Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
The ability to install various hacks and modifications of course. 
What are the hacks people find most useful -- that is a slightly different question. I will list my favorites: - screensavers hack ...
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- Collections Manager/librariansync ...
- Rescue Pack & Cowards Rescue Pack addon -- if your Kindle ever gets bricked, having these installed might just save an otherwise worthless device.
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The screensaver thing is perhaps useful to some but if you have the thing in a case, a screensaver is rarely seen anyway.
The Collections thing? Maybe but I never got it to work
The backup thing might be useful but doesn't always work to unbrick.
No, the ONLY real reason to jailbreak that I've found is to neuter the gawd-awful Kindle software by installing another reader ... and it is a HUGE reason that everyone who (still) has a firmware which *can* be jailbroken *should* jailbreak. Jailbreak, put KoReader on the device, and a whole bunch of things get better.
Ability to use epub which is a *much* better format than mobi.
Night mode
2 column landscape mode
Improve the contrast of the display (this makes a HUGE difference for me)
Gain control of EVERY aspect of the formatting for the book directly. Make the margins disappear for edge-to-edge reading or change them to any value you want. Change the right-edge to ragged or justified. Change the font size to anything you wish. Add fonts. Change the font weighting. Change paragraph spacing & line spacing & indents to anything you want. And more. No need to send the ebook to calibre to do these things, KoReader does them for you. You can even set up multiple profiles to change this formatting on the fly if more than 1 uses the Kindle and they have different tastes.
Vastly improve "collections", which are now simply folders on the device instead of the idiotic Amazon approach. Changing collections is simply a matter of dragging & dropping using the PC/Mac.
Much (much) better PDF reader. PDF reading on a 6" device is painful, no matter what software is used but KoReader makes this far less painful than does Amazon. Text reflow and far more control of the displayed text are the reasons.
No need to wait for your Kindle to "re-index" for hours/(sometimes) days.
In other words, jailbreaking gives Kindle users the same features that Kobo and every other device not named Kindle or Nook has *always* had (plus a few more). That's a pretty big thing.
I've a KPW1 & a KV. I only use the KV when the KPW1 is recharging because the KV can't be jailbroken. The KV has better hardware, the KPW1 is a better reading environment because jailbreaking.
The crazy thing is, Amazon could *easily* add these features themselves; they aren't radically new or special to KoReader because ALL good ebook-reading software has them. Amazon does NOT have good software and that's why you should jailbreak.