years and, worse yet, have done nothing to bring down the prices of an E-Ink display. The recent Sony "electronic clipboard/notepad" introduction created buzz and excitement until users found out the price: north of $1k. Everything about the device is appealing except for the cost and it's a dealbreaker. The cost of that device is almost entirely driven by the cost of the E-Ink display. Until there is competition in the electronic ink display market the combo of E-Ink and Amazon will continue to choke off innovation. When we see a sub $100 BOM cost of an electronic ink display/A4+ size then you'll see innovation explode.
I like the nook better, and appreciate the company behind it because I can go their brick and mortar store, have a coffee, flip through a magazine and relax. If i have trouble with it, I can ask the staff in the store and they always have an answer. Barnes and noble is a nice clean store and I can peacefully type a work email if need be. Amazon is kind of nebulous in that regard.
Wash your keyboard, its kinda gross.