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I want an eReader mostly for loading with PDF documentation and technical whitepapers. The Kindle DX seemed to be the best answer when it came out due to the larger screen, but it looks like Amazon hasn't bothered to update them in a while and the pricing makes me think they really don't want to sell them at all. Am I right in thinking I'd be an idiot for buying one now, and if so is there anything else worth looking at in the same class? Does the regular Kindle possibly not suck as badly as I expect it to with PDF content formatted for print? wolrah fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Dec 26, 2011 |
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Dec 26, 2011 05:38
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Maneki Neko posted:No, it sucks on the smaller e-ink screens. There was a woot deal for the refurb DX earlier this week, but you're probably going to have a better experience on a tablet if you mainly want PDFs/technical docs. That's plan B and at least fortunately does give me a lot of options. I had just been hoping to be able to get the battery life and readability benefits of an e-ink device. Time to wander over to the Android threads and find the best bang for the buck to pair with a regular Kindle for book use.
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Dec 27, 2011 17:11
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Hamburglar posted:Edit: One other thing that's weird, I pressed 411 in the settings page and it told me the cellular info of my KindleDX, and it says CDMA. Is that right? I thought to be global it would be GSM? GSM 3G uses a CDMA air interface rather than TDMA as used in its 2G modes to more efficiently share the spectrum and get better results with multiple users. It's often referred to as WCDMA since it uses a much wider "channel" than CDMA2000 family protocols like 1xRTT and EvDO. I don't know how the KDX software shows this info, but it wouldn't be surprising to see CDMA mentioned somewhere if you're in an area with GSM 3G coverage. It's still GSM, but it's also CDMA, it's just not the same CDMA most people think of.
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Jan 23, 2012 15:15
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Ethereal posted:If you have a stock Kindle Fire, I highly recommend rooting it and installing CM9 if you don't need Netflix. It is a night and day difference in speed and fluidity. Can you get the Amazon Appstore or the normal Android Kindle app to run? Both just crash on mine running the 2/19 build, which sucks since it means my Amazon-purchased apps (mostly FAotDs) are unusable.
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Mar 2, 2012 00:45
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To those running CM9 or any other ICS port to the Fire, are you wiping and then flashing or are you flashing over top of the stock ROM? If I wipe first, WiFi doesn't work at all and I haven't really gone much farther to see anything else that might be broken. If I don't wipe, none of the Amazon apps work even after deleting and reinstalling them. This is with the plain ICS from XDA, not the Hashcode variant (which seems to be nothing but a tweaked theme and a kernel last I checked). In either case, I accidentally hit the silence ringer button on the power menu and now com.android.phone is repeatedly crashing no matter what. I've tried everything but restoring to my backup of the original ROM and then reflashing over it again (I expect that'll work, I just would prefer to keep all my game saves and such so I'm fighting with it until I get bored).
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Mar 8, 2012 04:26
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Also confirming it works fine. The first few ICS builds I ran wouldn't boot without being installed over top of the stock ROM, which I know hosed up the frameworks, and no Amazon apps would work. I'm running an AOKP from a few weeks back now and Kindle plus the Amazon-purchased apps I own all work fine.
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May 14, 2012 17:23
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DoctorJones posted:Anyone have any experience with adding e-books to the kindle fire with calibre? I'm not 100% sure, as my Kindle Fire's not charged right now, but I think all user-added documents end up there and it's only a "Book" if it came through Amazon-approved means.
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Jul 13, 2012 21:12
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Kheldarn posted:That's about what I expected. I guess I'll be rooting mine soon. Thanks for the info. Do it, Jellybean runs perfectly on it. You lose the Prime features like movie streaming and the lending library, but everything else is 100%. It's smooth as butter too.
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Sep 14, 2012 05:26
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Kheldarn posted:I don't have a Prime account, so no loss there. Can you recommend a ROM to use? I haven't looked for any JB ROMs yet, so right now, I'm looking at NRGZ's 6/23 ICS ROM (though I see he has a 7/31 update now). I use CM10 with SGT7 Enhancements, which enables Jellybean's hidden multiuser support and a few other things. Hashcode's CM10 is more of a straight port and should behave pretty much like a Nexus 7, at least as far as the hardware allows.
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Sep 16, 2012 00:41
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Agreed with that. I just got a Nexus 7 for work a few days ago and have used it alongside my OG Fire a few times. If you want an Android tablet, the Nexus is much faster and more responsive. Android 4.1 is just so smooth (it works nicely on the old Fire too, but double the cores and RAM can't be denied). The Kindle Fire is a better media consumption device. It's also better for "noob" users, the stock UI while limiting for geeks is pretty much idiot-proof for parents and the like. If you intend on using it primarily for content from Amazon's ecosystem, it's the better choice. If you want a cheap tablet, go with the Nexus.
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Sep 29, 2012 01:09
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withak posted:It is alcohol-based cleaners (like windex) that can take some screen coatings off. Diluted soap shouldn't hurt anything I think. I'm pretty sure it's ammonia-based cleaners you need to worry about. I've been using straight 95% isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol on all my LCDs for years with no ill effects. edit: Just looked it up, ethyl alcohol (booze) is bad, isopropyl is fine. Dilution is recommended but not required. wolrah fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Nov 23, 2012 |
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Nov 23, 2012 23:54
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I'm going to buy a Paperwhite with some of the gift cards I got this year, is there any reason I should bother with the 3G version if I have tethering and unlimited data on my cell phone?
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Dec 25, 2012 19:29
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Sperg Victorious posted:Not really. As long as you know you can reliably get books over wifi, I wouldn't bother. But if you know you won't be around wifi for big chunks of time, 3g is handy. Ok, wasn't sure if it was like the iPad where the data-capable model has other features that just happen to be provided by the cellular baseband.
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Dec 25, 2012 20:30
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Another question, how necessary is the cover? The leather cover looks nice, but it's 1/3 the cost of the thing. I've never had a case or screen protector on any of my PDAs or smartphones nor my Kindle Fire and have never ended up with any damage I cared about so I'm leaning towards no. I just don't know if the e-ink display or the frontlight diffuser are any easier to damage than a normal glass-covered LCD. It'll probably live on my desk 99% of the time and occasionally end up in a side pocket of my backpack (probably right next to the Fire). I'm with Chemmy on the 3G if there's no other features that depend on the cell baseband, my phone is a 3G hotspot on demand and I'm pretty much never more than 50 feet from it at any time, so there's no reason to pay more to have it in a second device. wolrah fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Dec 26, 2012 |
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Dec 26, 2012 04:19
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Khablam posted:For comparison: Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, even those look pretty bad to me. Mine for comparison:   Sure it's not perfectly even, but it's honestly better than my Dell 2005FPW desktop monitor.
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Jan 17, 2013 22:35
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As a media consumption device, I liked my Kindle Fire in its stock mode and wouldn't hesitate to recommend the HD models to the kind of person who wants a tablet mostly to watch TV/movies and play games. The first one was just a good deal before the Nexus 7 came along, now the new ones are actually a solid product as long as the stock firmware does what you want it do. It's sort of like a slightly less polished Apple product in that it's really good if you use it exactly how it was intended, but may be questionable if you want to go outside the lines. Once rooted my 1G Fire also makes a great tablet, but with native AOSP tablets in the same price range it's hard to argue for them in that role. But yes, if the primary use is reading for $deity's sake get an eInk device. I bought one book on Kindle when I got my Fire last year and wasn't really impressed. Got some gift cards, got a Paperwhite figuring that if it sucked I'd jailbreak it and build an awesome clock/weather/news display (still might buy another to do that with), and I've probably spent $75 on Kindle books since then because it's just so much better to read that way. Crackbone posted:You just summed up the whole reason not to bother with a Fire. The Nexus is slightly more expensive, but has a better UI, isn't littered with ads, isn't tied to Amazon's ecosystem, and is an overall better piece of hardware. And dealing with rooting is idiotic when you can just get something that works how you like right of of the box. Like I said, I think for the "media consumption" market the Fire HD is a better choice. If you'd think about rooting it, don't get it, it's not for you. It's for your grandmother, your kid, etc. wolrah fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Feb 11, 2013 |
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Feb 11, 2013 17:51
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Nihiliste posted:I believe there are sleep/wake magnets in the Paperwhite, like the iPad. You are correct. Since I'm bored and have both a paperwhite and magnets within reach, here's a quick demo of the sensor in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdKtzLl9Ge8
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Dec 4, 2013 17:27
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I have the Gen1 versions of both the Paperwhite and Fire. The PW is by far the better reading device. The Fire was a good tablet for the price, and better when I ditched Amazon's stock crap for a proper Android environment. Supposedly the later models kept basically the same mix, good hardware for the price but heavily optimized for gaming and/or media consumption. If you want a tablet for work, maybe look at something else, but if you want one to watch videos or play games they're very nice. The only major complaint I have about mine is the lack of hardware volume buttons, but that was resolved in the later models.
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Dec 26, 2013 02:43
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As an ebook reading device, Paperwhite unless the majority of their intended reading material benefits from color. As anything else, well the Paperwhite is a pretty crappy web browser and doesn't really do anything else. The Fire is a full Android tablet minus Google Play services, which means a lot of apps that depend on them will never appear on the Amazon store, though if one is so inclined you can solve that problem with a bit of hackery. My gen1 Fire was a the best choice for a cheap tablet until the Nexus 7 came out, no idea how the current models stack up. When comparing a Fire against other Android tablets, Amazon Prime streaming is pretty much the only substantial difference. The Kindle app and the Amazon app store can be easily installed on any other Android device. If the person in question is the sort to go pants-on-head retarded when faced with a computer, the newest Fire models have live assistance built in which may be of value. Otherwise they're solid hardware with a fork of Android that may or may not be tolerable depending on what other apps one wants to run. wolrah fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Feb 9, 2014 |
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Feb 9, 2014 03:04
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I really wonder why they bothered with the USB port. Wireless charging could allow it to be much more waterproof. Phones can't get away with this because they're so power hungry and critical to many of their users that the near ubiquity of micro-USB is hard to give up. More perfect waterproofing isn't worth losing the ability to charge pretty much anywhere for most people. E-readers last forever on a charge compared to phones and are rarely of high importance to their users, so the tradeoff is a lot more appealing. I would love to not have to worry about the plastic bag I put around my Kindle leaking when I'm reading in the pool.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:49
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Zat posted:You'd still be shutting out all those people who don't have a wireless home network or other Wi-Fi available, which doesn't seem that great for business. Everybody has a computer with a USB port. An e-reader strikes me as far more of a luxury item than wireless networking. WiFi's free with most broadband connections, a lot of people have it without even knowing. Of course there are still a lot of people without broadband, but many of those are either uninterested in technology or can't afford it anyways, so not exactly the e-reader market. I could be wrong though, I'm no market analyst. Nintendo Kid posted:Also, microusb is a global standard for charging mobile devices, where the various inductive chargers aren't. There's only really Qi and Powermat, and only Qi is actually used in devices as far as I've seen. If Powermat hadn't made a deal with Starbucks no one would even be thinking about them. That said I did acknowledge that you'd be losing widely available generic charging, but since the odds of a "must charge right now" situation are a lot lower with an e-reader versus a phone it's an easier trade to make when you take water resistance from failure prone to practically foolproof. quote:And inductive chargers can really increase the price of your product. It costs under $20 to add to my phone aftermarket including the pad. I have to imagine it's a lot cheaper per unit to add as a standard feature in a mass produced device. edit: hotsauce posted:Have fun teaching grandma how to set up an SMB share. I know, grandma won't be sideloading books, but a lot of people do. And a lot more don't have a clue about SMB share types of stuff. Expose a SMB share, release a simple PC app that does an autodiscover (UPnP, Zeroconf, mDNS, whatever you prefer) and just does a \\device\share or smb://device/share depending on platform. Every OS Grandma uses has great SMB support so the PC app would be nothing. wolrah fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 23, 2014 02:05
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Nintendo Kid posted:That's like 1/3 the price of a new Kindle. Even if bulk ordering got the price down to a quarter it would still be a hefty additional cost. We're not talking about entry-level devices here, the Kobo that started this is $180.
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Aug 23, 2014 02:54
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Baller Witness Bro posted:Is there a better source for a replacement Kindle 3rd gen screen other than ebay? Friend gave me one that she doesn't want anymore but it has a slightly damaged screen that needs repaired. I'm not too keen on dropping a bunch of money on a new screen when Kindles aren't that expensive even new but I offered to fix it up. Flo Cytometer posted:I have plenty of parts from 1st gen through the 2nd gen Paperwhite. PM me with your needs, and I'll get back to you on costs. I'm nearly out of 3rd gen batteries, but I do have some 3rd gen screens and a couple units left. I'd also be willing to part with my Amazon lighted case for the 3. Catch you all in SAMart.
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Jun 20, 2015 00:17
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Tiggum posted:Why not? Here's the unit Rollofthedice was talking about, the latest and greatest color e-Ink technology, placed next to its predecessor:  This one is from the manufacturer's web site showing what the device is attempting to display:  See how washed out the colors are on the real thing compared to what the screenshot shows the designers intended? This is the best of the best right now. It's not what people want when they think "color e-reader". It's good enough to be production-worthy for a few niche applications where having some color is more useful than having the right color. This one's marketed for use with textbooks that typically have simple coloration like on graphs and charts. Simple clipart-style images work OK enough but you can see how even those lose a lot, and photos are basically pointless. It's not even in the same range as the cheap pages of the newspaper.
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Aug 14, 2015 21:40
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chippy posted:Just noticed that my Kindle (2nd gen PW) is on software 5.6.2.1. while the current version is 5.6.5. I'm downloading the file to do a manual update now, but aren't these updates meant to install automatically? What's the state of your battery? It won't auto-update below a certain point.
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Aug 26, 2015 17:21
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SymmetryrtemmyS posted:I'd really like an ereader with wireless charging (for instance, Qi). It would make the body slightly thicker, but well under a millimeter - and it would be the ultimate in convenience. Sure, the charge rate is slow, but with such a minimal consumption rate, who cares? Tossing your Kindle on the charge mat whenever convenient would give you effectively unlimited battery life, with no need to plug it in. Plus then it'd be relatively easy to make sufficiently water-resistant for any around the house situation. No need for any ports at all. I'd love to be able to use my Kindle while floating in the pool without having to put some stupid bulky case on it.
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Aug 27, 2015 14:38
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Nintendo Kid posted:You can put your kindle in a Ziploc bag to read it without worrying if it gets dropped in the water. The touchscreen still works correctly through the bag. I've killed a few remotes doing this to control my stereo from the pool, so I don't entirely trust it. A $10 universal remote is a bit easier to deal with drowning than a $100 Kindle.
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Aug 27, 2015 16:07
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Craptacular! posted:You couldn't even side load books without sending them to an email address or otherwise processing them through the Amazon cloud, which means if you're a book pirate you're uploading your pirated books to the nation's biggest book store. If that sounds paranoid, well, some people didn't want to give their MP3 collection to iTunes Match initially, either. I'm just generally looking for opinions. Put down the tinfoil hat and take a look at what happens when you plug a Kindle in to a PC through the USB port.  You can run a Kindle entirely offline if you want to and all you lose out on is obviously stuff that requires you to be online.
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Oct 10, 2015 00:26
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Sub Rosa posted:Thanks. Having not been following this sort of thing, I get the impression that the people that do the jailbreaking don't like sharing their method with the community for months. So will the current firmware be broken eventually? Months? A year? Or abandon all hope ye who have the newest firmware? The thing about any kind of jailbreak is it's a successful attack against the security of the jail. Once a method is made public, the vendor of the jail (Amazon, Apple, whoever) can look at what's being done and begin work on fixing the flaw that allows the attach to work. If you have an attack that's not publicly known it's best to wait to release it until the hardware vendor releases a major update to the system. That way you have the best chance of your attack actually working on the new thing. Since there's definitely a new piece of hardware incoming and probably some sort of software update to older devices soon after to add some feature from the new device, I doubt you'll hear a peep from the jailbreak developers until they've been able to try it on the new stuff.
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Apr 10, 2016 16:29
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No idea about anything specific to Kindle jailbreaking, I was just giving a general explanation since devs sitting on exploits is fairly common in all sorts of consumer electronics hacking. Assuming that quote is representative of those devs, it sounds like they're more on the "white hat" end of things and don't want to release a zero day exploit. The ethics of "responsible disclosure" get interesting when the same exploit could both enable users to do things they're otherwise locked out of but also attackers could gain control of your device. I don't know how many people should legitimately be worried about their Kindle being attacked, but who knows. wolrah fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 11, 2016 |
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Apr 11, 2016 00:25
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Since it doesn't look like it has the glass front like the Voyage I was expecting it to fit in a middle slot between the PW and Voyage, not a new top tier. No thanks.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:10
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hotsauce posted:It has the same design: Interesting, the Voyage always seemed to look glossier in promo shots in the past where the Oasis appears a lot more matte like the older models. I guess if you were considering a Voyage with the official leather case you're pretty much at the same price as the Oasis. I think the official case is hilariously overpriced and don't really care for cases anyways so that doesn't sell it to me, but obviously people buy 'em so I'm sure this will get a bunch of that market.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:39
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Holy gently caress. Woot has Kindle keyboards for 15$ today. That's officially the cheapest I have ever seen an ereader. drat, I wish I'd have seen this while it was available. I'd definitely have bought at least one as a dedicated bathroom device, maybe another solely to root and tinker with as a WiFi controllable e-ink display. The current Paperwhite is the third generation, right? Second gen improved the frontlight, third got the higher res screen IIRC. I have a first-gen model and I think color temp adjustments would be enough to get me to upgrade.
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Oct 16, 2016 23:22
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smackfu posted:A Paperwhite already only has one button and a USB port so it can't be that hard to waterproof. Give it wireless charging and expose the internal storage as a SMB share. Now you don't need the USB port at all.
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Apr 21, 2017 15:56
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More text per page, clearer images/illustrations where applicable (assuming it also means higher resolution), better handling of PDFs, etc. There's a reason the Kindle DX was mourned by a small but vocal subset of users.
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Oct 11, 2017 22:58
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I'm about 50/50 on e-books vs. physical at this point. I still buy the physical copy of anything I expect to reread, anything I expect to want to quickly flip back and forth between pages (reference texts mostly), anything with detailed images, and anything that I just really want to have on my shelves. What the Kindle does best are those one-time reads. I like reading Jeremy Clarkson's books, but I'm never going to read them again. I like reading 2600 magazine, but I'll probably never go looking through old issues. Basically the kind of stuff you'd buy at an airport book store is great on an e-reader. You can buy a bunch when it's cheap and you have them all with you wherever you go.
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Nov 27, 2017 20:08
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whomupclicklike posted:I think I might have to ask customer service to... but how do I approach it? Like, I feel almost like I'm scamming someone even though it's like one of the world's largest corporations. I think they really don't care. The kind of person who would request to get the ads removed probably isn't clicking on them anyways. They're in-house ads so its not like they need to maximize exposure for their clients. The people who pay to remove ads are pure profit and giving the ad removal away for free every now and then doesn't really hurt them in any way while making a customer happier. If I were Amazon I'd definitely give the customer service reps full discretion on this one, basically making it so if the customer isn't a dick about it they can have it.
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Dec 1, 2017 17:57
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I lost my PW1 at some point, probably left it on a plane back in April, and just got a PW4 for Christmas. I didn't realize how much I missed this. The new screen is also very nice, though obviously I can't do a side by side. I can't wait to put the water resistance to use this summer reading in the hot tub too.
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Jan 3, 2019 20:53
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fishmech posted:and the ePub spec is very simple. ePub uses HTML at its core, and HTML rendering is far from simple.
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Jul 31, 2019 14:05
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im on the net me boys posted:I dropped by the thread to ask this since I can't find a better answer by myself on the internet: is there a way to scrape threads from this site and dump them into an ebook? There are some funny threads I want to read but I don't want to strain my eyes all too bad. I think someone else asked this a while back but I can't find it. This seemed like a decent idea so I took a look, and no there doesn't seem to be anything of the sort beyond just using the web browser on the device and dealing with that lovely experience. Nothing for these forums or any forums as far as I can tell. A few forums offer an official ebook export of a thread, but it's not common. There are a few tools out there that convert web pages to EPUB or MOBI formats, but the output isn't great and I haven't yet found one that could take multiple URLs and make one document so each page of a thread is a separate book with around a dozen pages a piece. If you're familiar with HTML and can do some basic programming both major eBook formats are based on a subset of HTML so it shouldn't be too hard to write a script that basically screen scraped a thread and fiddled with the formatting. Could probably end up with something that worked at a basic level by pretty much find/replacing the forum template parts from around the content.
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Oct 1, 2019 02:30
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