Quote:
Originally Posted by booklover6
Well most people that come to this forum know that is simply not true, if one liberates one's books. I personally side load 100% of my content, with the exception of the free book a month I get from the lending library. I buy it, liberate it, and fix it up to look how I want, then use Calibre to put it on my Kindles.
My Kindle is as open as my Sony.
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On the other hand I doubt that many people frequenting the Sony subforum are unaware of the Kindle, so there must be other issues at play. I seriously don't want to turn this thread into a religious war, but I do think it's pertinent to address the question "Why not buy a Paperwhite" in this context. It's a good question.
I think that drawing a parallel to Apple could be appropriate. Like iStuff, the Kindle is a very good device, it's easy to use and well designed (I've only handled one for about ten minutes, but the quality is without question). Like Apple, Amazon takes the "benevolent" dictatorship approach to customer relations. Iskariot, I, and many with us are highly skeptical to this approach. Amazon has demonstrated on numerous occasions that they have the means and the inclination to remotely disable a Kindle, and to delete legitimately bought books from it.
They do this without any recourse for the customer, and, in at least one case of a disabled Kindle, even refused the baffled individual an explanation. As it turned out, they apparently didn't even investigate the issue properly, as the customer subsequently got her account reinstated and her purchases reactivated. I can see absolutely no use for this functionality that benefits the customer, and I am not comfortable giving such a company control over my device. They have clearly demonstrated that they will not act in the customer's best interest in case of a conflict, thus the "benevolent" part goes out the window at their convenience.
You might think you can sidestep this issue, but what on Earth makes you think that Amazon doesn't know about your "liberated" books on your device? To them, a liberated book bought legitimately from Kobo is indistuingishable from the same book acquired from the seedier parts of the Internet. You might be able to use a Kindle without tying it to an Amazon account (I actually don't know, but it isn't really relevant). I already liberate all my books as a matter of course, and I might consider trying to use a Kindle without an account if it were the only device good enough for my needs. Luckily for me and Iskariot it's not, and we are understandably excited about alternative readers that (might) make coveted features available to us.
And now, back to our scheduled discussion of unsubstantiated rumours about a possible new Sony device
