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

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Tarana

They see it as limited function (which it is) and miss out on its best feature (restful to the eyes).

Always keep in mind that many just don't recognize a difference (with regard to "restful to the eyes") between eInk and newer LCD screens. It's not that we're "missing out" (not always anyway). It's that we're switching over (or just skipping eink) with impunity. Switching over to a device, that even without a USB port, wouldn't prevent us from sideloading our own content. I haven't plugged a USB cable into my Nexus in months (Qi wireless charging and the Calibre Companion app for wireless sideloading).

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

It makes sense for the vendor, not for the consumer. At least, not for THIS consumer! I prefer not to volunteer as anyone's revenue stream.

So I'm grateful for my SD card and for sites like this one. I don't care to be planted in a walled garden. There's enough material in the public domain to keep me reading for the rest of my days. I will shut off the wi-fi to extend my battery life and to retain some degree of privacy.

Yes but the average Kindle owner just buys books direct from Amazon via wifi or 3g. Why bother including functionality to connect to PC as new methods of charging become cheaper?

The elegant solution is a sealed, wirelessly charged unit which delivers books via 3g. Once 3g hardware gets cheaper, the need for on-board memory will reduce and the device need only store a page at a time. The savings made from removing memory will be repurposed to pay for 3g. Jeff, I hope you're listening.

Oh brave new world that has such ereaders in it!

[DiapDealer]

Oh brave new FUD that has such tinfoil hat-wearers spouting it!

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Yes but the average Kindle owner just buys books direct from Amazon via wifi or 3g. Why bother including functionality to connect to PC as new methods of charging become cheaper?

The elegant solution is a sealed, wirelessly charged unit which delivers books via 3g. Once 3g hardware gets cheaper, the need for on-board memory will reduce and the device need only store a page at a time. The savings made from removing memory will be repurposed to pay for 3g. Jeff, I hope you're listening.

Oh brave new world that has such ereaders in it!

Certainly, I'm not the average Kindle owner; and I'm not saying that Amazon should design its hardware to please me.

Elegant? Technologically elegant, I will grant you. But it doesn't appeal to me at all. In what way does your solution benefit the customer? What does it enable the reader to do that isn't possible now?

Better for Amazon, sure. Why should I buy it?

[whitearrow]

The Kindle OS simply can't handle having 15 or 20,000 titles it right now. It would slow down to an unusable crawl.

Therefore I don't see the great benefit in adding an SD card slot at this time. Would it be beneficial for the relatively small percent of users who have a lot of very large files? Sure. But that's not most people, and manufacturers look to please the majority, not the small percent.

It's also easy for us here, friends of Alf, Calibre users, power readers and users overall, to forget that not everybody is like us. Both my parents have Kindles. They still haven't mastered library books, which can be handled wirelessly for the most part, much less sideloading (despite writing out painstaking step by step instructions). For people like them, and I think there are a lot of them because voracious readers skew older as a group than most tech users, there is real value to simplicity and not being confronted by menu after menu of configuration options. Would I like a few more options? Sure, but none of it is a dealbreaker to me.

I also don't think Amazon can fairly be accused of the strict walled garden approach, when they have allowed sideloading since day one, and support sending personal documents (including DRM free books purchased elsewhere) to be uploaded to the cloud and then downloaded to any Kindle device. A true walled garden would not allow that.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

I also don't think Amazon can fairly be accused of the strict walled garden approach, when they have allowed sideloading since day one, and support sending personal documents (including DRM free books purchased elsewhere) to be uploaded to the cloud and then downloaded to any Kindle device. A true walled garden would not allow that.

Yay! A voice of reason rising above the chants of the conspiracy theorists!

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Oh brave new FUD that has such tinfoil hat-wearers spouting it!

I think it's a bit strong to label people "tinfoil hat-wearers", but you have the thrust of it right. Amazon will continue to design the Kindle to suit the needs of the majority of it's users. If that means no SD-card or USB port or even on-board memory, then that is what the majority of users want. That's progress.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

Certainly, I'm not the average Kindle owner; and I'm not saying that Amazon should design its hardware to please me.

Elegant? Technologically elegant, I will grant you. But it doesn't appeal to me at all. In what way does your solution benefit the customer? What does it enable the reader to do that isn't possible now?

Better for Amazon, sure. Why should I buy it?

Better for Amazon. Exactly. And that is the point.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

I also don't think Amazon can fairly be accused of the strict walled garden approach, when they have allowed sideloading since day one, and support sending personal documents (including DRM free books purchased elsewhere) to be uploaded to the cloud and then downloaded to any Kindle device. A true walled garden would not allow that.

The ability to side-load is a legacy of the need to physically connect a charger. That will change.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Whoops, MP3 player! (even video though why anybody would want that....)

And why not? If you can play sound that comes from the air, you can play sound that comes from an internal storage card.

Actually, this isn't true.

In order to play an MP3, the device has to be able to download files, maintain a file system, open files, have an audio player and contain the MP3 codec, which is used to convert the encoded file into sound.

A phone that is just a phone doesn't need a file system. The audio codec used in digital phone reception is different than the MP3 one.

So, in order to play an MP3, the phone has to significantly more infrastructure.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The ability to side-load is a legacy of the need to physically connect a charger. That will change.

Horsepoop. They could have long ago made charging cables/connections that were incompatible with PCs.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The ability to side-load is a legacy of the need to physically connect a charger. That will change.

Why? When they have wireless charging they can also have wireless USB:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by meeera

I'm not sure what's so difficult about that screen? Once you know that you can dismiss any tile except the Sync tile with a long press, and that it shows the most recently used things, it's really not complicated.

I've set up several relatives with Kobos now, and these are not people who are new-tech savvy; they're doing just fine. One found it far easier to learn to use than his new iPhone.

The Kobo Utilities plugin has the ability to get rid of the Sync tile from the home screen. I've just done it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Go with Funk and Wagnalls. It's always fun to say; "Go check the Funk 'n' Wagnalls."

When I was a kid, we had a set of World Book encyclopedias.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Catlady

So tell me how come Amazon's tablets don't have SD card slots?

And that is why I won't buy one, even though I will cheerfully, joyfully, happily buy the E-ink Kindle.