08-19-2011, 11:03 AM | #61 | |
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But hey - I'm all for having lots of successful devices on the market - competition is good for all of us who love our ereaders! |
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08-19-2011, 11:08 AM | #62 | |
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I don't find the lack of ePub to be a problem, and don't particularly care if they ever implement it, aside from the fact it would quiet all the people who say "But it doesn't support ePub". |
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08-20-2011, 04:42 AM | #63 | |
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For a comparison this is why your will see relatively larger increases in the cost of say a 22" LCD screen for a computer monitor verse say a 24". The 22" are just manufactured on a much larger scale (plus there is less loss with the defective 22" panels verse a defective 24" so manufactures/suppliers don't have to cover. At the moment 6" is the sweet spot for eInk screens as 22" is for LCD monitors, but this will change in time. There is a reason the Kindle DX is so much more expensive than the 6" model. Also as others commented, I haven't pulled a Kindle 3 screen, and Kobo Touch screen apart, but I really doubt the Kindle 3 has a sharper screen. Much in the same way that TV sellers/manufacturers tend to pump up the contrast/saturation of TV sets in stores to make 'x' model look better (rather than true colour reproduction) so too do I believe the Kindle 3 has a heavier font that give the impression of being sharper/darker. The nice think about the Kobo Touch is that you can just change it to whatever font you like. |
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08-20-2011, 04:49 AM | #64 | |
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08-20-2011, 06:29 AM | #65 |
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What makes you draw that conclusion Harry? Do you have a link to a factual study of the Kindles typography with relation to eInk display technology (particularly the varients used in the Kindle and Kobo's) or do yourself have a background in typographic analysis and design with technical insight to eInk screens? Not trying to have a go, genuinely interested in your assertion.
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08-20-2011, 06:43 AM | #66 | |
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It's well-known that the Kindle font is "hand-optimized" by Amazon to the device. It's because, unlike the Kobo, the Kindle doesn't have changeable fonts (well, OK, it has three different fonts, but that's it - you can't load your own) whereas the Kobo has to deal with any font, so the font rendering engine can't be optimized for any particular font. This is true of any ADE device, not just the Kobo. If I compare the fonts on the Kindle with my Sony PRS-350 or my BeBook Neo, the Kindle's fonts are distinctly crisper in their appearance. |
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08-20-2011, 08:14 AM | #67 | ||
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Regardless of fonts used? I don't have access to so many devices so I'll take your word for it, but in photos it seems that through font choice there is little difference. Be interesting to do a blind test with people already not familiar with Kindle's typeface. |
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08-20-2011, 10:26 AM | #68 |
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Technically eInk is the brand name for one brand of electrophoretic displays (see http://www.eink.com/history.html), the one that happens to be used by all the major ereaders.
As for the Kindle's font, it is definitely a heavier font than the Kobo default fonts. Just compare the two side-by-side. I'm not saying that's good or bad, or whether it is optimized for the eInk display, but I note that heavier fonts on the Kobo screen also look darker and sharper, so that probably explains the majority of the font impression. |
08-20-2011, 11:14 AM | #69 |
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08-20-2011, 07:36 PM | #70 | |
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The Kindle font does 'look' heavier (in photos). If it really is or not, I don't know? You'd probably have to extract the font from the device and using raw vectors do a character volume analysis compared to other fonts for a given size. The Kindle font also looks to have less anti-alising style effect on it so maybe their special sauce is some sharpening filter. Has anyone been able to get the Kindle font and load it onto other devices? I know other people have hacked Kindles loading their own fonts and it's just Linux under there, so I doubt Amazon created their own font data format? |
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08-21-2011, 02:29 AM | #71 |
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Well to try and answer my own curiosity looked into the whole Kindle font thing. I still can't get any clarity on what they are really doing, but this was rather insightful => https://sites.google.com/a/etccreati.../kdesignworks/. I would love the same analysis for the Kindle 3. It seems that the Kindle's default font is Cacecilla? It also appears that the Kindle 3 'does' render fonts with more weight (the author of the above review/analysis descripted the font as 'whispier' when rendered on a computer (LCD) monitor which I suspect is a truer representation of the font).
It was also interesting to note that the author found notable display differences in the screens across units due to production variances. |
08-23-2011, 12:14 PM | #72 |
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The original Kobo and the WiFi Kobo both use the previous generation Vizplex screen while the Kindle 3 uses the Pearl screen. So yes, the Kindle 3 does have a better looking screen.
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08-23-2011, 03:01 PM | #73 |
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Except that those are both now outdated units and so comparing to the Kindle 3 is pointless, the fact of the matter is the Kobo that is available now uses the exact same screen as the K3 and therefore any talk of sharper screens is so much balderdash.
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10-21-2011, 03:28 PM | #74 |
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Kobo vs Kindle
Nobody has mentioned the top 100 free books that Amazon have for Kindle. This list changes all the time and is not solely classics. There are lots of books by new authors on there too. Also there are hundreds of books at 99p. Bargains in my opinion.
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10-21-2011, 06:48 PM | #75 |
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All infected with DRM meaning no portability to other devices. No thanks.
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