Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

I had the slowness problem a few weeks ago and it seemed to be tied to a specific book rather than the device - once I'd deleted it, then restarted, it went back to normal. Obvs that doesn't solve the problem of finishing the book, but I'm pretty sure your device is still okay.

ok thanks - just 5% left on a LeCarré book

if it's a post-74 le carre that could be the source of the problem, hey yo

nope - 'Small Town in Germany'

Anyone listen to music on kindle? I previously thought my headphones plug didn't fit but it does and it sounds pretty good, it's a Kindle Fire HD. I'm not an audiophile so I'm not sure it sounds good enough for me to settle on this but I'm quite excited by the idea of not having to buy an mp3 player.

What do you think?

There's no particular reason for audio output from tablet to be any worse than that of a phone or common/inexpensive dedicated MP3 players. They're all kinda equally shitty, compared to flac files, and higher-end DA converters, headphone amps and headphones.

I discovered I just didn't care that much for my usual portable audio listening (audio books and podcasts), so I purchased a cheap mp3 player that could be submersed in 20 feet of water and use it without fear while swimming on the weekend, washing cars and dogs, and walking in the rain.

I asked this in another mp3 player thread too, but does mp3 players ever have bass boost/dsgx options?

I used to have a Sony mp3 Walkman with bass boost. Don't remember the model # (NWZ something - or maybe they all are) and anyway it's about a decade old and I don't know if I'd recommend it as such since I never got on with the interface, but I think some of the newer models do too.

The current (micro sd based memory) nwz players are excellent and yes they do have some kind of spatial enhancement option as well as a bass boost option (I just use mine with flat EQ and gain turned up though). There's an insanely expensive one and a more reasonable one that's about the price of an pre-deletion iPod classic (250 to 300) (I have the less expensive one)

I'm wondering how much of a difference it makes. I've just always put bass boost on CD players and I think it sounds better but is it worth caring about on an mp3 player?

This kindle has Dolby Digital Plus, is that at all similar?

no idea specifically.

generally, it's better to reduce the treble a little and turn up the volume than to boost the bass. Or just turn up the volume plain and simple.

Screw it, I'm settling for this Kindle. I'm very happy just to have an mp3 player under my nose all this time and I can finally get those Art Zoyd albums.

fwiw my decade-old NWZ was at the cheap end of the range, the B series, well under 100USD, and it sounded good, I just didn't like the UI. so if I wanted a standalone player now I'd def consider one of the newer models. don't know if they still do a cheap model but the more expensive ones have bigger screens which hopefully translates into being easier to use

tbh I mostly just listen on my phone now with the stock Android audio player and that also sounds just fine to me but having a separate unit did have some benefits, not least conserving battery and SD card space on my phone

so no, I don't think there's anything wrong with just listening on a Kindle Fire

I had a shitty summer and splurged on the Oasis, the pointlessly expensive E-ink thing that comes with a book cover battery. Totally worth it. Ploughed through the Count of Monte Cristo (the longest book I've read, I think) so gonna keep it as my device for back-breaking Victorian fiction.

if i wanted to splurge and upgrade my paperwhite, is the difference between the voyage and oasis worth the extra $$$?

I don't think so.

there's an amazon store near me so i might pop by to see them in person. i'll be damned if i spend $90 on a CASE though...

i'm confused about the point of the case. these things already have insane battery life.

yeah I was thinking the same, short of getting marooned somewhere without power for more than a few days, it is pretty hard to get caught short with these devices. It does look very nice though.

This is the innovation I want.

When my e-ink reader is asleep, instead of displaying a default logo (like my wife's nook) or a randomly displayed ad for a shitty book (like my kindle) I'd like it if it could display the cover image of whatever book I happen to be in the middle of at the time. Do any of them do this? A pleasurable thing about a real book is the way it sits there reminding you what you're reading, beckoning you to pick it back up.

one thing that keeps me from buying a Kindle and sticking with my Nook Simple Touch is that you can load your own screensavers and let it randomly choose one when the device is sleeping... although I like the idea of it defaulting to the cover of the book you're currently reading!

all my screensavers on my Nook, for example, are Paget illustrations of Sherlock Holmes, with accompanying original captions from the story they come from.

i fkin loved the simple touch. When ours died there was no way to get one anymore. Never knew about the custom screensavers option on it, dang!

my Kobo shows the current cover but then slaps an ugly status bar on there, about 20 pixels from the top. "Sleeping" it says. Sometimes it gives a percentage.

If the book doesn't have a cover it uses a rendering of the first page instead. Which is often the same page of project Gutenberg licence information in unreadably tiny letters. Makes it impossible to tell what the current book is.

I was just gifted a cheap end kobo glo by my feller, and I like the book cover as screen saver thing, its neat. I cant help worrying it'll do screen burn in, but I know it wont, I just cant get my head round this e-ink concept haha.

I was a bit miffed when I got the kobo that my entire kindle library is wasted and cant be used on it, but eh, I can (re)read those on my PC anyway.

Trayce, Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/ ) and Apprentice Alf (https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/drm-removal-tools-for-ebooks/) are your friends for that

I very nearly got a kobo instead of a kindle but they are frustratingly hard to actually buy

James: yeah as it turned out the bf already had a stack of .mobis on his PC anyway which Ive already loaded in =)

The e-ink seems a little blurry, but maybe I just have a bottom end model.

Theyre not that hard to buy here! A few of the chain hifi stores sell em.

That DRM tool looks neat tho!

If there's something calibre can't do with ebooks I haven't seen it yet

Calibre has an available plug in that automatically removes drm from everything as soon as you add it to your library. Zero extra steps required once it's installed.

My main concern is I thoght the kobo store would be more than amazon but as it turns out, theyre competitive.

The main hassle is the fact Australians cant buy cheap ebooks :( Some fucked up law got passed that means we pay around $15-20 for ours.

Kobos are available from the biggest UK high street stationers / newsagent but where there used to be a whole table and lots of banners pushing them there's now about 3ft of wall space ticked away somewhere and 3 display models, 2 of which are generally showing the charging screen. I think the main problem is a) Kindle has much better brand recognition and B) they aren't something you buy more than once a decade.

I read a lot of public domain books on mine, Victorian novels mainly, and Australia, with its death+50 copyright laws has a better selection of these than UK or us (death + 75). Try project Gutenberg.

i like https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/meta/authors

Gutenberg is a good idea! I could stand to do some more older-book reading tbh.

Also, once you have the DRM remover, there are plenty of more recent books legally available at at Openlib.org: they're PDFs that you can download to the PC, strip the DRM and then chuck on the kindle/nook/ipad/whatever. You just have to delete the PDF when the borrowing time is up, presumably, to stay legal.

It's https://openlibrary.org

(Oh, it's death + 70 in Europe, not 75. And US is slightly different (worse))

if i wanted to splurge and upgrade my paperwhite, is the difference between the voyage and oasis worth the extra $$$?

For me, definitely - I have nerve damage in my left hand and the lightness makes a lot of difference.

Other than that, it's just what Calzino said ("it looks very nice") - apart from the buttons, there's no specific technical advantage over the Voyage - it's the same display and the same clunky OS.

But, given that I use the thing all the time, after a couple months of use I found the very-niceness totally worth the price. It's just a low-level addition to quality of life - it fits in pockets nicely, because of the cover I worry less about damaging the screen, the buttons feel good, and the jacket makes it feel less like a device.

I would say the nightlight is workable rather than excellent - I tend to keep the light as low as possible for as long as I can. But it's fine and doesn't make my eyes glare like an iPad in the dark.

http://www.mhpbooks.com/ownership-and-other-e-book-fallacies/

i got a kindle version of heidegger's 'being and time'

some things get a lot harder to read when you scramble their visual appearance from the familiar one!

a) Kindle has much better brand recognition and B) they aren't something you buy more than once a decade.

Kobo screen just broke after three years :(

Thought I would have a go at replacing, no disassembly videos for my model but I got the back off, removed the main board, now there is an impenetrable seamless plastic barrier.

huh, networked kindles don't update themselves upon daylight savings time beginning/ending

is there such a thing as a simple ebook metadata editor with batch file renaming? i'm that awesome guy that hates directory structure libraries

I think you can do all that with Calibre, not that I've ever used it for that purpose but Google answer confirms it can do that type of editing.

huh, networked kindles don't update themselves upon daylight savings time beginning/ending

kindle ad for book says on it

'this book includes photos and video that you can switch on & off'

WHY WOULD I EVER

Does anyone else get the ad for the book with the tag line "hacking in was hard...hacking OUT would be even harder"? Nothing has surpassed that to me quite yet.