advantages to jailbreaking

[cylemmulo]

Hi well I got my new kindle paperwhite and saw that people jailbreak them and I kinda scratch my head on it. I see some people like tether their 3g kindles and stuff but don't see much else useful. I tried googling but I can't find like a list could someone tell me some useful advantages to jailbreaking my kindle?

thanks!

[jhempel24]

well, I'm trying to work with Calibre collections at the moment, but not having much luck. I think that is the only benefit for me so far...unless I can get dropbox on it and download books directly onto my Kindle Paperwhite

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by cylemmulo

Hi well I got my new kindle paperwhite and saw that people jailbreak them and I kinda scratch my head on it. I see some people like tether their 3g kindles and stuff but don't see much else useful. I tried googling but I can't find like a list could someone tell me some useful advantages to jailbreaking my kindle?

thanks!

Jailbreaking is a pretty useless act by itself. No need to jailbreak, unless something you want to install to the PW requires it. That is pretty much everything that did not come from Amazon. The jailbreak does not give you any special powers, all it does is let you install non-official updates. If you see tethering as something useful, then you came to the wrong place. Please see the sticky Forum Policy: Special Offers and Tethering for further information. Check out the Developer Corner sub-forum. It is full of usefull stuff, and most everything there requires a jailbreak.

[Lyn2012]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

The jailbreak does not give you any special powers, all it does is let you install non-official updates.

I beg to differ here, to me jailbreaking isn't so much wanting to add apps that the PW wasn't designed for, nor to use the browser in other ways, it is to add functionality to the device that IMHO should have been there out of the box.

Jailbreaking and having an enhanced PW is one of my reasons for keeping it, before I discovered the Developer Forum I was ready to send my PW back due to its lack of flexibility. As it is my first Kindle I couldn't believe that it didn't support hyphenation without jailbreaking, also there was no way to import collections from my computer - much more useful than on the device itself, and the small selection of font sizes available, many of them taken up with extremely large or small sizes I would never use.

Thanks to the Developer Forum I now have a PW that supports hyphenation, (no more big annoying gaps at the end of lines), my collections are imported from Calibre, (no need to mess around on the device), and I've got rid of the very large and very small font sizes that I will never use, and replaced them with more intermediate sizes that I will use - no more switching between two sizes one of which is slightly too large and the other too small. Another advantage that I haven't tried yet is to be able to use your own screensavers, including having the screensaver as the cover of your current book.

Most of these enhancements that require JB on a PW come as standard on other makes of readers. Jailbreaking is just bringing increased functionality to the PW.

[Shack70]

I have the original Kindle Keyboard (Kindle 3G) and jailbroke it to add custom screen savers to it. The only other thing that I would jailbreak it for it custom fonts, but im happy with the fonts already installed. Once jailbroken you can also install other stuff such as a reader to read epub books. I find it simpler to just convert the books with Calibre.

If you are happy with the way your reader works stock then leave it alone

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Lyn2012

I beg to differ here, to me jailbreaking isn't so much wanting to add apps that the PW wasn't designed for, nor to use the browser in other ways, it is to add functionality to the device that IMHO should have been there out of the box.

Jailbreaking and having an enhanced PW is one of my reasons for keeping it, before I discovered the Developer Forum I was ready to send my PW back due to its lack of flexibility. As it is my first Kindle I couldn't believe that it didn't support hyphenation without jailbreaking, also there was no way to import collections from my computer - much more useful than on the device itself, and the small selection of font sizes available, many of them taken up with extremely large or small sizes I would never use.

Thanks to the Developer Forum I now have a PW that supports hyphenation, (no more big annoying gaps at the end of lines), my collections are imported from Calibre, (no need to mess around on the device), and I've got rid of the very large and very small font sizes that I will never use, and replaced them with more intermediate sizes that I will use - no more switching between two sizes one of which is slightly too large and the other too small. Another advantage that I haven't tried yet is to be able to use your own screensavers, including having the screensaver as the cover of your current book.

Most of these enhancements that require JB on a PW come as standard on other makes of readers. Jailbreaking is just bringing increased functionality to the PW.

How is this disagreeing with me? If you only jailbreak your PW, then you still won't have anything new. You had to install a few additional updates to make JBPatch work (for your hyphenation). The jailbreak made it possible so that the update did not fail. By itself pretty useless (ignore the changed diagnostic mode for a while). *shrug*

p.s.: You quoted me out of context. While it still holds true in itself, it makes a lot more sense if you had included the last 2 sentences as well:

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Check out the Developer Corner sub-forum. It is full of usefull stuff, and most everything there requires a jailbreak.