New Kindle said to be due end September

And like I've said before, Kindles are slow eInk readers designed to read mobis and their successors. They are no good for reading a lot of PDFs. I'm sure Amazon assumes that someone who reads a LOT of PDFs on a portable device will use a tablet rather than a clunky eInk reader. There will always be a few oddballs who think they should read technical PDFs on an eInk, but most of the people buying a Kindle eInk won't do that. PDFs take up a lot of storage space because they are big files, but mobis don't. So there is little need for adding complexity to the hardware and increasing the price even if by only $0.10 when most consumers would neither need the extra memory nor want to pay for it. It seems to me to be overkill to have 32 GB of storage on a Kindle. Even if your average eBook was 4 MB, that would be roughly 8,000 eBooks. Even if you read one book per day, it would take you nearly 22 years to read all of them. You might live that long, but the Kindle likely won't!

[koland]

Originally Posted by jswinden

... So there is little need for adding complexity to the hardware and increasing the price even if by only $0.10 when most consumers would neither need the extra memory nor want to pay for it. It seems to me to be overkill to have 32 GB of storage on a Kindle. Even if your average eBook was 4 MB, that would be roughly 8,000 eBooks. Even if you read one book per day, it would take you nearly 22 years to read all of them. You might live that long, but the Kindle likely won't!

Your calculations fail to take into account how much space amazon now wastes on each book for thumbnails, highlights, reviews/goodreads, xray, indexes and other such. Well over the size of the book itself, in most cases. On the older Fires with 8GB storage, they gradually fill up just with the thumbnails, leaving no space at all for an actual book or app; I don't imagine there is much difference on the eink kindles, if you use the thumbnail view (assuming, of course, the stupid things are smart enough to not download thumbnails for those of us that lock them into text only home pages; it not, they fill up with useless dreck for every Kindle, eventually).

An SD card slot solves the "kindle won't last that long" issue, as well as "where is that book I wanted" problems. And the "what size Kindle should I get" issue, as they only need leave enough room for a hundred books and the indexes, then bump you to adding an SD card if you need more room.

Of course, they took them out to reduce call support and because eliminating audio removed a lot of the high-storage users from using Kindles. No doubt they had hundreds of call an hour where people put books on the card, then moved the card to a new Kindle, then it didn't work (not to mention the poor design that required shutting it off to change the card).

Originally Posted by koland

Your calculations fail to take into account how much space amazon now wastes on each book for thumbnails, highlights, reviews/goodreads, xray, indexes and other such. Well over the size of the book itself, in most cases. On the older Fires with 8GB storage, they gradually fill up just with the thumbnails, leaving no space at all for an actual book or app; I don't imagine there is much difference on the eink kindles, if you use the thumbnail view (assuming, of course, the stupid things are smart enough to not download thumbnails for those of us that lock them into text only home pages; it not, they fill up with useless dreck for every Kindle, eventually).

An SD card slot solves the "kindle won't last that long" issue, as well as "where is that book I wanted" problems. And the "what size Kindle should I get" issue, as they only need leave enough room for a hundred books and the indexes, then bump you to adding an SD card if you need more room.

Of course, they took them out to reduce call support and because eliminating audio removed a lot of the high-storage users from using Kindles. No doubt they had hundreds of call an hour where people put books on the card, then moved the card to a new Kindle, then it didn't work (not to mention the poor design that required shutting it off to change the card).

You comparing apples to oranges--Kindles to Fires. Not the same thing at all. And even if you double the file sizes, you are not going to read 4000 books on a Kindle before it wears out with age. No frigging way. I simply don't buy into any argument I've ever heard claiming that Kindles need more than 4GB of storage. It simply is not true for the average, or the vast majority, of Kindle owners, who tend to use them to casually read eBooks, are not techies, and will rarely visit a forum like this. Those who constantly bitch about their Kindle only having 4GB or so of memory would be better served buying a tablet instead.

[eschwartz]

@koland,

After years of use and a couple thousand books, my thumbnails have grown to a whole 32 MB -- 1/100 of the total space on my Kindle!


Annotations are miniscule.

When deleting a book:
Assuming the book is not from the Kindle Store, all it saves is highlights/notes/bookmarks/current page. It never had the other data (which I still don't believe is as much as you say, though I cannot confirm goodreads data) to begin with.
If the book is from the Kindle store, nothing at all is saved.


Search Indexes track the books you have currently on your device, and they are a feature many people desire.
My search indexes use up 1/4 again of the amount of space my documents folder does. That is a sacrifice most people are willing to pay. If not, see: Kindle_Touch_Hacking#Search_Bar_Shortcuts and disable the indexer.



P.S. "Well over the size of the book itself, in most cases." You must be quite special. I haven't ever seen that at all, and I haven't heard of anyone else with your problem either.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by koland

Your calculations fail to take into account how much space amazon now wastes on each book for thumbnails, highlights, reviews/goodreads, xray, indexes and other such. Well over the size of the book itself, in most cases. On the older Fires with 8GB storage, they gradually fill up just with the thumbnails, leaving no space at all for an actual book or app; I don't imagine there is much difference on the eink kindles, if you use the thumbnail view (assuming, of course, the stupid things are smart enough to not download thumbnails for those of us that lock them into text only home pages; it not, they fill up with useless dreck for every Kindle, eventually).

An SD card slot solves the "kindle won't last that long" issue, as well as "where is that book I wanted" problems. And the "what size Kindle should I get" issue, as they only need leave enough room for a hundred books and the indexes, then bump you to adding an SD card if you need more room.

Of course, they took them out to reduce call support and because eliminating audio removed a lot of the high-storage users from using Kindles. No doubt they had hundreds of call an hour where people put books on the card, then moved the card to a new Kindle, then it didn't work (not to mention the poor design that required shutting it off to change the card).

1. Kindle fires have the storage broke up into a certain amount for apps and more for books.
2. The goodreads, highlights, x-ray and others notes are not in the book. You have to be on the internet to access them.
3. As far as I know, the kindle e-inks do not have thumbnail views.
4. There are not many books that are even 1M when sent to a kindle.
5. If I remember right any books over 2M, have a note that they will take longer to download.

So the bloat you mention does not get transferred to the ereader.
So no an e-ink does not need an SD slot.
Well now I guess if one only downloaded graphic heavy books it might help but for those books, a color tablet is much better than an e-ink ereader.
Not to mention some graphic intense books cannot be downloaded to an e-ink.

Graphic in this case means pictures and illustrations.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

3. As far as I know, the kindle e-inks do not have thumbnail views.

Your profile says you have a K4 and a K5.

Try this on your K5:
Menu ==> Cover View

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Your profile says you have a K4 and a K5.

Try this on your K5:
Menu ==> Cover View

Thanks I had never seen that.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Thanks I had never seen that.

Well, if you had thoroughly explored the K4, then you might not have thoroughly explored the K5 and thus never seen the NEW feature.

[Jack Torrance]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I simply don't buy into any argument I've ever heard claiming that Kindles need more than 4GB of storage.

I have to agree here. Never came close to filling my K2 and I had it for 4 years. Not that I couldn't have but for 2 reasons I didn't even try.

One was the filing system as it was a pita to add and move books around after a few pages of folders.

Second was that after about 2-300 books it really got slow. Once I had it up to 700 books and it wasn't worth the agrivation to work with.

My DX has 4gb and thats fine as I have a few large file pdfs but even then since it has the same type of file system and its Eink it gets slow after more than a couple of hundred books. I dot know if the newer versions are that much faster or easier to manage hundreds of books but I think the "I must have it all at all times" is just being ridiculous.

I'm also not in to needing gigs and gigs of storage on my 6+ or iPad as both are 16gb versions. I find they just get filled with unmanageable amounts of crap.
If I need space I just shuffle something back to iTunes or one of the many clouds I use, and the same goes with the Kindle.

[eschwartz]

FWIW, speed should be just fine even with many books -- except for the search functionality.

I have no idea how well a device as old as the DX(G) would run...

[Shane R]

I've fought a long internal battle with myself over buying another Kindle. Ultimately (shocker!) I've decided that a mix of p-books and e-books works better for me.

[ProfCrash]

The only Kindle I filled was my K1. (I still kind of miss the scroll wheel and the silver bar thingy....). I never filled my DX, K3, or PaperWhite2.

For this board I am a light reader. I own some where near 1,000 e-books. to the rest of the world that is someone who reads a ton. I would guess that less then 1% of the population reads more then I do. I base this estimation on the annual reports that show an insanely small number of Americans read one book a year never mind more then 10.

Memory card slots are simply not needed by, hell lets be generous, 95% of the population. They had them on the K1 and all they did was cause problems. The only people I have ever heard say that they needed more space are people on this board.

With that in mind, I doubt we will see another Kindle e-reader with a memory card slot. Pick your favorite 3,500 and leave space for 500 new books. You should be good to go.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

For this board I am a light reader. I own some where near 1,000 e-books. to the rest of the world that is someone who reads a ton. I would guess that less then 1% of the population reads more then I do. I base this estimation on the annual reports that show an insanely small number of Americans read one book a year never mind more then 10.

My average is only around 30 books per year. They are around 500 "pages", using my own 2400 characters per page. (Which, at 400 words per page, are quite large pages, AFAIK.)

To the rest of this board that is probably not a lot of reading, but most people I know think I'm reading my brains out. (This is reading in addition to the reading getting my second degree, and the reading I do for my job.)

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

To the rest of this board that is probably not a lot of reading, but most people I know think I'm reading my brains out. (This is reading in addition to the reading getting my second degree, and the reading I do for my job.)

If it wasn't for audiobooks, I'd probably be at around 2-3 books a year for recreational reading these days. My eye reading time took a big hit when I went from a train commute to driving.

I wish more software vendors put out their admin and developer's manuals as audiobooks....

Nonetheless, even as one who likes the idea of having everything possible stored on my devices, without wanting to rely on clouds and data connections, I have never filled my K3.

For my smartphone, though, I'd be lost without an SD card slot. A decent music and movie library takes up a lot of space.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ApK

If it wasn't for audiobooks, I'd probably be at around 2-3 books a year for recreational reading these days. My eye reading time took a big hit when I went from a train commute to driving.

I wish more software vendors put out their admin and developer's manuals as audiobooks....

Nonetheless, even as one who likes the idea of having everything possible stored on my devices, without wanting to rely on clouds and data connections, I have never filled my K3.

For my smartphone, though, I'd be lost without an SD card slot. A decent music and movie library takes up a lot of space.

Thanks for the reminder that I need to move all my music to a micro SD card.
I stored it all on an SD card years ago.