So what e-reader do you use now you've given up on Sony?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by FacebookVirus

If you don't want to use a Kindle for whatever reason, fair enough, but here thou doth protest too much.

Yeah, fair enough. I'm just being bad

I don't like that it forces you to upgrade firmware though. That should be a user choice. As should custom fonts. Does the Kobo force you to upgrade? From what I hear about Kobo FW, I hope not

[thomasn75]

Yes that has never been a problem with Sony as they don't upgrade their firmware at all. ;-)

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by FacebookVirus

This morning I finished a book I purchased at Amazon.

At the end of the book, there is one "Before you go..." window where you can rate the book and which shows a list of similar books purchased by other customers.

That's it. You close the window and close the book. One screen tap to close the window. No social media was mentioned.

If you don't want to use a Kindle for whatever reason, fair enough, but here thou doth protest too much.

well "that's it" for now, until they add the next nag, or the next ad, or the next enforced "social media" link-up it's where do you draw that line. I chose to draw the line there - 1 nag that I could not remove via preferences was n 1 nag too many for me & I sold the kindle, bought Sony.

I have no desire to publicly rate books and it was offensive that I had NO choice over being asked to contribute to stupidities like face book. it s a form of chugging.

rant on
there's an push towards social media everywhere such that i have to go through so many apps - Spotify, Steam,,, saying no I am not interested in your "community", I do not wish to use your app to chat to "friends"/ share what I'm doing.... reading should be an escape from all of that nonsense.
Rant over

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Yeah, fair enough. I'm just being bad

I don't like that it forces you to upgrade firmware though. That should be a user choice. As should custom fonts. Does the Kobo force you to upgrade? From what I hear about Kobo FW, I hope not

You're not being bad at all, some of just detest the way everything now pushes the social twits on us in everything we do online and even offline. When I finish reading a book I don't want to see even 1 reminder about the dredges of the internet in 1 window that I have to then close. They could at least give a way to shut off all interaction with social media in the user settings if they feel the need to include them.

And unfortunately with Kobo, from the initial setup when you first purchase the reader, you're forced to update. Whenever you connect to wi-fi it will check and try to do an update. There are ways to keep it from updating though which is pretty simple if you're like me and really don't use the wi-fi. I prefer to keep all my book purchases in one location since I don't purchase from one source, so I only purchase from and download to my PC and then transfer books to my readers with Calibre.

Cybmole sums it up above pretty well how I feel about all the social media nagging on websites.

Edit: Nor do I want to be nagged to either rate the book or see what others have bought that also read this book. Just to cover that some of us are lumping this in as "social media" since you're asked to post the rating on Amazon and not Facebook/Twitter/Whatever.

It's one of several reasons I won't get a Kindle. But if all else was perfect with the Kindle and it had any type of nag either for its own ecosystem or other social media, I would still pass on it. There are other choices out there where you don't have to be irritated every time you finish a book, no matter how minor it might be.

[FacebookVirus]

As I said already, there was no mention of social media in the unmodified Amazon-purchased book I finished yesterday.

As a single example among countless, in one minute of searching in the backs of the few remaining physical books I have, I found a ten-page selected *catalog* of one publisher's books. In a book printed in 1984.

OMG! I'm choking.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by FacebookVirus

As I said already, there was no mention of social media in the unmodified Amazon-purchased book I finished yesterday.
.

the nag I referred to is not encoded in any books it's something in the kindle firmware that you can't disable. It pops up whenever kindle decides you have turned the "last page", even on sideloaded books

Amazon have other nags already e.g. the one that nags me to give them copies of all my other music ( for their cloud player/clpud storage ) whenever I buy a new mp3 track.

I predict that as soon as Bezos invents amazonface-book it will be mandatory to have an account there before you can buy anything.

it is already happening with spotify, Last year took me an hour of googling, a VPN proxy and a smattering of German! to get a new spotify account without going via facebook.- & even that worked only because the Germans, bless em, have the sense to resist begin overrun by facebook.

[FacebookVirus]

There is no mention of social media on the screen. Remember, I own and use a Kindle daily.

I don't use spotify, but I just checked and all I have to do to use it without Facebook - which I also don't use - is give an email.

Anyone who wants to boycott Amazon for any reason or no reason has my blessings, but the reasons given so far amount to unfounded rationalizations.

[cybmole]

spotify caved in to pressure some months back and allowed people to sign up without going thru facebook - but a year go the only way to do that was to sign up at the german site via a proxy.

there's a growing trend of "sign up / sign in via your facebook identity" - e.g. goodreads does it now. [ luckily one of my pet cockatiels has a facebook account which I borrow for such occasions, as I refuse to have one of my own ]
I assure you that buying an amazon MP3 leads to a promotion for amazon cloud storage, but we are drifting way off topic now...

lets just say:
Sony readers: no ads, no nags, ever
Kindles: some imposed social media prompts,( at end of books) but not at all troublesome to most of their users. option to pay less for the hardware in exchange for accepting screen saver ads.

[FacebookVirus]

OK, I have no experience or knowledge of spotify, and I don't doubt you. Social media is pushed far too hard and often for my tastes.

But here is a screenshot - mine - of the dreaded end of book popup that is said by some to ruin your life and those of your progeny for a thousand generations:



No social media at the end of the book, unless you want to point to the optional starred review on Amazon - hardly what comes to anyone's mind.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by FacebookVirus

There is no mention of social media on the screen. Remember, I own and use a Kindle daily.

Anyone who wants to boycott Amazon for any reason or no reason has my blessings, but the reasons given so far amount to unfounded rationalizations.

Maybe it's because you keep wifi turned off?

Re: 'unfounded rationalizations,' I wouldn't agree with that.This is one thing that attracted a lot of people to Sony, namely that Sony have so far been less intrusive than other brands. Many people are highly resistant to a company looking over their shoulder as they read.

For example, you don't even need to register a Sony to be able to use it with all it's functionality.

[eschwartz]

I am 99.9999999999999999999999% positive the only time you get a facebook nag is if you've signed into your facebook account via your Kindle settings. I've never seen that nag, EVER, and I have finished books while connected to WiFi.

And the popup for rating the book only shows up after you've finished the book, when I usually just press the home button at that point anyway. I don't have a moral objective to seeing the popup if it doesn't hinder my getting out of the book.

On sideloaded books, this popup is at the 100% (location) mark, on Amazon-loaded books, it is wherever Amazon's algorithms say the end of the book is. Which is very often before end matter, previews, and extra material, like short stories.

Fortunately, I discovered the data is all saved in /documents/{book-title}.sdr/EndActions.data.{ASIN}.asc, so I searched and deleted them all. Since I backup my Kindle for weird reasons, rsync is set to prune out all files containing "EndActions". And a KUAL hack which turns off the popups via the settings database now includes (on my suggestion) a button to "rm /mnt/us/documents/*/EndActions.data.*.asc" for extra security.

This might not suit everybody, but I find it makes for a happy Kindle reading experience. YMMV.

[FacebookVirus]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I am 99.9999999999999999999999% positive...

Awesome hack! Thanks for backing me up.

[toomuchreading]

It seems that everyone is talking about the Kobo, Kindle and Nook as the only options available. I believe that these model ereaders are readily available in retail outlets. Does anyone plan on investigating any other options?

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by toomuchreading

It seems that everyone is talking about the Kobo, Kindle and Nook as the only options available. I believe that these model ereaders are readily available in retail outlets. Does anyone plan on investigating any other options?

well apart form some cheap obscure brands that you may find on ebay or similar, what else is there, & surely you'd want something with proper support....
I am sure there's mention of the other brands somewhere on this site e.g. in the secion called more e-readers.

PS AFAIK the nook range is no longer sold in UK, barnes & noble have retrenched to USA only ?

[radius]

Originally Posted by toomuchreading

It seems that everyone is talking about the Kobo, Kindle and Nook as the only options available. I believe that these model ereaders are readily available in retail outlets. Does anyone plan on investigating any other options?

For me personally, the clarity of the screen, quality of rendering and speed of the UI are the most important things in an ereader, and they are all hard to eveluate over the internet. heck, it's hard enough to compare reader if you can't do it back to back in the same lighting conditions.