Content Get full (or shorter) OED on Kindle?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by maximus83

Yes that would be an issue. For a nicely laid out and indexed version of OED, I'd probably pay to own an epub copy if it wasn't too insane.

The 20-volume printed edition of the OED costs £833 (roughly $1000). Even if an ebook edition were half the price, I suspect there wouldn’t be too many takers at $500.

Originally Posted by HarryT

The 20-volume printed edition of the OED costs £833 (roughly $1000). Even if an ebook edition were half the price, I suspect there wouldn’t be too many takers at $500.

That 'free' online access with my library membership is looking better every day. Although I and others did spring for the CD version back in the day.

[montalex]

I wonder if the ram and processor on a Kindle could even handle an OED. Even the Webster's Collegiate tends to freeze my old Kindle 3.

Originally Posted by montalex

I wonder if the ram and processor on a Kindle could even handle an OED. Even the Webster's Collegiate tends to freeze my old Kindle 3.

Interesting. How many MB is the file?

I've noticed current Kindles and Kobos seem to easily handle very large files, once they're indexed. For example, I have a study Bible that's huge, in the range of 50MB, and both the Kindle and the Kobo open it easily, in a few seconds. Some of the open source apps like KOReader struggle with those huge files that have thousands of links and paragraphs in them--it'll literally take like 10 minutes to open a book. :-)

The OED of course, would be an even far larger file. You could wrap it all in a single epub container, and split internally into many indexed files. No idea how performant it would be with something that huge. Obviously upload/download would be a pain.

[HarryT]

I suspect there wouldn't be a real problem. The number of "words" (and hence the size of the index) isn't dramatically larger than that of a smaller dictionary; the real difference is in the length of the entry for each word. The Kindle doesn't load a whole book into memory; it just loads the single HTML or XML file corresponding to the part of the book you're reading.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suspect there wouldn't be a real problem. The number of "words" (and hence the size of the index) isn't dramatically larger than that of a smaller dictionary; the real difference is in the length of the entry for each word. The Kindle doesn't load a whole book into memory; it just loads the single HTML or XML file corresponding to the part of the book you're reading.

Yes that sounds exactly right to me. That's why you can have a really huge file in an epub--which is really just a big zipped file container--and yet have a book that performs pretty well in your reader if the content is split into many reasonable-sized files. Calibre defaults to 260K when converting and splitting large files, if I remember correctly. As long as the reader has everything indexed and can quickly find the file it needs, loading shouldn't be a problem.

With the OED, yes. I've always thought the essential diff between OED and regular dictionaries, is all the historical citations showing usage. Which is the stuff I really want.

I think it boils down to cost, and demand. As you said earlier, OED would probably have to charge a lot higher than most would be willing to pay. Their target market tends to be academic libraries. I'm thankful to at least have online access through the local library.

[HarryT]

Yes, as an alumnus of my university I get life-long full online (and physical) access to the university library, including the OED and the entire JSTOR academic journal system which makes available the complete text of hundreds of journals. A wonderful resource!

[Lady Stardust]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suspect that the licensing costs would be the main issue. A personal subscription to the full OED costs £17 a year.

According to this website it’s £215 a year and now reduced to £90 a year until July https://public.oed.com/help/how-to-s...ndividuals_row

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lady Stardust

According to this website it’s £215 a year and now reduced to £90 a year until July https://public.oed.com/help/how-to-s...ndividuals_row

Not according to the Oxford University Press web site, which is where you buy the subscription from:

https://global.oup.com/academic/prod...&lang=en&cc=gb

It says £16.66 for a 1 year subscription.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not according to the Oxford University Press web site, which is where you buy the subscription from:

https://global.oup.com/academic/prod...&lang=en&cc=gb

It says £16.66 for a 1 year subscription.

@Harry: Whoa--that is the best price I've ever seen for personal OED access. That would be just over $22 US.

It says UK on the site, do you believe US customers could get this as well? Also, I'm not totally clear, is this the total cost for the annual subscription, or is this a MONTHLY subscription fee?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by maximus83

@Harry: Whoa--that is the best price I've ever seen for personal OED access. That would be just over $22 US.

It says UK on the site, do you believe US customers could get this as well? Also, I'm not totally clear, is this the total cost for the annual subscription, or is this a MONTHLY subscription fee?

It says it’s for an annual subscription, but what I’m not 100% clear about is whether it actually is for the OED or for some other range of Oxford dictionaries. Looking at the link, what’s your view on this?

Originally Posted by HarryT

It says it’s for an annual subscription, but what I’m not 100% clear about is whether it actually is for the OED or for some other range of Oxford dictionaries. Looking at the link, what’s your view on this?

After reading that and clicking around on their site a bit more, it looks like this subscription may be for a collection of their best dictionary, thesaurus, style guide, and other useful reference works by OUP, bundled into a single package for online access, but excluding online OED. Given that, and the other pricing that @Lady Stardust linked on their site (the $90 for annual access due to their 90th anniversary), I'm guessing this package for $16.66(UK)/$22.15(US), is the collection of ref works but not OED.

[HarryT]

I suspect you're right. It's not at all clear! If the price LS found is correct, it simply emphasises the fact that licensing the OED for the Kindle would almost certainly be prohibitively expensive .

[Lady Stardust]

Yes, it’s different dictionaries. OED online has 600,000 words and the premium ones have more than 350,000.

To bring this thread to some sort of resolution, it seems like here are a few useful takeaways for Kindle users wanting a top-notch dictionary. Some of this may be old news to long-time Kindle owners, but since I had about a 6-7 year gap since I last bought a Kindle of any type, this was all new/useful info to me.

* There's currently no *legal* way that I can find to get full OED on your Kindle. Best options if you need OED are a physical or online library you already have access to, or the $90 annual subscription, which currently is a steal compared to their normal rate.
* The built-in Oxford English, and Oxford American, 1-volume dictionaries are still very good (though they don't include the historical citations of the OED). I am a total dictionary nerd, I own probably too many :-), and for 1-volume dictionaries if I were buying a paper dictionary today, I'd either get one of these Oxfords or the latest American Heritage dictionary. I'm not aware of any included dictionary on any other device that equals these for comprehensiveness and quality. The Oxford dictionaries have a very evidence-based approach where they scan a vast library of English usage to create their definitions, it's one of the most rigorous approaches I'm aware of to build an accurate, modern English dictionary. They describe their method in detail in the prefatory material.
* If you want, you can try what I did to get the latest (third) editions of both Oxford dictionaries on your Kindle. It appears that new Kindles, like the PW4 I recently got, include the older 2nd edition Oxfords by default. And I never did find a way to manually update to the 3rd editions by yourself. But if you contact service as I did, they should be willing to "push" the 3rd editions to your device. I'd also be interested to learn if anyone else is getting brand new Kindles that include the third editions of the Oxfords by default.