[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mobama

Looks like the issue is more about where you buy your books from and not so much about the device you use to read them. As long as the place you are buying from provides a download and the download is a decent format (a real file, epub or pdf, and the possible DRM is easily crackable), you can read it anywhere and nobody will track you, provided that you do not use an app that insists on being logged in over an active internet connection. Just keep the internet connection off and everything will be fine.

Forget PDF as you really cannot read it anywhere and conversion is just not worth the hassle.

As for being tracked, what is it that's being tracked and what is it you don't want tracked?

Kindle makes online-reading really convenient and auto-syncs your Amazon e-library over the cloud in the process (and tracks you at the same time). For offline/sideloaded reading, a major inconvenience on Kindle is that it does not support epub, which is the most common e-book format, so you have to use Calibre on the computer to convert those books.

Reading a Kindle eBook online does get you tracked by Amazon. I thought you didn't want to be tracked. So why say Kindle online reading is good? Forst you say to keep WiFi off when you read to prevent tracking and here you are saying it's OK to be tracked by Amazon's cloud reading. So which is it? Is it OK to b tracked or is it not OK to be tracked?

Most people on this forum consider Calibre a wonderful thing, but I consider it a nuisance, an unnecessary middle-man and a waste of space on the computer. All I want is to download a file in the webbrowser and drag-and-drop it to the e-reader over a cable connection. The e-reader itself never has a compelling reason to connect to the internet, IMHO.

Calibre is a wonderful program. I like having my eBooks easily manageable. Think of Calibre as a bookshelf for your eBooks. Your method is of downloading with a browser and drag/drop to the Reader is not going to work in all cases. For example, ePub with DRM needs ADE to download before they can go on your Reader. Yes you use the browser to download the .ascm that ADE uses to grab the eBook. If you own a Kobo and want easy collection management, Calibre does that very well. If you need to convert your eBook from say KF8 to ePub, Calibre does that. Thing is, there are a lot of thing you cannot do with just a browser and your Reader. You do need something else to help out and that something else is Calibre.

I have never bought an e-book from the Amazon webstore. I hear they use a Kindle-specific format there. The purchase used to be downloadable, maybe it still is, but two important facts make me avoid Amazon - that the download is not an explicit promise up front and the format is something that only works in the Kindle app/device. Luckily Amazon is not ruling the entirety of the e-book world yet.

First you praise Amazon's cloud reader and here you are condemning Amazon. Which is it? Either you like Amazon or you don't. If you download an eBook from any store or any library service, you will be tracked. As for Amazon, if you have a Kindle registered to your account, you can download and you will get KF8 or Mobi if there is no KF8. Either of these formats can be converted to ePub if they have no DRM or you are setup to remove the DRM.

The overwhelming majority of my reading material has been found free by googling, not by purchasing. Much of it is in pdf format, the rest in epub, djvu, and doc. Therefore I need an ereader that can handle these different formats. Pocketbook and Android e-readers can handle pretty much all the formats out of the box.

When you say that the majority of your reading is found online, does this mean you are downloading eBooks that you should be paying for (piracy)? That's what it sounds like to me. Prove me wrong if you can.

It is important to consider the possibility of installing the reading app that you like most. This is very much needed particularly for pdf. Again, Pocketbook and Android e-readers do a decent job displaying pdf out of the box with their default reading apps. Zooming, cropping, arbitrary column-setting, etc. are absolute necessities with pdf.

If you want to bother with PDF (even though PDF is awful on most eInk devices) if you have a Kobo, you can install KOReader and use that to handle your PDF. KOReader will display your PDF as good as it can be on that device.

There is a version of Koreader, a very good free app for e-reading in a bunch of formats, available for Pocketbooks (easiest to install), for Kobo (where installation and patching procedures are more difficult and error-prone), and for jailbroken Kindle. A Kindle is not worth buying, unless it can be jailbroken or unless everything you read comes from Amazon bookstore or unless you passionately love post-processing stuff with Calibre.

KOReader is very easy to install for Kobo. There is a thread where there is a simple setup to install. Nobody loves post-processing eBooks, but it's something that sometimes has to be done and if you know what you are doing, it's very easy and does not take too long (in most cases).