Amazon announces Kindle Scribe Colorsoft at Sept. 30 Devices Event

[Pjama]

Goodness gracious, these are outrageously expensive.

Glad we got our OG Kindle Scribe for Christmas when it was released. Even I'm not tempted by a $700 Kindle! Wow!

Also, why even offer a no-light option? Going to lead to a lot of disappointed gift recipients methinks.

The original is wonderful, and to think that the original price now seems pretty reasonable!

[Pjama]

Originally Posted by bustacap

thats certainly one way to make drm and a closed eco system sound like something "good", lol

Wow! Yes, they have a nerve describing it that way.

[Pjama]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

so it is fair to say, Scribe is no longer the most affordable option for electronic note taking then, that was the only reason I purchased the original scribe, still works like a charm. why are they removing the front light though, like who was asking for it?

I guess so that they can claim the range is "starting at $429", a horrible decision.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JoeC

Are notes and or annotations on the Elipsa portable in any way? I thought they remain on the device. I’m still looking for an eink device that would allow me to scribble on a book and move those scribbles outside of the device it was created on. I know it’s not ideal, but I’ve been experimenting with the reMarkable ecosystem and I can do that fairly easily.

Totally easy for PDF (but no conversion to text) or the notebooks (conversion to text and docx).
For epub you need to stick to the touch keyboard to easily export notes.

Nebo on Android on Nxtpaper 11 or 14 has local handwriting to text on PDFs. The Kobos with notebooks run a cut down version of Nebo as the full version is unsuitable for eink.

The eink is best for reflowable novels on 5" to 8" screens. It's poor for PDFs, writing, magazines, comics, fixed layout illustrated book and annotation of PDFs.

[JoeC]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Totally easy for PDF (but no conversion to text) or the notebooks (conversion to text and docx).
For epub you need to stick to the touch keyboard to easily export notes.

Nebo on Android on Nxtpaper 11 or 14 has local handwriting to text on PDFs. The Kobos with notebooks run a cut down version of Nebo as the full version is unsuitable for eink.

The eink is best for reflowable novels on 5" to 8" screens. It's poor for PDFs, writing, magazines, comics, fixed layout illustrated book and annotation of PDFs.

Thank you for the detail!

[jhowell]

Data encryption
Data on your device, as well as data in transit to Amazon servers, is fully encrypted.

Originally Posted by bustacap

thats certainly one way to make drm and a closed eco system sound like something "good", lol

That is something new. Up til now your personal documents, annotations, and Scribe notebooks have been unencrypted on the device.

Also odd that it says nothing about your data being encrypted once it reaches their servers.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

why are they removing the front light though, like who was asking for it?

Originally Posted by Pjama

Also, why even offer a no-light option?

Aside from supporting a lower price point, removing the frontlight makes the image appear closer to the surface of the screen, which some people find pleasing, as it gets closer to tricking your brain into thinking you're actually writing on the screen. Of course, plenty of people don't notice or care about this and prefer the convenience of a frontlight.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Totally easy for PDF (but no conversion to text) or the notebooks (conversion to text and docx).
For epub you need to stick to the touch keyboard to easily export notes.

Nebo on Android on Nxtpaper 11 or 14 has local handwriting to text on PDFs. The Kobos with notebooks run a cut down version of Nebo as the full version is unsuitable for eink.

The eink is best for reflowable novels on 5" to 8" screens. It's poor for PDFs, writing, magazines, comics, fixed layout illustrated book and annotation of PDFs.

There is this feature, which seems to be on development: https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...g-annotations/
(it doesn't mentions scribble/handwriting notes, but rather text ones).

Pardon, but I'm not that sure that any comics wouldn't be fine on eink: on a 8" or 10" even a PDF format can be fine - imho. On a nice resolution, keeping apart colour ones that could be a different thing, manga or comics in B/W may be pleasant (I have to try).

[gt346]

Tamper resistant
Only authorized software can run, protecting against tampering.

Unless they added some new security chip or something, this seems like marketing fluff. The current Kindles are "tamper resistant" and only allow "authorized software" to run too. And yet, a bunch of people run KOReader on them.

I'm interested in a color Scribe because it can be purchased with a bunch of stacked discounts, but only if it can be jailbroken.

[hobnail]

I'm confused by the term frontlight. Does the one that doesn't have frontlight have built in illumination?

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by hobnail

I'm confused by the term frontlight. Does the one that doesn't have frontlight have built in illumination?

Frontlight means that a unit has a LED light source that's shined(shone?) across the eink panel via a diffusion layer built into the eink panel to help you see the screen better in various instances. The Scribe without a frontlight will have zero illumination because it has no LED's. It will be dependent on room lighting or a clip on light source to be used in a bedroom for night reading as an example.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Frogm4n

They do not mention the macOS Kindle app any more.

The macOS app is virtually identical to the iPadOS app, except that it does not have in-app storefront or Home view w/recommendations. They are listed together in App Store, and have same version history. That is not gonna change.

[tomsem]

I'm curious about 'downloading directly from Google Drive/OneDrive'. They mention PDF and Word format; what about ePub, google spreadsheets, excel, powerpoint, etc? In any case, I assume they're still gonna get converted to a Kindle format somehow, and not improve native PDF support or add native Word support. 'On device' conversion seems unlikely but anything else would not be 'direct'. And 'direct' downloads would presumably not get stored in library? Still has to go through Amazon server to export to PDF>

Encryption: does it mean .notebooks folder will now be hidden?

Having notebooks be searchable will be a nice addition. Since this is likely just another application of handwriting CR that's done in cloud (used now for 'refinement' and conversion to text), I'd expect it to be for all Scribes and not just the new ones.

It's disappointing that underline highlight style and active canvas notes are still to be exclusive to Scribe for now. What is so special about underline that it cannot be implemented everywhere? Active canvas notes should at least be visible with the Kindle apps, as sticky notes are.

Also 64GB seems a bit restrictive if you want to use it for color PDFs (print replica KFX) and comic books.

[Quoth]

What's this about AI summaries on new Scribes?

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by nana77

There is this feature, which seems to be on development: https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...g-annotations/
(it doesn't mentions scribble/handwriting notes, but rather text ones).

Pardon, but I'm not that sure that any comics wouldn't be fine on eink: on a 8" or 10" even a PDF format can be fine - imho. On a nice resolution, keeping apart colour ones that could be a different thing, manga or comics in B/W may be pleasant (I have to try).

Quoth has a problem thinking their eyesight and preferences are everyones'.

Personally I've read A4 PDFs on 8" readers, read color comics on 7" readers. Even manga on BW 6" readers, although that was a touch small for me. Even in paper form it's not that uncommon to read comics in a form not much bigger than an 8" reader (e.g., manga or Archie's digests).