It really is a shame that my e-reader doesn't have an SD slot

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Shades

Well that's certainly true, pbooks have never been as portable. Some probably like having their whole library at their fingertips nowadays. Internet can be shoddy at best in some places or extremely expensive.

And I have the ability to have half of it, if I should so choose... which is more than enough. People need need need the whole thing? I won't concern myself with that...

I have a similar setup for myself that you describe in your sig. I have a Raspberry Pi that I use as a home server running COPS (Calibre OPDS and HTML PHP Server). I have it set up with DDNS, so I have access to my whole library from anywhere I have internet. I don't need an SD card slot myself, but I do need OPDS browsing capabilities on my reader. :P

I don't think any default vendor reading app will or would support that... but have you looked at KOReader? Available for both Kobo and Kindle, it supports OPDS on E-ink devices.

But why not use your main reading device with audio books too if you consume books that way as well?

Because E-ink ereaders were not designed to do audio well, and the fact they "can" play music (the older ones at least) is irrelevant.

That is what tablets are for, to be general multimedia devices. I certainly don't go complaining that my MP3 player doesn't display ebooks...

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Phogg

The Aztak wasn't bad for it.
I also kept all the Shadow novels on it and made epubs of some interviews with Gibson.
The Shadow perfect collection as it were.

I also would compile lyric books for songs I was trying to memorize.
I would gladly shell out for an E-ink machine with decent audio now.

I want an eight inch 300dpi screen and water resistant while I am wishing.

Before I changed Firmware on my PEz, I would have some tunes playing while I was reading (and walking round the block ) on my lunch break.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

An ereader is not an MP3 player, stop pressuring it into acting like one.

How about "A telephone is not a MP3 player, stop pressuring it into acting one". How many people are listening to music on their telephone? Why not combine two functions that are natural companions in one device? Reading a book and listening to a book read is both consuming a story. And the purpose of an ebook reader.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by twowheels

~100 MB in four years... so I'll finish the 2 GB that my PW1 has in ~76 years at my current rate. I just hope I live that long, but I doubt it.

It doesn't really matter how you use an eReader. (20 pages a day would be less than a standard size novel a month.) Some folks want their whole LIBRARY with them so they can pick and choose on the road what they want to read. And there are books intended for research where the object is not to read it all, but to carry an "encyclopedia" with you. Like, for instance, the Catholic Encyclopedia, which (by itself) is 70 Megs (13 volumes of dense print in hardback form).

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by cromag

To each his own.

Absolutely. This thread smacks of Kindle fanboy-ism. It seems the argument comes down to this ... "Since Kindles don't have SD slots obviously no one really needs them."

Don't get me wrong. I own Kindles (which I like) and non-Kindles with SD slots (which I like). I have yet to use an SD card. I just don't get why these threads, that basically ridicule those who want SD slots in their eReaders, are necessary.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

See my sig.

As mentioned somewhere else in this thread, not everyone has access to the Internet when traveling. Dropbox is useless in that case.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

How about "A telephone is not a MP3 player, stop pressuring it into acting one". How many people are listening to music on their telephone? Why not combine two functions that are natural companions in one device? Reading a book and listening to a book read is both consuming a story. And the purpose of an ebook reader.

No one listens to music on their cellphone. They listen to it on their multipurpose handheld general computing device. The key factor there is multipurpose. It is meant for lots of things. You can tell, every time you look at the screen.

Now look at your Kindle/Kobo/Nook/Sony/other, and tell me if it looks like that was intended as a multipurpse device.

I love multipurpose devices, and I think they should be designed that way from the get-go.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by rcentros

It doesn't really matter how you use an eReader. (20 pages a day would be less than a standard size novel a month.) Some folks want their whole LIBRARY with them so they can pick and choose on the road what they want to read. And there are books intended for research where the object is not to read it all, but to carry an "encyclopedia" with you. Like, for instance, the Catholic Encyclopedia, which (by itself) is 70 Megs (13 volumes of dense print in hardback form).

Your encyclopedia example is the epitome of a fringe case, cubed.
That is what tablets are for, the same way they are also for PDFs.

Me, I can have over three thousand books on my Kindle, including my extensive TBR as well as many hundreds of old favorites, and still have oodles of miscellany Just In Case... all on the builtin storage. Expandable memory is useful for bragging rights ("I have over 300,000 books on my ereader, look at me"), manga/comics for which I joyfully concede the point, and encyclopedia fetishists.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by rcentros

As mentioned somewhere else in this thread, not everyone has access to the Internet when traveling. Dropbox is useless in that case.

Your post is useless for a response to someone answering the question "how do I download from calibre in a convenient way, with author/series/tag listing, without using the content server that requires being on the same WiFi network in which case I'd just use a USB cable"?

Did you by any chance read the post I responded to?

[Ghitulescu]

The answer is simple (to the original question, in the title): If you want a SD-slot, get an eReader that has it. Thanks <insert your pet god here> there are plenty of choices, today.

If you're not happy that eReader A has this SD but has some disadvantage but eReader B is better but it has no SD-slot, I may ask you, are you happy with your house, your car, your wife, your president/king ? Compromises are made every day, for each little thing one has or buy.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I have seen people who want to archive wikipedia.org, though... go ahead, tell me that is reasonable...

Sure it's reasonable. It takes a lot less time to download the Wikipedia than it does to create your own selection of articles that you may, or may not, be interested in. That would be useful for a person who is going to be offline for a period of time, or who doesn't have internet access where they read.

This isn't necessarily a concern for urban and suburban dwellers who can quickly fetch an article on their mobile phone, but there are still plenty of places in the world where the cellular networks are nonexistent.

[JSWolf]

The current Reader that really needs an AD card slot the most of any Reader out there is the nook Glowlight. 500MB for side loading is pathetic.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Sure it's reasonable. It takes a lot less time to download the Wikipedia than it does to create your own selection of articles that you may, or may not, be interested in. That would be useful for a person who is going to be offline for a period of time, or who doesn't have internet access where they read.

This isn't necessarily a concern for urban and suburban dwellers who can quickly fetch an article on their mobile phone, but there are still plenty of places in the world where the cellular networks are nonexistent.

True, Wikipedia is *only* 10GB of bzip2-compressed data to download (text-only, does not include pictures I believe)... but very little of it will be used. There are over four and a half million articles, and it would take a lot longer and consume more disk space to scrape the bzip2 archive and turn it into useful ebooks which use the less-efficient ZIP archive.

News articles, being targeted, will have a higher percentage of useful articles.

They will also be a lot smaller, depending on how many sites you download from. Wikipedia as ebooks would be a minimum 10GB and with worse compression, and formatting added in, should shoot to a good 25-30 GB.

You also won't have to update them ever, whereas Wikipedia gets updated multiple times per minute...

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

No one listens to music on their cellphone.

I do. And I "cast" music from Android to my Chromecast regularly for listening on the big speakers.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Your encyclopedia example is the epitome of a fringe case, cubed.
That is what tablets are for, the same way they are also for PDFs.

The Catholic Encyclopedia works fine on my Kindles. I don't own a working tablet and have no desire to get one. You'll find that a lot of people who use eReaders can be classified as so-called "fringe" cases. That's why no one solution is the solution.

Choice is good.