iPad Apple Releases new IPad Air and iPad Mini with Apple Pencil Support

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Excellent! What reading app are you using?

My normal reading app is Marvin. I do have Kindle for iOS as well. Downloading my Kindle Library (2000+ books) was much, much faster as well. I use Goodreader for PDF books. That also seems a lot snapper. It's snapper than my iPad pro for that matter, my iPad Pro is the model before last year's release.

[OtinG]

I guess I can see the allure of putting a huge library of eBooks on a device, I did that years ago with a device or two. But since then I only put a few new books and some reference books and documents on my devices. I once added up how many years it would take to read all the unread books in my library and that figure was more years than I have left! It then began to seem ridiculous to me to have that large of a library on any one iPad or iPhone. Keeping them on a computer is different, and keeping them on backup storage drives is also a smart idea. But I soon decided it was not worth paying Apple for the extra storage space and not worth wasting time with calibre to deDRM and modify my eBooks. I find with the modern iPads and iPhones that the screen resolutions/pixel densities are more than enough to provide a pleasant reading experience using stock apps like Kindle or Books because I no longer need to embed special fonts in order to keep my eyes from going wonky while reading for hours at a time. It sure makes life simpler than the old days when I sometimes spent more time trying to maintain libraries and modify eBooks to a useable reading format than I did reading. One day I turned around and made note of the fact that I'm getting old and I no longer have time to waste on that sort of stuff. Now I buy the latest iPad or iPhone every few years but usually get it with only the minimum storage to save money, then download only a handful of books at a time and then delete them from the device when finished reading (but I keep them in the library of course). To each their own, of course. If I was still in grad school or actively doing research, then I would pack everything I could on my devices. But being well over 30 years finished with graduate school and now retired, taking a simpler approach is seems so much better.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I guess I can see the allure of putting a huge library of eBooks on a device, I did that years ago with a device or two. But since then I only put a few new books and some reference books and documents on my devices. I once added up how many years it would take to read all the unread books in my library and that figure was more years than I have left! It then began to seem ridiculous to me to have that large of a library on any one iPad or iPhone.

It’s not (for me) about reading them all, but about having a large choice of reading matter available. That’s why I like having a large library on a device. I’ll probably read fewer than 5% of the 10,000 books I have on my Kindle Oasis in the two or three years I’ll have it for, but I won’t know in advance which 5% of them I’ll read.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by OtinG

But I soon decided it was not worth paying Apple for the extra storage space and not worth wasting time with calibre to deDRM and modify my eBooks.

To be fair, books don't use much space relative to iPad storage.

Base iPad storage is 32-64GB nowadays. Even back in the early days of iPad, base was 16GB. Quite plenty even for 10K books unless your books are particularly image heavy (my Kindle fiction books average around 600KB each).

Mind, with 10K titles, I'd need Calibre's extensive search capabilities to actually find something to read. Granted, even with the less than 1K on my PW3/PW4, I already do most of my browsing using Calibre content server (either via experimental browser or for faster browsing on my iPhone/iPad). Then when I find something, I just do an author/title search on the Kindle.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It’s not (for me) about reading them all, but about having a large choice of reading matter available. That’s why I like having a large library on a device. I’ll probably read fewer than 5% of the 10,000 books I have on my Kindle Oasis in the two or three years I’ll have it for, but I won’t know in advance which 5% of them I’ll read.

Curious, how feasible is library-wide full content search with 10,000 books on the Kindle?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Curious, how feasible is library-wide full content search with 10,000 books on the Kindle?

It doesn’t work - or at least, it doesn’t return results in any sensible time.

Searching for authors and titles gives virtually instant results, and searching within a book works fine, too, but I guess whole library searches are just too much for the poor thing to cope with .

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

To be fair, books don't use much space relative to iPad storage.

Base iPad storage is 32-64GB nowadays. Even back in the early days of iPad, base was 16GB. Quite plenty even for 10K books unless your books are particularly image heavy (my Kindle fiction books average around 600KB each).

My 10k books are using about 27GB of space, but that 10k includes all 200+ Delphi omnibus editions, some of which are pretty humongous in size.

Mind, with 10K titles, I'd need Calibre's extensive search capabilities to actually find something to read. Granted, even with the less than 1K on my PW3/PW4, I already do most of my browsing using Calibre content server (either via experimental browser or for faster browsing on my iPhone/iPad). Then when I find something, I just do an author/title search on the Kindle.

That’s exactly what I do.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It’s not (for me) about reading them all, but about having a large choice of reading matter available. That’s why I like having a large library on a device. I’ll probably read fewer than 5% of the 10,000 books I have on my Kindle Oasis in the two or three years I’ll have it for, but I won’t know in advance which 5% of them I’ll read.

I've probably read or tried the vast majority of ebooks (3500+) that I own. I've grabbed very few PD or free books just because it's free. When I "buy" (i.e. actually buy or download from a free site) a book it's because I'm interested in actually reading the book. Some I read the first chapter and decide it's not for me though.

I keep all my books on my iPad because I never know what book I might be in the mood for. I re-read books a lot. I keep all my books in CC, then transfer books that I'm either actively reading, or books that I plan to read to Marvin. Most of the time, when I first buy a book and download it to CC, I will transfer it to Marvin.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

To be fair, books don't use much space relative to iPad storage.

Base iPad storage is 32-64GB nowadays. Even back in the early days of iPad, base was 16GB. Quite plenty even for 10K books unless your books are particularly image heavy (my Kindle fiction books average around 600KB each).

Mind, with 10K titles, I'd need Calibre's extensive search capabilities to actually find something to read. Granted, even with the less than 1K on my PW3/PW4, I already do most of my browsing using Calibre content server (either via experimental browser or for faster browsing on my iPhone/iPad). Then when I find something, I just do an author/title search on the Kindle.

My decision had little to do with storage space and mostly had to do with the clutter. The fewer the books and docs, the quicker I can locate the one I want.

BTW, PDF documents do take a lot of space and my library on my computer has hundreds of them, so if I placed all of them on my device they would eat up a lot of storage space. Ebooks are usually not that big though unless they have a lot of illustrations.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by OtinG

BTW, PDF documents do take a lot of space and my library on my computer has hundreds of them, so if I placed all of them on my device they would eat up a lot of storage space.

They do indeed. I keep my Egyptology reference library (several hundred PDFs) on my iPad and they use well over 200GB of storage. They’re the specific reason I bought a 512GB iPad.

[OtinG]

Well like I said, it is a matter of personal preference as far as library size on a device. I definitely see the allure of having most or all of your vast library on one or all of your devices. I used to do that. But now a days I'm content to keep the vast library stored on a couple of computers and various backup drives. I keep it organized by hand--I don't use any management apps like calibre. I then locate the books I want to put on a particular device and transfer them. The vast majority of books on my current devices are also housed in the Kindle cloud so they are easy to transfer and they automatically keep my bookmarks, notes, and current reading position updated on all the other devices. That was always a PITA back when I used calibre and modified books. It is so easy with the Kindle cloud though, but it only works with Kindle books bought at Amazon and unmodified, hence the reason I don't modify ebooks any more. So for me that is the best of both worlds. I have my complete, organized library on my computers safely stored away at home, and I have the books I need or want at the current moment on my portable devices. When I was young and in grad school I had a vast print book library and I can guarantee I only carried around a few of those at any one time. The vast majority stayed at home on my bookshelves. I've slowly returned to that concept, but in digital format now.

I remember spending many hours in the university library and as a grad student I even had a small office there that the university library provided for grad students which contained a small desk and a few shelves. It was only about the size of an old phone booth, but it was good for doing research in the library rather than having to lug books back and forth between library and home. I would have killed to have had the book storage capability we have now back then, although most of those books probably still aren't in digital format--not even PDF. But that was over 35 years ago, and now I no longer need to have research books with me 24x7x52! Now I can just read for pleasure. One of my favorite memories after I graduated university was that for the first time in years I could once again choose what I read and whether or not I finished it. I rarely had that luxury in university. It was SO wonderful to be able to pick up a book, decide it wasn't good, and then be able to put it down and never go back to it again. One of life's little pleasures now.

[hollowpoint]

Got a new Mini last Friday, 256GB Wifi. Best tablet ever, the new A12 cpu makes page rendering blazing fast.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by hollowpoint

Got a new Mini last Friday, 256GB Wifi. Best tablet ever, the new A12 cpu makes page rendering blazing fast.

I'm glad you like it. Nothing like a new toy that you are happy with.

[hollowpoint]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I'm glad you like it. Nothing like a new toy that you are happy with.

How are you doing with battery life on yours?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by hollowpoint

How are you doing with battery life on yours?

I'm still over 60% after reading much of the day. Battery life depends a lot on what mix of apps you run and how strong your wifi signal is.