Amazon Announces Kindle Colorsoft

[Cactus Chef]

A Color Kindle is of zero interest to me personally, but we all know that the vast majority of the e-reader populace (especially in the United States) gives zero ****s about new e-reader technology until Amazon does it, so if nothing else, this will probably spur some new developments across the field and push Kobo to step up their game with subsequent color e-ink screens. Then I'll be interested.

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Not exactly. Several other brands still offer physical buttons on their ereaders.

There are always a few companies that will cater to a niche market, but Amazon sure isn't going to be one of them.

As much as I'd like to try a Kobo reader, I simply don't have the patience right now to strip the DRM off all my unread Kindle eBooks, convert them to epub, and then copy them to said Kobo reader. Maybe, if I end up hating the Colorsoft, I'll do that next time around.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

There are always a few companies that will cater to a niche market, but Amazon sure isn't going to be one of them.

As much as I'd like to try a Kobo reader, I simply don't have the patience right now to strip the DRM off all my unread Kindle eBooks, convert them to epub, and then copy them to said Kobo reader. Maybe, if I end up hating the Colorsoft, I'll do that next time around.

I was stripping the DRM from my Kindle titles so I could back them up to Calibre even before I got a Kobo. I don't trust Amazon not to one day yank a book I legally purchased out of my library, so, I back up everything I buy from them as soon as I can.

The bulk conversion of the AZWs to EPUBs is really not that difficult or time-consuming once you've got them decrypted. The KindleUnpack plugin works great.

[jamelon13]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

There are always a few companies that will cater to a niche market, but Amazon sure isn't going to be one of them.

As much as I'd like to try a Kobo reader, I simply don't have the patience right now to strip the DRM off all my unread Kindle eBooks, convert them to epub, and then copy them to said Kobo reader. Maybe, if I end up hating the Colorsoft, I'll do that next time around.

Now, I don't have thousands of books or anything, but it was not much trouble to use Calibre on the 400 I do have. After using my Kobos for a while, I love the page turn buttons and the much better UI. I don't think I will be going back to Kindles anytime soon. I am very comfortable in my niche.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

There are always a few companies that will cater to a niche market, but Amazon sure isn't going to be one of them.

As much as I'd like to try a Kobo reader, I simply don't have the patience right now to strip the DRM off all my unread Kindle eBooks, convert them to epub, and then copy them to said Kobo reader. Maybe, if I end up hating the Colorsoft, I'll do that next time around.

Whatever floats your boat, of course, but you won't have to do that with all your Kindle books at once; after all, you're not going to read all of them at the same time. You can do a few and then some more next time and so on and so forth.

As to myself, I started to disinfect my purchases with the very first DRMed ebook I bought some 15 years ago; it was unacceptable to me NOT to make a personal backup of all my ebooks. So I never had a huge backlog to clean up. But I know I'm in the minority. Most folks don't want to be bothered with such things.

[cgsmom]

I know I said that I wouldn't buy another Kindle because they don't have page turn buttons. But, I love looking at new devices. I am looking at the Paperwhite Signature Edition. The page says "Save 20% with Trade-in" When I click on the Trade-in, it says $30 dollars for my Paperwhite 3.

Does that mean $30 in addition to 20% off? It also says I get $10 off if I use my Discover Card Cash-back bonus.

If all that is true, I can get the Paperwhite Signature Edition for $119.99. I might have to think about that. (Here we go again. I can talk myself into anything. LOL)

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

As much as I like my original Oasis, both the buttons and its ergonomics, time marches on. It's a replay of why Blackberries no longer exist: overall people don't want physical keyboards on mobile phones.

I've held out long enough hoping Amazon would release a new Oasis, have officially given up hope, and ordered a Colorsoft. I've got two weeks to change my mind!

My hands did not find Oasis ergonomic at all, and I tried various 'mitigations'.

I also ordered a Colorsoft, after discovering I could get trade-in credit for a PW4 equal to that of my PW SE. I expect the color to be at least somewhat better than the Kobo and PocketBook devices I have and it will be better for comics because of Panel View and facing pages support.

Any reports on whether these are using MTP for USB transfer, like Scribe?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by cgsmom

Does that mean $30 in addition to 20% off?

Yes.

But if you’re not in a hurry, why not wait and see if there’s a discount for Black Friday? There may not be, for such new devices, but it’s not impossible. One thing, if you’re going to do the Black Friday ploy, it’s a good idea to do your trade-in in advance of the sale date (within 30 days). Usually if the device is registered to your account, they credit you the trade-in value up front, but sometimes they get shirty and want to have it in hand, first. And with a BF sale, that would mean the sale price had ended.

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

As much as I'd like to try a Kobo reader, I simply don't have the patience right now to strip the DRM off all my unread Kindle eBooks, convert them to epub, and then copy them to said Kobo reader. Maybe, if I end up hating the Colorsoft, I'll do that next time around.

Might want to start now anyway. Amazon only continues to make removing DRM more and more difficult.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by tomsem

The description calls it Kindle Scribe 1st generation - 2024 release. I think the internals are essentially the same, the only change is the cosmetic bezel redesign (which probably removes the 'gap' as well).

The new features will be coming to the existing Scribe as well. I'm not going to upgrade just for a new bezel.

Me neither. I’ll wait and see what happens.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by cgsmom

I know I said that I wouldn't buy another Kindle because they don't have page turn buttons. But, I love looking at new devices. I am looking at the Paperwhite Signature Edition. The page says "Save 20% with Trade-in" When I click on the Trade-in, it says $30 dollars for my Paperwhite 3.

Does that mean $30 in addition to 20% off? It also says I get $10 off if I use my Discover Card Cash-back bonus.

If all that is true, I can get the Paperwhite Signature Edition for $119.99. I might have to think about that. (Here we go again. I can talk myself into anything. LOL)

Yes, once they accept your device (after you have sent it in) you get a gift card for the $30 and a code for the 20% off discount.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by JoeC

I fell out of my chair when I saw this.

It's good to see that many were wrong about Amazon abandoning the Kindle. Competition is good. Let the ereader wars continue!

It turns out that Amazon will also use the Kaleido 3 overlay for color. So it's just as bad.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

If your second paragraph is a quote, then it's 28 hours. 1/2 hour per day.

Yeah, my mistake. It is 28 hours. That's not all that good (IMHO).

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I was stripping the DRM from my Kindle titles so I could back them up to Calibre even before I got a Kobo. I don't trust Amazon not to one day yank a book I legally purchased out of my library, so, I back up everything I buy from them as soon as I can.

For me, the wake up call for removing DRM was in the dim distant past when one company I had purchased several ebooks from went out of business leaving me with books which I could no longer read on my computer. At that point, if there was a way to remove DRM from ebooks, I used it.

Years later (2011-2012???), Microsoft decided to shut down the servers which allowed me to read their .lit format ebooks. I was happy that I had embraced ConvertLIT (despite it's rather unfortunate short name) and so ended up losing only 2 books which ConvertLIT was unable to remove the DRM from. At that point, I made a conscious decision that if I was unable to remove DRM so I could make a backup copy, I would not buy the book. Actually, Microsoft is now a 2 time loser since they dropped ebooks from the Microsoft Store and turned off the DRM servers for those books in 2019.

I'm not worried about Amazon yanking a book. I will have a backup even if that happens again. I am worried that most ebook publishers seem to treat the purchaser as an idiot who won't care about access to their books in the future. Despite a lack of evidence that DRM reduces piracy (in music downloads for example, low priced non-DRMmed music did not lead to an increase in piracy).

Perhaps this discussion could be moved to a more relevant thread? DRM and backups is not a good fit for this thread.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

And the Kobo Libra has buttons. I think the Kindle Color is overpriced right now.

I don't mind not having buttons. But as long as the buttons are not in the way for holding it's OK. But yes, the Colorsoft is overpriced.