The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[JSWolf]

Kobo discontinued the Libra 2 and left us with the awful Libra Colour. So we have no decent B&W Kobo larger then 6". The Colour models are rubbish (IMHO) and the Sage and Elipsa are also rubbish because the battery is terrible.

As it stands, the batter in the Libra Colour is also rubbish because you need the light on at a level that's higher then you'd normally use.

The Libra 2 is a good model with good battery and a good screen. So unless Kobo is planning on replacing it with a new Libra, they've (IMHO) screwed themselves over.

[theducks]

That is more recent than the L2 color release. (I looked then)
I did not the site said Out of Stock, not discontinued

I do agree the L2 (not color) is a fine reader

[issybird]

Cheer up, Jon! There's always Kindle.

[DNSB]

Jon, as a Sage owner, I would like to point out that I do not find the battery life to be rubbish. Yes, it is not as good as my other Kobo ereaders but it lasts me 2 to 3 days reading an average of 4 to 5 hours a day. Given that Kobo used to quote the battery life for reading 30 minutes per day, that number is pretty decent. About ⅔ of what I see on my Clara HD or Libra Colour—4 hours for 2 days is equivalent to 16 days using the reading 30 minutes per day with frontlight and WiFi off. Not all that bad for a 1,200mAH battery though I still wonder what some of Kobo's designers were smoking when they gave the power hungry CPU on the Sage the same battery as the Forma.

By comparison, one friend of mine has a Kindle Paperwhite Signature edition. This has a single core CPU and a 1700mAH battery. Amazon rates the battery life at 10 weeks with the usual reading 30 minutes per day (so 35 hours of reading), no WiFi. Real world testing says that after a few deep discharge/charge cycles you are see the equivalent to a 6 week battery life since most people read with the frontlight on and seldom remember to turn WiFi off.

[John F]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Jon, as a Sage owner, I would like to point out that I do not find the battery life to be rubbish. Yes, it is not as good as my other Kobo ereaders but it lasts me 2 to 3 days reading an average of 4 to 5 hours a day. Given that Kobo used to quote the battery life for reading 30 minutes per day, that number is pretty decent. About ⅔ of what I see on my Clara HD or Libra Colour—4 hours for 2 days is equivalent to 16 days using the reading 30 minutes per day with frontlight and WiFi off. Not all that bad for a 1,200mAH battery though I still wonder what some of Kobo's designers were smoking when they gave the power hungry CPU on the Sage the same battery as the Forma.

By comparison, one friend of mine has a Kindle Paperwhite Signature edition. This has a single core CPU and a 1700mAH battery. Amazon rates the battery life at 10 weeks with the usual reading 30 minutes per day (so 35 hours of reading), no WiFi. Real world testing says that after a few deep discharge/charge cycles you are see the equivalent to a 6 week battery life since most people read with the frontlight on and seldom remember to turn WiFi off.

WOW, only 30 minutes per day! That makes the Sage look like fantastic battery life.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Jon, as a Sage owner, I would like to point out that I do not find the battery life to be rubbish. Yes, it is not as good as my other Kobo ereaders but it lasts me 2 to 3 days reading an average of 4 to 5 hours a day. Given that Kobo used to quote the battery life for reading 30 minutes per day, that number is pretty decent.

I'm sure I get more than that, but no front light, wifi or BT.

Yes, it's not as good as Libra but better than the Oasis 2.

Weight can be reduced by removing all the internal magnets. That was a bad design for the power cover. They pick up all sorts of stuff.


Edit:
The Elipsa is too big and heavy, as is reMarkable, or Kindle DXG compared to the Sage, yet they are not big enough for all PDFs. The Sage is nice size to relax with for 8 hours of solid reading.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I'm sure I get more than that, but no front light, wifi or BT.

WiFi is the killer. A dim front light is negligible. I never turn mine off. BT isn't bad either.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Weight can be reduced by removing all the internal magnets.

They go crazy with magnets. These are all the ones that I removed from my Poke5 and I can still hold the device just by the front cover without it opening. As I've said many times, just cut your cover down to a front flap and a vestigial back tab and glue it to your device.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by John F

WOW, only 30 minutes per day! That makes the Sage look like fantastic battery life.

This is AD-manship striking again. How do you make a number look BIGGER?
Change the criteria that was used to measured it.

Back in the 50's, The US FTC had to step in and make rules on how HiFi (stereo) Amplifiers Output POWER RATINGS were advertised.

Some were so skewed because they used the power IN (mains) consumption (These were Tube back then, so 300W was not unusual for a 10W output)
Some bright engineer, came up with using a single click (on a single channel) to get some really insane numbers. and the list goes on...
The rule became: All channels driven, into rated load (8 ohms was common) for 8 hours.

TV sets were similarly distorted. Originally the CRT was round so 8" was still 8" even at 4:3. But then the tube became rectangular and Diagonal screen measurement still exists to this day
Well, e-readers started on PDA's and (monochrome) LCD. Battery life was not much, so why not use a 'commute' as the read time (I sure hope you are not one of the IDIOTS that I have seen driving with a Newspaper resting on the steering wheel the predecessor to reading on a phone while driving)

So it all breaks down to who had the better NUMBERS, forcing the followers to use the same insane criteria or they look bad.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

TV sets were similarly distorted. Originally the CRT was round so 8" was still 8" even at 4:3. But then the tube became rectangular and Diagonal screen measurement still exists to this day

And a 2/3rd inch vidicon camera tube (or four thirds) wasn't the diagonal of the image area. It was the outside diameter of the tube, or even the metal ring around the end.
That's refusing to die!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_T...d_aspect_ratio
A Four Thirds of an inch is 33.9mm. The MFT sensor is 22.5mm diagonal.

The diagonal of the later CRTS, even monitors, was to the edge of the tube, so a 17″ CRT was really a 16″ diagonal image. At least the Plasma, LCD, OLED it's the image on monitors, but often phones or tablets use rounded up or down numbers.

[DNSB]

Then there is the TV size class that seems to be popular. I was helping a friend look for a new TV over the last weekend and we found TVs that measured 64.2" corner to corner being sold as 65" class TVs. One of the '65"' TVs we measured had ultra-thin bezels and measuring a 65" diagonal had the measurement ending about 10mm past the end of the display.

[issybird]

Could you take the television discussion to the tech thread in the Lounge, please? Let's try to get this one back on topic for a bit.

[JSWolf]

Reading on a large screen TV but not being able to rotate it to get it portrait.

[DNSB]

From a recent newsletter, my wife found out that an author whose work she loves has dropped out of Kindle Unlimited. Twice now her books have been found on pirate sites and both times Amazon kicked her out of KU, withheld earnings, etc. She managed to convince them after considerable effort to restore her books to KU and pay out her accumulated earnings on both occasions.

After the second time, she withdrew her books from Kindle Unlimited and is now selling wide including Kobo. On Kobo, she has her books in Kobo Plus so those who wanted a subscription to read her books still have that option. From what she wrote, her earnings have dropped slightly but she no longer has to worry that someone will pirate her next book forcing her to spend hours that could be better spent writing being wasted on fighting Amazon about content being 'freely available on the web'.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Reading on a large screen TV but not being able to rotate it to get it portrait.

VESA mount with rotate capability.

But your TV is large enough that 2 column mode should work well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

From a recent newsletter, my wife found out that an author whose work she loves has dropped out of Kindle Unlimited. Twice now her books have been found on pirate sites and both times Amazon kicked her out of KU, withheld earnings, etc. She managed to convince them after considerable effort to restore her books to KU and pay out her accumulated earnings on both occasions.

After the second time, she withdrew her books from Kindle Unlimited and is now selling wide including Kobo. On Kobo, she has her books in Kobo Plus so those who wanted a subscription to read her books still have that option. From what she wrote, her earnings have dropped slightly but she no longer has to worry that someone will pirate her next book forcing her to spend hours that could be better spent writing being wasted on fighting Amazon about content being 'freely available on the web'.

Why does Amazon penalize authors who are at no fault for having their books pirated?