Onyx T68 - Is it right for you

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Yes, but IMHO, mgmueller is overdoing it. If his time it as important as he makes it out to be, even being on this forum will cost millions.

How can one overdo something, by not spending time on it?
I simply don't care about backup and such or the few dozen titles I may buy twice or triple per year. We're talking about a few hundred Euros per year tops. And that's exactly my point. Spending time on something, that's paying almost zero dividends.
On the other hand, I already expressed: If someone is doing it for fun, that's an entirely different topic. But then it's not about savings or dividends, which had been the original argument of some.
Same about me being in the forum:
a.) I'm always doing it in parallel to something else, hence my frequent typos or mixing of English and German spelling. Usually I'm checking the forum while being in a conference call. Right now I'm waiting on my BlueRay rip being done and starting to watch all episodes of "Columbo" again.
b.) I'm not joining the discussions, to save any money. Quite the contrary, usually I find inspiration for another gadget I have to buy.

To repeat myself:
I've bought about 2500 eBooks over the years.
Downloading them to the PC, stripping from DRM, converting to another format easily takes 1 to 5 minutes per book (depending on whether I touch the metadata).
That's 40 to 200 hours.
I read about 100 books per year.
If I re-purchase 20 out of those 100 books (I do so less often than some years ago, I more likely will switch to the respective reader, but just for argument's sake), that's € 200.
Spending 40 to 200 hours, to save € 200? Financially, this doesn't make any sense at all (as an example: Minimum wage in Germany will be € 8,50 next year). Even if I would re-purchase majority of my meager 100 books I read per year, it would be a doubtful savings model.
And even if I only would spend time for the few books I'd have to re-purchase, figures wouldn't work out.
That's all I have been saying/writing. Not even close to millions, quite the contrary.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Yes, but IMHO, mgmueller is overdoing it. If his time it as important as he makes it out to be, even being on this forum will cost millions.

BTW: I never said, my time is important.
It is not, I've got more than enough spare time and limit my working time to the bare minimum = my time is NOT important.

But still I consider, what to spend my time for. It either should be fun or relaxing or productive. In the perfect world all of those three at once.

Moving my books around, converting them and such is no fun for me (anymore). I used to care about inconsistencies, like for example author's names (James Patterson vs. Patterson, James vs. JAMES PATTERSON and so on) or book titles. But I don't anymore, I rather jump right into reading instead of bothering.
And I never found it difficult, to find my books in my library. Either I have an idea what I'd like to read and find it quickly enough via title or author or I have no specific idea what to read and scroll through my library. The latter being one of the things I love about eBooks: I can scroll through a library of hundreds and thousands of books, wherever I am.
I wouldn't hate to use calibre, but it simply doesn't have enough benefit for me anymore.

So the "fun" aspect, for me, doesn't apply.
And if you check out my brief calculation in the post above, it wouldn't be productive either.

Some state the "backup" aspect.
So far, 3 or 4 of my merchants ceased business. They warned me months ahead and in most cases some other merchant did jump in anyway. Kobo for Sony and WHSmith and some similar case I don't quite remember.
There was a single case, where I would have lost some 500 books: Microsoft dropping the .lit format.
I think I even would be able to still install the reader and still use the books. But in that case I did have backups and DRM-free copies. But I've never used them. I've still got them, but probably won't need them ever...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Yes, but IMHO, mgmueller is overdoing it. If his time it as important as he makes it out to be, even being on this forum will cost millions.

Sorry, but I can't resist.
I've just done a quick calculation:
Over the years, I have posted 3.054 posts, you have 3.256 posts.
What should we assume per post? 3 minutes?
Thats's about 150 hours. Only posting, not considering reading other threads in addition.
The average service provider in Germany (similar in the Netherlands) bills € 60 to € 90 per hour (there are consultants with > € 400, but let's not overdo it).
So each of us could have earned > € 10.000, instead of posting.
That's 1000 books, more than the average consumer ever will buy...

[FinancialWar]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

To turn pages in zoomed PDF on the Aura HD, use one of the two following methods:

1) Tap the side of the screen along the right edge. The page will turn forward. If you tap along the left side of the screen, the page will turn back.

2) Drag the page until you see a black bar with an arrow. Tap the arrow. The page will turn.

I have already return it.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by FinancialWar

I have already return it.

If PDFs are your main focus: Maybe you can get one of the old iRex readers?
I loved all 3 of them for their PDF capabilities.
They've had what I called "intelligent zoom": Via Stylus you could mark any area of the screen and explode it to full screen. Those settings could be saved for the entire document. Great for cropping margins and such.
I think, the PocketBook readers with stylus (9xx and so on, if I remember correctly) have a similar feature.
iRex 1000 was close to A4/letter format, so most PDFs could be displayed almost in their original size.
From time to time I see iRex readers even in the flea market here on mobileread.

[FinancialWar]

Where can I buy them? They are impossible to find. Especially in Australia.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by FinancialWar

Where can I buy them? They are impossible to find. Especially in Australia.

Just found an iRex 1000 in the flea market: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...50&postcount=1
The seller states only shipment to Europe, but even additional freight to Australia wouldn't be that expensive.

I frequently order from the US.
Given the conversion rate, it's affordable enough. No savings, after customs and taxes I end up the same price as when buying directly in Europe. But if items simply aren't available here...
I've just checked dhl.com: Shipment to Australia isn't much more expensive than to Europe.
It probably won't make sense for you, to order in Europe - too expensive, even without shipment.
But ordering from the US should be working? Or are customs and taxes killing it for you?

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

How can one overdo something, by not spending time on it?
I simply don't care about backup and such or the few dozen titles I may buy twice or triple per year. We're talking about a few hundred Euros per year tops. And that's exactly my point. Spending time on something, that's paying almost zero dividends.
On the other hand, I already expressed: If someone is doing it for fun, that's an entirely different topic. But then it's not about savings or dividends, which had been the original argument of some.
Same about me being in the forum:
a.) I'm always doing it in parallel to something else, hence my frequent typos or mixing of English and German spelling. Usually I'm checking the forum while being in a conference call. Right now I'm waiting on my BlueRay rip being done and starting to watch all episodes of "Columbo" again.
b.) I'm not joining the discussions, to save any money. Quite the contrary, usually I find inspiration for another gadget I have to buy.

To repeat myself:
I've bought about 2500 eBooks over the years.
Downloading them to the PC, stripping from DRM, converting to another format easily takes 1 to 5 minutes per book (depending on whether I touch the metadata).
That's 40 to 200 hours.
I read about 100 books per year.
If I re-purchase 20 out of those 100 books (I do so less often than some years ago, I more likely will switch to the respective reader, but just for argument's sake), that's € 200.
Spending 40 to 200 hours, to save € 200? Financially, this doesn't make any sense at all (as an example: Minimum wage in Germany will be € 8,50 next year). Even if I would re-purchase majority of my meager 100 books I read per year, it would be a doubtful savings model.
And even if I only would spend time for the few books I'd have to re-purchase, figures wouldn't work out.
That's all I have been saying/writing. Not even close to millions, quite the contrary.

You'd actually have a point with your money-saving argument if you were being paid for your free/spare time. You are not.
If you have to re-purchase 20 books because you lost access to them then that is down to you own fault; you are spending money that you could have used for other things if you'd just taken a few moments to archive your book properly.

[HarryT]

Can we all simply agree that we each do what works best for us? Personally I find that time invested in maintaining my Calibre library more than repays itself. mgmueller finds that this is not the case for him. Everybody is different.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can we all simply agree that we each do what works best for us? Personally I find that time invested in maintaining my Calibre library more than repays itself. mgmueller finds that this is not the case for him. Everybody is different.

Agreed.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by ST-One

You'd actually have a point with your money-saving argument if you were being paid for your free/spare time. You are not.
If you have to re-purchase 20 books because you lost access to them then that is down to you own fault; you are spending money that you could have used for other things if you'd just taken a few moments to archive your book properly.

We won't find much common ground here (and don't have to), but to conclude this:

"..your money-saving argument": You've mixed up arguments.
I never reasoned about "saving money". Exactly the opposite.
I've reasoned about how (or on which task) to spend my time.

"...if you were being paid for your free/spare time": Here's the difference in our perceptions. You're thinking in unit of times. I'm thinking in output/result.
Your result would be spending an hour or so on the PC. My result might be making a call, sending an email, driving to the cinema or restaurant, preparing a trip, ...

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

My result might be making a call, sending an email, driving to the cinema or restaurant, preparing a trip, ...

And still you'd have lost 200 € via the re-purchase of the books; money you could have spent in the cinema, the restaurant or on your trip.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by ST-One

You'd actually have a point with your money-saving argument if you were being paid for your free/spare time. You are not...

Not for my spare time.
But if I "work" with calibre, I could very well do other work in that time as well.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by ST-One

And still you'd have lost 200 € via the re-purchase of the books; money you could have spent in the cinema, the restaurant or on your trip.

We're turning in circles, but I've got time .

When reading at night in the hotel, I certainly wouldn't start downloading on the PC, stripping from DRM, importing into calibre and so on.
So I would have to process my entire library in advance, not just the 20 books I else may have to buy double per year.
Then we end up with the 40+ hours I had extrapolated in post #61 for my library of 2500 purchased books.
40+ hours for "saving" € 200?
Your argument was, those 40+ hours couldn't be considered, because nobody would pay me for them.
But that's too limited a view.
First of all: If I "work" in calibre, I as well could do some "real" work = write an email, make some call or whatever.
Second of all: I could find other areas of cost optimizations. For example, in 40+ hours I could plan my next 20+ business trips and save manifold on hotels, tickets and stuff.

40+ hours for fun? Great! I'm spending more time every single week with my gadgets without ever considering dividends.
40+ hours for "saving" € 200? Doesn't compute.
But to each his own calculation...

[aceflor]

Gosh mg, these posts sure are costing you a fortune...