Paperwhite Disgust

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Standard textbooks that are PDFs? What size do they average?

The 1100-3500 estimation is based on a reasonable 1MB-per-book estimate, which is a little on the large side... for books that are mostly text, which is where e-ink ereaders excel.

Anything larger than 1MB should probably be read on a tablet, unless it is simply one of those giant omnibus/collections that are tens of megabytes simply because they contain 50 books or so -- those are, technically, 50 books in one file.

This might give you an idea of how PDFs stack up against the other formats size wise:

I have an ebook from Project Gutenburg of "The Adventures Of Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi. As an epub it is 98KB, as a plain text it is 221KB, and as a PDF it is 751KB. Based on the above, I wouldn't be surprised if many textbook PDFs exceed 1MB.

[BearMountainBooks]

What you read is what you (or your character) are.

No. I read and write characters that are nothing like me. The Alex Hughes series involves an addict. They are noir. My life, Thank God, is not stuck in his world or anything like it. I could go on. But I'm pretty sure that every romance reader who reads the Billionaire series is NOT a billionaire. Maybe they all WISH to be one, but that really has nothing to do with the statement.

In fact, many of us read to read about people who are NOT like us.

Okay, I'm OT. Sorry.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The Amazon AZW3 format is a pretty good equivalent to EPUB, and the second of the two (not half a dozen) Amazon formats is MOBI which is only supposed to be a fallback for older devices and non-updated books. There is also AZK (iOS app only) which is the Google Play books of Amazon -- some incomprehensible app format full of javascript -- as well as the Print Replicas which fulfill the same role as Adobe PDFs.

All three formats (AZW3, MOBI, EPUB) are roughly the same sizes. If books are bigger, it is because there is more in them (either text, images, or embedded fonts) and not because the format is intrinsically bigger. In act, my few ADE ebooks average 3-4X the size of my Amazon books, for no good reason -- a conversion in calibre makes it much smaller. Amazon seems to have higher standards for using space in ebooks wisely.

In short, books are no bigger than they used to, except in terms of how the authors/publishers make them... a problem that applies equally to every bookstore.



Prime is not being shoved down anyone's throat. Please explain to me why I need Prime any more than I did 3 years ago. No old stuff is being made into Prime exclusives, only new features are being added to the Amazon ecosystem, and start off as Prime features. These are all also things that anyone else who does offer them charges membership fees for as well.

Amazon is fine with you having 1000 books on your ereader. This is possible with the PW1/2, and easily with the Touch/Keyboard which can hold about 3500.

At a certain point, they have judged that the vast majority of Kindle owners do not need the extra storage, based on the fact that they never use it, and have saved everyone money by lowering the cost of making Kindles, allowing them to keep charging the same low price after adding on new features (think frontlight) that people will actually use.

Don't keep all your books on your ereader. Keep them on your hard drive (dedicated storage exists for a reason) and merely keep the next few months worth of reading materials (taking into account lengthy TBRs, keeping favorites handy, eclectic tastes and being in the middle of 6 books at once, I manage to do precisely this) on your ereader. Rotate as necessary.

Amazon uses more ebook file types than anyone else: AZW, AZW3, PRC, Mobi, HTMLZ. I see no reason why they couldn't just use Epub.

I have a Roku with the Amazon video app on it. Amazon just upgraded the app a few months back. The new app has Amazon Prime in two of the first three categories. To find your purchased videos you now have to go to the bottom of the page through all of the Prime movies and suggestions. Amazon is obviously pushing Prime, and this is not the only place I've seen it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by conan50

Amazon uses more ebook file types than anyone else: AZW, AZW3, PRC, Mobi, HTMLZ. I see no reason why they couldn't just use Epub.

For excellent commercial reasons. Amazon sell the Kindle at cost price as a vehicle for content consumption: their own content. The last thing they want is to give away a Kindle and have people buy their content elsewhere. Yes, you can do that now, but few Kindle owners are aware of the fact. There is no conceivable reason that Amazon should use ePub, especially considering the fact that they dominate the (English-language, at least) market with their own format.

What commercial basis would you suggest for your recommendation that Amazon adopt the ePub format?

[janrey]

Originally Posted by crossi

The cloud wouldn't be quite so bad if it wasn't for the stupidity of the kindles being set up so that in order to remove a book from your device you first have to remove it from it's collection then remove it from the device. When you want to read it again you have to search through a hundred or so pages of archive, download it to your device and then put it back into it's proper collection(s). Too many steps. After going through the trouble of organizing all my books into collections I don't want to have to keep undoing and redoing it over and over again. Sort of makes collections pointless.

I've never had to do this. I have several "collections" of books and I can easily remove them from the device without removing them from the collection and if I redownload them they go right back into the collection they came from. I have the kindle keyboard but I can't imagine it's different for any other one.

[booklover6]

that explains it. You would be shocked out of your imagination to learn that it is quite different on the paper white.

Originally Posted by janrey

I've never had to do this. I have several "collections" of books and I can easily remove them from the device without removing them from the collection and if I redownload them they go right back into the collection they came from. I have the kindle keyboard but I can't imagine it's different for any other one.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by conan50

Amazon uses more ebook file types than anyone else: AZW, AZW3, PRC, Mobi, HTMLZ. I see no reason why they couldn't just use Epub.

AZW is a renamed MOBI file. PRC is an older version of MOBI, renamed to work on a PALM reader. Both are valid alternative extensions for MOBI, and are supported as such, PRC because people might still have some, so why not recognize them properly, and AZW because it is used specifically to refer to Amazon-purchased MOBIs, which may have DRM.

HTMLZ is a DeDRMed Topaz ebook (TPZ if downloaded from browser, AZW1 if downloaded via the ereader). It is a failed experiment that is fortunately rare, and only a few books should still be in that format. The only one I ever saw was a library loan of The Princess Bride, which oddly seems to be a very old edition that the Kindle Store doesn't sell, but which is still somehow linked to OverDrive.

So that leaves two Amazon formats: AZW3 and MOBI... just like I said.

If you are wondering why the Kindle can read so many formats, (in which case you have forgotten to mention PDF, TXT, and HTML.txt,) it is not alone in that respect...

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I can't see how having less font and formatting options makes it easier for people, unless they are near-total idiots. Are you suggesting that?

Because most people no matter how intelligent don't care about font OR formatting. It is a freaking edge case!

I am perfectly capable of using all those options as available in addition to making extensive use of the hacks, and I can assure you I am no near-total idiot. Nevertheless, I am grateful that the settings are not cluttered up with options I don't care about... I have never used any of them in my life. To be honest, I would like a hack to remove the overlay font button that IS there. (Although it isn't a high priority.) The Kindle is not targeted at the dumb, it is targeted at the people who don't freaking care!

I'm speaking in general and not only for me. Why do you and others confuse the two so frequently? And what's with all the bold underlines? Brand loyalty?

NO, it's called emphasis. I am irritated at the FUD and am attempting to point out to you how you are wrong. You want a Kindle, you can make it work for you.

That being said, if you want options, I really do recommend a Kobo. Clearly, the Paperwhite is not for you, so you can shove off now.

Originally Posted by Rizla

The other thing that would irk me about the PW2 options is the lack of narrower margins. Why not let the user use the whole screen? Would that lack, as eschwartz suggests, make it easier for users? But as he / she suggests, a user can jailbreak. But quite why Amazon doesn't include such a feature is beyond me.

I entirely agree that is a fail on Amazon's part. I said that font choices are not features most Kindle owners want, and jailbreaking is a valid path for those who prefer a Kindle over a Kobo for other reasons, yet want more font choices anyway.

Not that Amazon should offer tons of margin choices; they should simply fix the default.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by janrey

I've never had to do this. I have several "collections" of books and I can easily remove them from the device without removing them from the collection and if I redownload them they go right back into the collection they came from. I have the kindle keyboard but I can't imagine it's different for any other one.

Originally Posted by booklover6

that explains it. You would be shocked out of your imagination to learn that it is quite different on the paper white.

Indeed. The Kindle firmwares >=5.4.2 have "Cloud Collections" which are shared between supported devices. One epic fail of them is that all books in a collection are showed in it, regardless of whether the book is ondevice or not. The books currently in the cloud will show up grayed out, taking up space in the UI and making it rather pointless to delete books. (OK, you get more storage space, but more often it is the clutter that spurs the removal.)

[HarryT]

"Epic fail" in your humble opinion. Useful feature in mine.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Epic fail" in your humble opinion. Useful feature in mine.

It is an excellent place for having a setting to toggle. But if it was one or the other, then since people seem to dislike it more than like it, Amazon has failed in their target of making a clean simple UI that appeals to the majority.

[HarryT]

I totally agree that it should be togglable.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Not that Amazon should offer tons of margin choices; they should simply fix the default.

Agree. Three choices are fine ... but does anyone actually choose the (even) wider margins?

The trick of editing the HORIZONTAL_MARGIN setting in the reader.pref file fixes the margin issue nicely in the Kindle 4 -- I just wish there was a non-rooting solution in the Kindle Touch to do the same thing.

There's a couple reasons I may root the Touch -- to fix the margins and to change the translate setting from Bing to Google (I want Latin). I'll have to figure out the best, easiest hack available, I guess. I've already been able to add fonts without rooting, but I guess you can do a better job if you root it.

[conan50]

To take this discussion full circle, I just noticed the Kobo Glo has an sdcard slot, even though onboard memory is not great. Anyone here have a Kobo Glo? Any thoughts about the device?
Thanks.

[booklover6]

I have 2 Kobo Glo's. They are wonderful.