Quote:
Originally Posted by desertgrandma
Many people (me included) prefer a device that just reads books.
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For some time I have used an old notebook for reading books. Really, REALLY low power notebook. I have managed to install a bare-bone Linux distribution on it, because I needed long filenames for my books. Yes, the notebook was too low power to install Windows 95 on it.
I have striped down everything from the Linux distribution that was not essential to reading books, so I have replaced init with Vim text editor. It meant that when you booted the thing it started the Vim editor and NOTHING else (apart from a Linux kernel, obviously). Vim editor was configured in a "book reading mode", so most of the keyboard was remapped to page up and page down function, you could open any of hundreds books from a central index, the Vim editor opened the last read book at the last read page uppon startup, ...
So. Here I have a book reader that can not do anything except for displaying the book. Yet, it was MUCH more powerful than a typical e-ink reader. Because if I wanted I could write my notes into a book. I could reformat the book, I could replace fancy quotes (from the original book) that displayed as gibberish to something my text console could display. I could just dump any text file on it and not worry about formatting, because I could change the formatting any time I wanted.
To sum it up. I do not want my e-ink reader to be web browser, mp3 player, personal assistant, movie player, general purpose computer. Yet I am ready to pay premium to manufacturer that offers me an e-ink reader that would allow me to correct an error in my formatted book or change formating to something I want at the moment.
In current situation when I load up a book and I find out later that the fancy curly quotes got mangled in the process, or that the indent is too large, or chapters are wrong format I have to go back to the PC edit the book, load up the book and try it again.