What sort of ebook reader do we really want?

[barryem]

I have a Nook Glowlight Plus and I keep trying to like it. There's a lot about it I do like. It's one of the most comfortable readers to hold without the cover. The screen is great and it works very well. The interface seems a bit clunky to me but so does the Kobo although I'm more used to the Kobo.

The real killer is that damned capacative button that's just sitting there where I want to hold the device, waiting for my thumb to touch it by mistake so it can take me out of the book and back to the Home page. I swear I can hear it snicker when it happens.

Barry

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by barryem

.... The real killer is that damned capacative button that's just sitting there where I want to hold the device, waiting for my thumb to touch it by mistake so it can take me out of the book and back to the Home page.

I feel your pain.

I have a similar issue with the Keyboard Kindle, where the DOWN button almost touches the BACK button, which is agonizing to accidentally click when adding an ebook to a collection which you have to scroll down to by several DOWN clicks. One thumb held/moved/slipped slightly too low during repetitive clicking and you have all that clicking and more (pages, etc) to do again. And it also has similar repercussions elsewhere.

Very bad design fault that. Really makes you wonder about who does the testing.

It also compounds the issue that you can't scroll up to get to the bottom of a page. That is, in Collection pages. On other pages you can use a trick to do that ... though at the cost of two extra clicks, often not worth it.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by barryem

Back when all books were made of paper the term "book lover" referred to people who love books and to people who love reading. I think these days we need a new term to describe people who love reading because they don't all LOVE books.

Very true and I agree.

Music has gone through a similar revolution, where you could say many love the sound of certain pieces of music, rather than the musicality or skilful performance. I can well remember a time, when many were quite happy to say they weren't into music. Now it is around us everywhere, and people associate tunes with all sorts of things ... events, emotions, etc. So most now like some kind of music ... if not for what you would call musical reasons.

I've always thought of myself as a book lover and yet all my life I've bought books, read them and passed them on in some way. I rarely kept books I'd read unless it was to find someone to share it with. And then they were gone.

I was like that for a while, due to funds, but eventually I regretted it and bought back most of what I had sold or passed on. Which was quite a task once upon a time, especially here in AUS. In fact, it was only a relative few years ago, that via the Internet, I was able to purchase many long sort after books via overseas Library sales. A few years later, not long after I had gotten virtually all, I got my first ereader, and could have avoided that state of affairs for many, especially with sites like The Gutenberg Project. I'd been collecting ebooks from them for years, in the hope of one day getting a good ereader.

And then some people have kindly provided hard to get books as ebooks (i.e. Biggles).

I've never been a note-taker so I never wrote in books are marked them but I never minded folding the corner down to mark a page. And I nearly always read paperbacks and had my current book in my back pocket and i was pretty hard on those books. Fussy people didn't want them when I finished.

I used to buy a lot of second hand books, some of which I still treasure greatly. One thing that really angered me though, was notes written by people in the margins or amongst the text. I saw and still see that as abuse. Folding down corners, while not as bad, was still a milder form of abuse in my eyes. So yes, I was one of those so-called fussy people.

So I think I'm probably not a book lover but a lover of reading; a lover of stories.

While I am definitely both.
If a book looked great, I could buy it, without any definite intention to read ... cost & sense permitting. Of course, I'd probably say to myself, that I must read it one day, while knowing full well that was highly unlikely.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by barryem

The real killer is that damned capacative button that's just sitting there where I want to hold the device, waiting for my thumb to touch it by mistake so it can take me out of the book and back to the Home page. I swear I can hear it snicker when it happens.

Barry

Funny. I never had that problem with my Nook ST. I guess the act of making it a touch-sensitive 'button' rather than a raised piece of plastic leads to the problem you describe. If they felt the need to keep that button, maybe they would have been better off moving it to the top of the screen. It may not look as nice, but would lead to far less user frustration.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Funny. I never had that problem with my Nook ST. I guess the act of making it a touch-sensitive 'button' rather than a raised piece of plastic leads to the problem you describe. If they felt the need to keep that button, maybe they would have been better off moving it to the top of the screen. It may not look as nice, but would lead to far less user frustration.

I agree that above the screen would be a better place but I think in a touch screen ereader the purpose of the border is to be able to hold it and the entire border should be safe.

If that button had required pressing it wouldn't have been much of a problem. But there's about a full square inch, the area with the embossed N and the area around it, where you better not touch while you're reading.

To make it worse I can't simply cover that area to make it safe because then I have no way to get to the Home screen. I finally put a thick piece of adhesive backed felt over that area that required a lot of pressure to let my finger get close enough to that surface to trigger it and that worked for a short time but the felt seemed to have flattened a bit and stopped protecting it.

The real shame of it is that if they'd do something about that and make the dictionary definitions dark text instead of greyed out it would probably become one of my favorite readers. Everything else about it is excellent.

Barry

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by lindaP

quick question to kindle (or the likes) users. Do you bring your kindle along on the subway/bus? or do you only use it at home.
How about on vacation.

Well we don't have subways and I refuse to ride our busses. But I do take it on vacation. Much lighter than toting books.

[barryem]

I also don't ride subways, living in rural Arkansas. The retirement home I live in has a van that takes us shopping, etc. and I read on that with my phone. The rides are short. The same with normal doctor's visits. If I'm expecting to have extended time to read then I do take my ereader since I'm limited to about 15 or 20 minute sessions on my phone.

That's the basic rule for me; short sessions the phone is okay and for longer sessions, here or away, I use the Kindle. Or the Kobo. I have both.

If I did take long bus or subway rides I'm sure I'd take it with me.

Barry

[ApK]

Originally Posted by lindaP

quick question to kindle (or the likes) users. Do you bring your kindle along on the subway/bus? or do you only use it at home.
How about on vacation.

I have, and I would again, if decided to eye-read on my commute rather than listen to audio books.
I see at least one person per day reading on an eink reader, often in Chinese, on the PATH (sort of like a subway).
Vacation? Absolutely. That's one of the main reasons I have it. Business travel too.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by lindaP

quick question to kindle (or the likes) users. Do you bring your kindle along on the subway/bus? or do you only use it at home.
How about on vacation.

I don't ride a bus or subway, but I take my e-reader with me whenever I leave the house. Like American Express, I don't leave home without it.

[radius]

(would have loved to have a long chat about this over coffee, but I'm not up to writing long, thought out missives this month, so please excuse my snipping large swaths of your text ---8<--- haha)

Originally Posted by Timboli

I am not trying to substitute my preference in place of yours or others, or even saying mine is better. If you are happy with current status quo, then lucky you ... we should be so lucky. Some of us have a different preference, that we also, are entitled to. In a very real way, to say the current status quo SHOULD be acceptable for all, is in itself taking a condescending line.

Not trying to dispute what you like. Just explaining why your hypothetical device doesn't work at all for me and the way I think about reading... This is the what-do-you-want thread after all

You and I and most others here who own an ereader, are in relative terms overall, early adopters. There are factors that made us so, that don't apply to many others out there. That should never be forgotten.

I wonder about this. E-ink readers have been mass market for about ten years now, and before that various LCD readers were available, and PDAs before them (disclosure: in the past I have worked for both Gemstar and BlackBerry). iBooks and Google Play Books have been commonplace for about five years. Microsoft's LIT format books were first released around 2000 IIRC.

Personally, I have read almost exclusively on eink for the last ten years, and almost exclusively on phones, PDAs and other electronic readers for the ten years before that. And that doesn't even include the reading I did earlier in plain old text from Gutenberg back when they still believed that ASCII was the best preservation medium. But I don't feel like an early adopter. I tend to be conservative because I want my gadgets to work and be reliable and use open, interchangeable, standard formats. So I think of ebooks as being very established, well up there with papyrus scrolls.

Ebook readers are the new norm. Pbook readers are the late-adopting holdouts :P

(Actually, now that I think back to my old Franklin eBookman, Sony Clie and Casio Cassiopeia, I kind of miss having a scroll wheel to use as the page turn mechanism)

[Timboli]

Ebooks and especially ereaders have been slowly gathering momentum over many years, but it has been only the last few, where you could say they have really gone anything like mainstream, and mainstream amongst a certain type of person only, which was what I was alluding to in my previous response.

Many people, and not just what you might call dedicated readers, have been interested in ereaders since the idea first went public (and prior that for some of us). The majority it would be fair to say I reckon, have a love of tech stuff, are attracted to it. Many of those interested, initially held off due to cost and poor implementation.

So in short simplistic terms, you can say there are two main groups of readers - those who love reading and or tech, and those who just love reading but don't particularly care for tech. Most of the early adopters are those who love tech. Many of the other group are yet to be convinced, perhaps because they are slow to see or understand the benefits, but also because of the losses, and a general mistrust of what still seems a tech toy to many of them ... and then there is the cost equation.

Even though all of us know how beneficial and ultimately cost saving it can be to stock our freezers with bargain food purchases, how many actually do it?

When it comes to forking out for an ereader, many still struggle with the initial cost, and need incentives beyond cost saving. One of those is multipurpose, which is why iPads and other Tablets are so popular. Getting bang for buck is a real motivator.

I also reckon, that a huge number of current ebook readers, are incidental ones. They got a tablet device mainly for other reasons than ebooks, though it might have been another slight factor in their reason for purchase, as a possible later option. They then tried an ebook, and in many cases I expect, got hooked.

And of course, many are infrequent readers ... if at all.

An interesting note about that last, is that I have found people to usually read more once getting an ereading device ... probably mostly those enamored of tech. And of course, those devices, especially color tablets, go well beyond just novels. They also go beyond the realm of play and into work, schooling, etc. So reading that is not purely entertainment or that at all.

While I know you can't go on E-Ink device sales alone to determine people who deliberately bought a device to read with, I still think you can look at the sale of E-Ink devices to gauge how mainstream ereaders have become. Taking into account all the factors I mentioned above. And it must be remembered, that true converts probably have at least two devices ... especially over a few years. Some as you know, regularly update to the latest and greatest.

Apart from my three listed devices, I also have a 7" cheapy tablet, that has sat in a draw since getting my much superior 9.7" Samsung tablet, plus I had another 10" cheapy tablet that died. Many here have had far more devices ... some going way back into the never never.

[Cinisajoy]

Not quoting you but please define bargain food.
Do you mean foods bought on sale or foods bought at the bargain barn?
The first is a good idea if you are going to use it all within about 6 months. The latter you might want to check the expiration dates as it might already be ruined.
Oh and not a good idea to stock up if the store's freezers have been turned off. (That was not a cheap lesson when it turned out all the frozen vegetables had thawed).

Oh and on your food analogy. That is only if you buy good for you foods in the first place.
Now yes, stocking up on sales is a good idea if you have the room.
Oh and your cost savings can apply to the pantry too.

Can you now spot the one that does stock up?
And thanks for the reminder that I need gallon freezer bags.

Oh if there are very few people in your household, you can also make bigger meals and freeze part of it for a quick meal later on.
Remember to date everything.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Not quoting you but please define bargain food.

Well I guess it is whatever suitably fits the bill.

I would say for instance - getting quality for cheap by buying in bulk.

Another, is to buy a whole animal, getting all the parts sliced and diced, which is always much cheaper in my experience, than individual purchases of meat. Sometimes you can group together with one or more other households and still achieve a significant saving.

And still another, is when you come across something that is cheap for overstocking reasons and not the use-by-date. And then there is promotional sales. Strike while the irons hot.

Really, it's not too hard to come up with suitable bargains. Many a place has a Farmer's Market even, where you can buy fresh in bulk, for cheap, and then freeze some of that for later.

It's not rocket science.

P.S. But if you do want to get into Rocket Science, you could make a large outlay on several freezers and have a backup power plan (i.e Generator(s), Wind Power, Solar, etc). You will eventually make your money back.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by lindaP

quick question to kindle (or the likes) users. Do you bring your kindle along on the subway/bus? or do you only use it at home.
How about on vacation.

Kobo here, but it literally comes *everywhere* with me.

You never know when you'll catch some reading time! Waiting in the checkout line at the store, going through the automatic car wash, sitting out a momentary torrential downpour in a parking lot waiting for it to ease up before going into your destination. Or reading in the theater before a movie starts!

Once upon a time, I had to drag a physical book about ... with a couple more in the car and waiting in case I finished before getting home. Those days are gone! I don't miss them any...

Sent from my Pixel C using Tapatalk

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Timboli

Well I guess it is whatever suitably fits the bill.

I would say for instance - getting quality for cheap by buying in bulk.

Another, is to buy a whole animal, getting all the parts sliced and diced, which is always much cheaper in my experience, than individual purchases of meat. Sometimes you can group together with one or more other households and still achieve a significant saving.

And still another, is when you come across something that is cheap for overstocking reasons and not the use-by-date. And then there is promotional sales. Strike while the irons hot.

Really, it's not too hard to come up with suitable bargains. Many a place has a Farmer's Market even, where you can buy fresh in bulk, for cheap, and then freeze some of that for later.

It's not rocket science.

P.S. But if you do want to get into Rocket Science, you could make a large outlay on several freezers and have a backup power plan (i.e Generator(s), Wind Power, Solar, etc). You will eventually make your money back.

Oh you mean like one of our local stores has canned vegetables 2/$1 this week so I will buy a couple of cases.

Hey your rocket science idea might work since I live in the land of sun and wind.