Why no SD cards?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Readirect

I don't really have to "imagine" it, dude, since I see it everyday on my Nook Gen 2. Without problems. With 32 GB.

Indexing isn't the problem, Amazon's insistence on using their cloud IS the problem and the reason they don't offer an sd card. You can do anything you want, as long as you do it the way Amazon tells you. It seems.

Personally, I'm waiting for reviews of the production version of the Kobo H2o before I tell Amazon "ciao, thanks for the memories but you don't get to tell me how I should be using an e-reader" ***needless profanity removed***.

Am I angry about this? Ya think?

Then why did you ever get a Kindle if you have such violent disagreements with their memory policy? Surely it didn't come as a surprise...

Also, the Kindle indexing is indeed the problem, insomuch as it actually does have the effects stated. Amazon's so-called insistence on the cloud is somewhat in doubt (the Nook is an excellent example of a cloud-is-king policy, 500 MB sideloading caps, no SD slot, anyone???) especially since they have send-to-kindle.

Now, Amazon may have set things up to be too dependent on the index, and the index may be ill-designed, leading it to be non-optimal for many books, and the other devices may be better. Personally, I don't believe that either, because the only slowdown I have ever seen is in the global searching, where one would expect things to bog down the more content needs to be searched.
I am sure many fellow Kindle owners will share my experiences, here is one to start with (from this very thread no less):

Originally Posted by HarryT

The Kindle certainly isn't. I have over 1000 books on every one of my Kindles, and performance is absolutely fine. The only thing that slows down with more books is, naturally enough, a global search across all books.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by tompe

The cloud is such a better solution.

Ask Mrs. Linn Nygaard about this.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

... so-called insistence on the cloud is somewhat in doubt (the Nook is an excellent example of a cloud-is-king policy, 500 MB sideloading caps, no SD slot, anyone???) especially since they have send-to-kindle.

I did own one of older Nooks - Nook Simple Touch.
Fortunately, it did have an SD card.
I used it to root the device ;-)

... which reminds me of one more reason why a manufacturer might want to produce a device without a card slot. - One less vector for hacking/rooting attack. And we know that Amazon is very keen on preventing unauthorized tweaking of the device.

[speedlever]

My Kindle is a dedicated use device. I don't do anything but read on it. For me, an SD card is superfluous in the Kindle.

My cell phone is a multipurpose device and I will not have one without having an SD card for extended storage unless there is simply no option. I also prefer a replaceable battery too. Fortunately, I have options in that category and you will have to pry my Android phone from my cold, dead fingers.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by kacir

I did own one of older Nooks - Nook Simple Touch.
Fortunately, it did have an SD card.
I used it to root the device ;-)

... which reminds me of one more reason why a manufacturer might want to produce a device without a card slot. - One less vector for hacking/rooting attack. And we know that Amazon is very keen on preventing unauthorized tweaking of the device.

And I will never understand how anyone could object to Amazon's handling and yet not object more vehemently about B&N.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Ask Mrs. Linn Nygaard about this.

Eh, why? What has Linn Nygaard to do with storing your books in Dropbox?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by tompe

Eh, why? What has Linn Nygaard to do with storing your books in Dropbox?

You don't see a connection between someone who lost access to their cloud data and the idea of relying on cloud data?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ApK

You don't see a connection between someone who lost access to their cloud data and the idea of relying on cloud data?

Why should you rely on cloud data. The cloud was a solution to having all your books available. I mean on a trip if you SD-card breaks you loose access on the trip. I would trust Dropbox and Box more than SD-cards for solving the problem of access on trips.

Of course you backup all the data you have in the cloud locally and maybe in cloud backup solutions like crashplan. All of this is easier than handling SD-cards.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by tompe

The cloud is such a better solution.

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Ask Mrs. Linn Nygaard about this.

Originally Posted by tompe

Eh, why? What has Linn Nygaard to do with storing your books in Dropbox?

Originally Posted by ApK

You don't see a connection between someone who lost access to their cloud data and the idea of relying on cloud data?

I have to agree with tompe about this.

The original mention of using the cloud was as opposed to SD cards. Not for the purpose of keeping your multiply-redundant backups, just as a means of quick access (or access in general) versus SD cards.

And cloud can easily mean your home server running calibre-server or COPS or calibre2opds in apache/dropbox/something, or whatever.

So yes, I would rely on cloud data, even after taking Linn Nygaard into consideration.
On the other hand, I wouldn't rely solely (that being the operative word, perhaps you should've mentioned it ) on cloud data, but then again that was true before her and anyway no one has suggested doing so.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why should you rely on cloud data. The cloud was a solution to having all your books available. I mean on a trip if you SD-card breaks you loose access on the trip. I would trust Dropbox and Box more than SD-cards for solving the problem of access on trips.

Of course you backup all the data you have in the cloud locally and maybe in cloud backup solutions like crashplan. All of this is easier than handling SD-cards.

The SD card would not break as you would put it in your Reader before you go on vacation and there would be no need to remove it until you got back home.

[NickyWithNook]

I've just moved from the iPhone world to the Samsung Galaxy world, and I do find the sd card useful in that, because I use the phone to take pictures. Lots of pictures. Also videos of things like piano recitals. That stuff takes up a lot more space than most books. (Cookbooks and others iwth lots of pictures take up a lot of space but I read those on my iPad -and I bought the one with a ton of memory - and not on my Kindle.)

I used to have all my books on my Nook, and it got to be a pain to wade through them all. I've just changed my mind on this. I don't doubt there are people who prefer to wade through thousands of books, but I like to just have maybe 50 I might want to read. Enough to choose from, but not so many that it takes long to file through the pictures of the book covers. (I remember which book is which from the book cover and not title.)

The Kindle no doubt loses some customers due to this, but I think it's a small number who want thousands of books. Most people with Kindles probably get a book from the library or Amazon, read it, and then move on to another one from the library or Amazon.

[Rizla]

Apparently the chip in the Kindle comes with blue-tooth functionality built-in, and guess what--Amazon turn it off! Why? It would cost them nothing to leave it activated, and leave it as an unsupported experimental feature.

Why does Amazon have such an unnecessarily restrictive attitude? It's like with not allowing custom fonts and the poor margin options. But unfortunately Amazon seems determined to reduce the functionality of e-readers.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Apparently the chip in the Kindle comes with blue-tooth functionality built-in, and guess what--Amazon turn it off! Why? It would cost them nothing to leave it activated, and leave it as an unsupported experimental feature.

Why does Amazon have such an unnecessarily restrictive attitude? It's like with not allowing custom fonts and the poor margin options. But unfortunately Amazon seems determined to reduce the functionality of e-readers.

Amazon writes the OS for the Kindles, so in order to use the Bluetooth functionality, they'd have to include a Bluetooth stack in that OS. Deactivating the Bluetooth (at the OS/software level) simplifies the development process.

Even unsupported features increase support costs, because there are always people who call for support on those features, and telling them the feature isn't supported still incurs the costs of the support call.

Finally, it's not active because it's not needed for the Kindle's designed purpose.

From Amazon's perspective the cost/benefit analysis came up in favor of leaving it deactivated.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Apparently the chip in the Kindle comes with blue-tooth functionality built-in, and guess what--Amazon turn it off! Why? It would cost them nothing to leave it activated, and leave it as an unsupported experimental feature.

Of all the silly complaints, this is the winner. What exactly would you like the ereader to connect to via bluetooth? A smartwatch? A phone? A car? Noise-canceling headphones?

Given that its an ereader, what possible use could there be for a bluetooth connection?

Remember before you answer, that any connection is going to require a fair amount of software on the kindle for a really obscure use-case. Its not about turning on the bluetooth, its about all of the software support after it is turned on.

Or did you just want them to turn it out so that when you scan for bluetooth devices for your phone, you would see the Kindle as one of the devices? Perhaps that's it, they should turn on the bluetooth as a Kindle location device. That sounds like a feature most people would want.

Originally Posted by Rizla

Why does Amazon have such an unnecessarily restrictive attitude? It's like with not allowing custom fonts and the poor margin options. But unfortunately Amazon seems determined to reduce the functionality of e-readers.

I would certainly like better margin control and line control, and I would also like the font control that the Kobo has.

But all of the fairly obscure use cases for a book reader (SD card, more than 4 GB of storage, TTS, audiobooks) and now this silly one are all just a distraction that do no help to us if Amazon happens to be monitoring this forum.

Perhaps it would make more sense to concentrate on the features related to the general use and function of a book reader. When asking for a feature, perhaps it would make sense to say "is this a feature for me, or would it help with at least a sizable minority of device users".

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Apparently the chip in the Kindle comes with blue-tooth functionality built-in, and guess what--Amazon turn it off! Why? It would cost them nothing to leave it activated, and leave it as an unsupported experimental feature.

Why does Amazon have such an unnecessarily restrictive attitude? It's like with not allowing custom fonts and the poor margin options. But unfortunately Amazon seems determined to reduce the functionality of e-readers.

It was the same with the nook tablets. Did you complain about those?

Since the frequencies are the same, and many computers have both, many wireless chips provide both wifi and bluetooth.