Simple use with huge sideloaded content?

[gwing1]

Hi,

I'm looking for recommendations for an ereader usable (i.e. extremely simple) by my aged parent with simple searching by author or title on a huge sideloaded library.

I will probably load up 10,000+ books (prefereably in epub format) onto it so will I guess need it to take an sdcard and have e-ink display but otherwise ease of use is more important than anything else. I did try him with my old rooted nook but that proved too difficult when using non B&N content as accessing the search facilities was a bit arcane. I'm not up to speed on current devices so looking for advice here.

Rgds,
Rob.

[Shopaholic]

Why do you feel you need to have 10,000+ books on a reader. You'll bog it down to a crawl and practically render it useless. It will not be easy to use at that point. Search features, any of them on any device, will be useless when you expect it to search through that much text.

Do you or your parent read that fast that they need that much content on the device? What's wrong with a few hundred or even 1000 and then swap out already read books?

[3dusty]

I just got my mom a kobo mini. It is light weight and doesn't hurt her wrist to hold like the nexus 7 tablet. She has had no problem using it. But it is limited to the number of books it will hold.

[pwnn]

I assume you have the Nook First Ed. The Nook Touch treats side-loaded content the same as B&N downloaded when it comes to search for titles or authors. To search you just touch the bottom of the screen and "find" comes up as an option and you type in what you want and a list will come up.

I don't know how fast it would still be be with 10,000 files but I have about 1500 on my Nook, on the device and card, and don't notice it being any slower than when I had just a handful.

[jlynton]

Nook simple touch would be good, the alternatives as far as I can tell would be pocketbook, bookeen oddyssey, onyx boox. Basically any reader that uses directory navigation as opposed to some kind of indexing system should work well.

[jlynton]

Originally Posted by Shopaholic

Why do you feel you need to have 10,000+ books on a reader. You'll bog it down to a crawl and practically render it useless. It will not be easy to use at that point. Search features, any of them on any device, will be useless when you expect it to search through that much text.

Do you or your parent read that fast that they need that much content on the device? What's wrong with a few hundred or even 1000 and then swap out already read books?

A lot of people, myself included, just want to carry their libraries around. We couldn't do that in the olden days, please indulge us now.

[gwing1]

[QUOTE=Shopaholic;2617736]Why do you feel you need to have 10,000+ books on a reader. You'll bog it down to a crawl and practically render it useless.[\QUOTE]

Yes I have seen that on some devices. Of course there is no need for it to slow down like that except for inexcusably poor software design and/or a deliberate intention to discourage such large libraries.

It will not be easy to use at that point. Search features, any of them on any device, will be useless when you expect it to search through that much text.

Do you or your parent read that fast that they need that much content on the device? What's wrong with a few hundred or even 1000 and then swap out already read books?

Far from it. But he will be away for 8 months at a time and take everything he may want with him rather than having the luxury of just loading up a few books from time to time. If the practical limit of available devices is only 1000 books or so then so be it - but I hope for better.

[gwing1]

Originally Posted by pwnn

I assume you have the Nook First Ed. The Nook Touch treats side-loaded content the same as B&N downloaded when it comes to search for titles or authors. To search you just touch the bottom of the screen and "find" comes up as an option and you type in what you want and a list will come up.

I don't know how fast it would still be be with 10,000 files but I have about 1500 on my Nook, on the device and card, and don't notice it being any slower than when I had just a handful.

Spot on, it is the Nook first Edition I currently have. Thanks for the recommendations from yourself and others for the newer Nook Touch. I''ll have a look at that, the only thing I see in the reviews to dislike is the difficulty of organising a large library with Calibre etc. not able to do that to do that off the machine - but I found a post suggesting a workaround on that.

[Shopaholic]

Originally Posted by jlynton

A lot of people, myself included, just want to carry their libraries around. We couldn't do that in the olden days, please indulge us now.

I have a 160gb iPod classic along with a couple of smaller Nanos - 8gb & 16gb. I carry all my music, audiobooks, Podcasts etc. The difference between that and carrying 10,000 books is that it doesn't bog down the iPod. It's easy to understand the desire to hear a certain song when in a particular mood and they're easy to find by album, artist, title. That's not the case with books on a reader.

I understand that some people want it. I just have no comprehension as to why. Unless someone is a speed reader, I can't fathom why someone would need to carry 10,000 books. Especially when all devices - anything - holds only a finite amount of product; songs, books, files etc. In my experience just about everything runs slower when it's near its maximum capacity. *shrugs*

[Istvan diVega]

I have 7000+ books on my PRS-950. With PRS+ I can access folders on an SD card and there is no slow-down whatsoever. I would think (although I don't actually know) that as long as the chosen ereader can do the same, then all will be well. Personally I have no comprehension as to why anyone would want to do it differently.

In practice that means a reader from Onyx, Pocketbook or Bookeen, so maybe you'd best enquire in those forums and see if there aren't some people who use their just as you've suggested.

[pwnn]

Originally Posted by gwing1

Spot on, it is the Nook first Edition I currently have. Thanks for the recommendations from yourself and others for the newer Nook Touch. I''ll have a look at that, the only thing I see in the reviews to dislike is the difficulty of organising a large library with Calibre etc. not able to do that to do that off the machine - but I found a post suggesting a workaround on that.

Some people use scripts to organize with Calibre.

Since Nook has a file/folder system I create folders by genre. If I had even more books I'd probably make subfolders by author under genre. I use Calibre to sort them before I "save to disk" (The Nook) but I could just as easily just drag and drop folders and files in Windows

A topic discussing readers with folder systems

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=218678