Why no SD cards?

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by Readirect

The main reason for an SD card is that I'd like to have a WIDE choice of what I read and I usually read multiple different books -- different titles in the same category and different categories -- at the same time; often starting several different books before I find ones that I want to continue reading . YOU might not think that's important and that's fine, but you're not buying my ereader for me, are you?

That's the point. Amazon isn't making the Kindle just for you. They are making it for a wider audience. Most of that audience doesn't want or need to carry around more then the couple of thousand books that can fit into internal storage.

Its not about control and it isn't about the cloud. Its about keeping down costs by only providing hardware that is going to help them sell more devices. That's why they don't provide an SD card slot. Because most people don't own enough books to fill of the internal storage and never will. They only offer 4GB instead of 2 because the extra 2 GB is cheap and it allows them to advertise storage for a large number of books.

By the way, good luck with your huge library on the Kobo. I've been using an Aura HD for a year or so, and if you put more than about 800 books on it a time, the system slows down to a crawl. Book reading is fine, but you will spend several minutes going from collection to collection.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by ratflinger

oh good god - the whining here is legion. Just put Calibre on your laptop & there is your collection.

How many friggin books can you read one time anyway? Oh, I need all 10,000 at my fingertips or I might collapse - Try leaving mom's basement once in a while.

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[kaufman]

Originally Posted by ratflinger

oh good god - the whining here is legion. Just put Calibre on your laptop & there is your collection.

How many friggin books can you read one time anyway? Oh, I need all 10,000 at my fingertips or I might collapse - Try leaving mom's basement once in a while.

I don't mind the rude tone, but I wish you wouldn't post if you don't understand the issues you are posting about.

Collections are useful with a even few dozen books. Is this book part of this series or that series? I'm in the mood for some non-fiction. Which books have I already finished? I've added a few books for my kids, how do I easily let them pick which one they want to read? Etc....

[Lemurion]

Every tablet or other LCD device I've owned to date has had an SD slot. None of my Eink readers have.

My old Pocket PC and Palm T|X needed the storage badly. There just wasn't enough internal storage to keep anything resembling a library on either. Both my tablets have come with 32GB of storage and a card slot. I read a lot of comics and use Zinio so the space tends to go pretty quickly.

For a dedicated Eink reader though, I don't think the SD card is crucial. Sure, I understand the idea of wanting to keep everything on one device so it's all right there to read whenever I want it. What keeps me from doing it isn't storage space, it's file handling.

Most readers choke on anything over a thousand books, and I personally find that wading through a flat file system of a thousand entries at 10-20 per page is mind-numbing. So for me, the Kindle overloads to the point of uselessness before it runs out of storage.

Nook's a different case because BN limited your sideloaded documents to a small fraction of the available storage. It needed the expandable memory. Amazon doesn't have that restriction on Kindle, so it's not as important.

Anyone who really wants an SD card slot can find a reader that has one. Amazon's omission isn't a matter of them wanting control or to shift everyone to the cloud, just a recognition that it's a luxury rather than a necessity for the vast majority of their customers. They don't need it for its designed purpose, and filling one up provides an inferior user experience. It's not worth it to Amazon.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Anyone who really wants an SD card slot can find a reader that has one.

Yep. The Onyx T68 is one such choice: I currently have over 4000 books on the SD card on mine, and it handles it just fine. Not the right choice for everyone, to be sure, but I'm happy with mine.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yep. The Onyx T68 is one such choice: I currently have over 4000 books on the SD card on mine, and it handles it just fine. Not the right choice for everyone, to be sure, but I'm happy with mine.

I was so close to getting one of these, but some guy on the CC forum talked me out of it.

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by Readirect

The main reason for an SD card is that I'd like to have a WIDE choice of what I read and I usually read multiple different books -- different titles in the same category and different categories -- at the same time; often starting several different books before I find ones that I want to continue reading . YOU might not think that's important and that's fine, but you're not buying my ereader for me, are you?

Back in the days when the Pocket PC or Palm only had like 8, 16, 32, or 64mb of storage (yes, megabytes) that would make a ton of sense. But we have gigabytes now. You can store thousands of books on even the crappiest Kindle. THOUSANDS. Or at least HUNDREDS if the files are massive. With the combination of cloud storage and gigabytes of onboard storage most people probably don't need an SD card on their e-reader these days. So the demand is probably not stellar, you know? But if you do need the SD card you should totally get a model that has an SD card slot. Why the heck not? Go for it. That is the power of choice.

Originally Posted by Readirect

My dollars, my choice. Fortunately, Kobo and others understand the value of actually caring about their customers.

Amazon has world class customer service, bar none. And their crazily expanded line of Kindles, Fire phones and Fire tablets shows that they are trying to cater to as many people as possible. It is in their interests as a business to give people what they want and they do this better than almost anyone in the world, but that doesn't mean they can get exactly what everyone on the planet wants.

Originally Posted by Readirect

That's why I'm saying "good riddance" to Kindle e-ink hardware.

And there's no shame in that. You gotta go where you feel your needs are met the best.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by Readirect

The main reason for an SD card is that I'd like to have a WIDE choice of what I read and I usually read multiple different books -- different titles in the same category and different categories -- at the same time; often starting several different books before I find ones that I want to continue reading . YOU might not think that's important and that's fine, but you're not buying my ereader for me, are you?

My dollars, my choice. Fortunately, Kobo and others understand the value of actually caring about their customers.

That's why I'm saying "good riddance" to Kindle e-ink hardware.

No one is trying to tell you what to do, what we are saying is that what you are saying doesn't jibe with what you are writing as your reasons for wanting an SD card on your ereader.

If you want an ereader because you want it, then god bless you, go get a book reader with an SD card. If you want one because you carry around dozens of hundred megabyte Manga (as someone mentioned in some thread last year) that's a good reason too.

But if you want to get an SD card, because you usually read multiple different books -- different titles in the same category and different categories -- at the same time; often starting several different books before you find ones that you want to continue reading then you don't need an SD card and you are kidding yourself if you think you do. If you like to start several thousand different books before you decide, than maybe, but otherwise no.

In any case the only company that makes an eInk book reader that will work with several thousand books on it is Onyx. Kobo makes a great eReader, but it bogs down long before the internal memory is filled up with typical sized books. Again, if you think they are making a reader to support your use-case of 4 or 5 thousand books, you are incorrect.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by kaufman

In any case the only company that makes an eInk book reader that will work with several thousand books on it is Onyx.

Come on ...
There are quite a few companies making e-ink reader, for example PocketBook.
PocketBook has an SD card slot, supports 15 file formats for books and has number of other very interesting features.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kacir

Come on ...
There are quite a few companies making e-ink reader, for example PocketBook.
PocketBook has an SD card slot, supports 15 file formats for books and has number of other very interesting features.

The limiting factor with large libraries tends to be the management aspect of it: how easy is it to find what you're looking for. What makes the T68 good for large libraries is the fact that it's a generic Android device which can run Calibre Companion, a superb library management tool.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The limiting factor with large libraries tends to be the management aspect of it: how easy is it to find what you're looking for. What makes the T68 good for large libraries is the fact that it's a generic Android device which can run Calibre Companion, a superb library management tool.

- The main limiting factor, I think, is that some readers simply choke on large number of books, because they need to index the library. Kindle is an example of such reader.
- The problem number two is that some readers do not support hierarchical directories. Some, like Kindle, do have kind of Collections system, but the official way of organizing collection [manually put every book to collection through slow user interface on the device] is unsuitable for large number of books.
Those two factors are strong reasons for not supporting an SD card.

The Calibre Companion is a fantastic tool.
What I do is:
- I tag all the books I want to put on my reader in Calibre.
- I set up a "save to disk" template that creates a set of hierarchical directories /First letter of author name/author name/[optional series subdirectory]/[optional series number with leading zero]book_file
That way I do not have to page through many pages of directory list
- I use "save to disk" in Calibre for tagged books
- I use "Create catalog" for tagged books in Calibre and put the nicely hyperlinked [large] catalog book on the reader. When I am looking for something to read I go through the catalog and then manually locate the book. PocketBook even has "breadcrumb" directory path displayed in the library, so you can easily page up two, three or four directory levels in library - further limiting paging.
- This is not nearly as elegant as Calibre Companion, but it works reasonably well even for a large library of reference materials, or a huge library of classics or fan-fiction, or whatever you wish to put on your huge SD card. Just in case you get stuck somewhere, or wish to read something unexpected.

[Greg Anos]

I concur with HarryT about large libraries, organization is key.

But I'm an old school barbarian. I keep everything in folders, well organized, and with multiple levels. (Example, folder level one, science fiction R-Z, level two, Eric Frank Russell, level three, individual titles. Works for me...) Also I keep all my data (e-books, music, photos, video montages, ect.), in exactly the same method. Consistency leads to simplicity...

The real advantage of SD chips is data portability. The reader fails, and you just pop out the chip and plug into another machine. I have come to the conclusion, over the years, that ease of portability, and ease of backup, overrides just about everything else.

[Greg Anos]

As to the Kindle, it was not designed for large libraries from day 1. Because of that, the features needed are not part of the machines. And because of the large user base, they can't be added in, because it would disrupt the existing user base.

My old Hanlins just keep chugging along, only asking for the occasional new battery...

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The real advantage of SD chips is data portability. The reader fails, and you just pop out the chip and plug into another machine. I have come to the conclusion, over the years, that ease of portability, and ease of backup, overrides just about everything else.

It is not all that troublesome to simply copy them on from calibre, just like you did in the first place.

To me, featuresets override the ability to save 30 minutes of time that I will anyways be spending here.

[Greg Anos]

As a sidebar, SanDisk just released a 512GB (1/2 Terabyte) SD chip...($800 US)

When they get a lot cheaper, they'll be my surrogate external hard drives...