Why no SD cards?

[Barbara1955]

IF the sdcards were such a Bad idea WHY do Nooks have them? Why di Sopny ereaders have them? & Kobos???

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Do you mean Whispersync???



Oh yeah. The e-ink Kindles should all be bumped up to 16 GB storage just so a minority of people can listen to audiobooks on their all-handheld-devices-must-have-the-full-capabilities-of-a-tablet ereader.



That doesn't sound right. Are they badly indexed? They should show up as an audiobook and get linked together though the metadata, IIRC.

NO one said they had to have 16 gig but YEA!! Bring it on! ITS NOT A Minority! I have tons of friends that have K3 & use audible! I HAVE a Fire Rarely use it! Why would I or anyone want to turn the K3 into Tablet.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Katie1

IF the sdcards were such a Bad idea WHY do Nooks have them? Why di Sopny ereaders have them? & Kobos???

Why has Sony gone out of the market?

Why is the Nook so unpopular?

Kobo is not targeting the average user. They target people who want something a little out-of-the-box. And Amazon is, shockingly, more popular.

And which ereader besides Kindle has offered audio?

Originally Posted by Katie1

NO one said they had to have 16 gig but YEA!! Bring it on! ITS NOT A Minority! I have tons of friends that have K3 & use audible! I HAVE a Fire Rarely use it! Why would I or anyone want to turn the K3 into Tablet.

You and your friends are clearly a minority. Let me assure you, the average Kindle user does not buy an e-ink ereader for audio.

I could see my way to thinking (one of) the main reason people keep a model as old as the K3 is because of the audio, but then again, that still just goes to show... minority.

I am unsure why you want your K3 to duplicate the functions of a tablet, but... there it is. You are.

[Barbara1955]

Your a minor Person that seems to Love to Argue! BYE!

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Katie1

Your a minor Person that seems to Love to Argue! BYE!

Are you saying I am a minor, or a minority?

The first is factually wrong, and that is all there is to it.
The second is a matter of opinion, but based on the general lack of mention of people using the K3/KT audio, versus the vast numbers of people who are known to read ebooks on their Kindles of all denominations, and who happily bought the models without audio, or buy non-Kindle ereaders which never had audio... I am fairly confident about who the minority group is, here.

You got me on the arguing part. (I thought that is why we are all here. Surely you don't expect Amazon to read this thread, do you?)

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Are you saying I am a minor, or a minority?

I believe she was going for the adjective.....

minor
[mahy-ner]

adjective
1.
lesser, as in size, extent, or importance, or being or noting the lesser of two

2.
not serious, important, etc.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katie1

IF the sdcards were such a Bad idea WHY do Nooks have them? Why di Sopny ereaders have them? & Kobos???

I guess, it's all about the respective business model and the strength of position.

Sony obviously did fail with their own bookstore. Hence content hadn't been their main source of income/profit and they had to try everything to at least sell their hardware (= open it to a wider public, not linked solely to the Sony bookstore).

Nooks obviously did fair even worse than Sony readers.

Kobo probably is somewhere in the middle between Sony/B&N and Amazon: Not disappearing quickly, but far from being dominant either.

Meaning:
Amazon pretty much seems to dominate the market. And personally, I tend to understand and accept their dominance: Great customer service, pretty clear strategy for growth, free 3G globally (massive effort, to negotiate with telecom providers globally), early in the market, easy to buy content globally and so on.
As the market leader, they can build their strategy instead of struggling for survival.

And they openly state their strategy:
- Growth before (quick) profits.
- Focusing on content and considering hardware a mere vehicle for content sales.
- The future is in the cloud.

As they focus on the cloud, they deem large internal storage unnecessary.
And they don't want to open the hardware to 3rd party content, but bind customers into their own ecosystem.

It's certainly a pain, that one can't use Kindles and free 3G and buy from other vendors as well, especially in ePUB format.

But from a business perspective, I absolutely can understand (and admire) their approach.

On the other hand, I never understood B&N for example. Why did I have to use VPN to buy my books when in Germany? How come, Kobo and Amazon did solve lots of those international hurdles and B&N did not? I easily can imagine, B&N only covering the American market (and UK later on) loosing half the business potential Amazon has in Europe alone...

[Greg Anos]

Does that imply that one should think of McDonald's as high cuisine? After all, they sell the most prepared food in the world...

Personally, I believe in letting the marketplace decide.

My Hanlin's just keep chugging...

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

I believe she was going for the adjective.....

minor
[mahy-ner]

adjective
1.
lesser, as in size, extent, or importance, or being or noting the lesser of two

2.
not serious, important, etc.

See above under minority.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Why has Sony gone out of the market?

Why is the Nook so unpopular?

Kobo is not targeting the average user. They target people who want something a little out-of-the-box. And Amazon is, shockingly, more popular.

And which ereader besides Kindle has offered audio?

The T68 offers audio. I'm not sure if it has speakers though. Sony used to offer audio with a headphone jack. So yes, others did or do offer audio.

nook is unpopular because it's a poor user interface and the splitting of memory for sideloaded books is really a bad idea that doesn't work well.

I went on a cruise earlier this year and of the eInk readers I saw being used (mostly by older adults/elderly), Kobo was the brand I saw most of all. Most so then any other brand.

The reason Sony didn't do so well was not so much the hardware but the people in charge of the Reader division making poor decisions. The T2 should have had a 1024x758 screen. The T3 should have had a front light and been sold in the US. Sony just made some mistakes and instead of fixing them and moving on, they gave up.

[HarryT]

No speakers on the T68 - just a headphone socket, or you can use Bluetooth speakers.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by Anthem

You mean other devious methods like an USB cable?! Which you will still be able to use without problems (assuming you have a computer, obviously).

Actually USB is tricky. It must be a Master and some Slaves. Two (or more) Slaves cannot communicate to each other, as well as two Masters. Some devices are Masters themselves (to command Slave devices, like USB-TV or Radio-receiver and so on) - these cannot be connected to a PC, which is Master by default.
Once this hurdle is passed, the next one comes - logical lock-down - it means the USB I/F is opened only to a few applications. It's how iPhone works. Have a look on proprietary SAT-Recorders (like Sky, in Europe). They have a network I/F, an USB one, and a big HDD. Yet the content of the HDD cannot be accessed via none of these two I/F, which can only be used for eg playing youtube (bleah!) or external AVIs (bleah bleah) or upgrading the firmware.

Luckily my devices are Slaves and not locked.

Originally Posted by Zeebra

I don't understand why the need for tons of storage or SD cards on ereaders. Most ebooks are fairly small in size and you can carry thousands already on the device.

Not space, but accessibility.
Think for once what would happen to your nicest ever eReader you had when it will develop a memory fault. Like a scientist with Alzheimer, it's an irreplaceable loss.
When an SD card get broken, another one could be fit in. The books should have been archived properly on another storage medium.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Most phones don't have an SD card slot of any kind. So you don't always have that much space for audio/video/audiobooks.

Again, which ones? Apart from iPhone and stuff I know very few phones without an SD slot.

Originally Posted by Katie1

IF the sdcards were such a Bad idea WHY do Nooks have them? Why do Sony ereaders have them? & Kobos???

Not bad idea, but wrong idea.
Not part of the concept, but part of the customer's imagination.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Katie1

IF the sdcards were such a Bad idea WHY do Nooks have them? Why di Sopny ereaders have them? & Kobos???

They're not a bad idea, just an unnecessary expense for Amazon based on the expected usage model. Other companies use them because they have a different usage model, and quite frankly, don't have as good a cloud.

The driving force behind the Kindle specs lies at the intersection between how Amazon expects customers to use it and how customers actually use it. SD card slots aren't enough of a factor to justify the expense on Amazon's part.

As for TTS, the real problem was that too many publishers said no, probably because they were afraid it would cut into audiobook sales. Taking it out meant Amazon no longer had to deal with the complaints about it not working on most bestsellers.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Your post is insulting, inappropriate, and rude. I suggest you take the time now to read our Posting Guidelines and that you think twice before making another post in this thread, if it resembles the quoted one above.

I find quite a high level of rudeness is tolerated here. I had assumed by the general toxicity of certain posters that it was acceptable to be rude. I would welcome greater moderator intervention.

[Rizla]

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 wonder why an open Android OS can handle so many books without a slow-down, yet the Kindle, Kobo and Sony OSes cannot. They have more or less the same speed CPU and amount of RAM.