How’s the support for DRM-free ebooks? That was one of the things that drove a lot of people away from kindle in the first place…
I was wondering if we were gonna see Cory posting snarky comments here.
All ebook readers including the Kindle support DRM-free ebooks. Use Calibre to manage your ebook library. To load ebooks onto your Kindle (or Nook, or iPad, or Kobo, or Indiebound, or Sony, or whatever) plug it in to USB, when the “device” icon appears at the top, drag and drop your desired book there. Calibre will autoconvert it to whatever format your reader likes to eat. It’s seamless and you don’t have to worry about the format.
With the right plugins, Calibre can also remove DRM from books that you have purchased.
I also own a Paperwhite and less than half of what I read on it is purchased from Amazon. I agree, it’s the best reader on the market. You can easily buy a Paperwhite and read for years without buying an ebook from Amazon, if you prefer.
Personally I really like having the Kindle Paperwhite, the Android app on my phone, and the cloud reader that I use on my work PC during lunch all automatically sync to the last reading location of my current book. If you buy the audiobook from Amazon, that will autosync to your most recent position as well. This is a great feature.
I actually bought the paperwhite, but then returned it when I found the Kobo Aura to be superior. It supports micro sd, and pdfs natively. You can zoom and drag pages without it constantly refreshing, and the screen is flush with the bezel. Also there’s no extra bulk at the bottom.
I bought my kindle paperwhite in 2013 and I am very happy with it. I like the fact that it doesn’t clutter up my sleeping area and I don’t need extra storage space for books. Online ordering is great but this can’t be good for local business. I don’t really want to only buy books from one source in the future. I would love to have more control over the meta information on the display. I read before I sleep and a permanent on screen clock would be great, as opposed to having to pull down the menu bar to see the time.
I have a kindle 3G, but I also use my ipad. I’m not that averse to replacing my 3G, if it
a) has free cellular, which has come in handy a few times.
b) has search speeds that are comparable to my ipad
c) has better resolution, so that I might read pdfs without scrolling
Does the Aura have Sony-type collections management?
That’s my one gripe with the Kindle: I’ve used the Sony Readers for years and was so spoiled by the collections management; that I could have my entire Nero Wolfe collection listed in publication order (If I set t up that way in Calibre)
I read a lot of series.
The collections feature in the Kindle just sucks. Yes, you can have a collection, but you can only sort them by title or (I believe) modification date.
I’ve read that some Kindle users just rename all their books along the lines of “Harry Potter 1 - Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, etc, but come on, Amazon can’t handle metadata?
I love the Paperwhite screen and speed, but I’d drop it in a minute for a reader even close to “as good” if it had better data management.
As chance would have it the very first thing I read on mine was my copy of the Wool series that author Hugh Howey gave out to all attendees of the Boing Boing Ingenuity conference. It was easy to copy to the device from my computer, though obviously Amazon would be happiest if you just downloaded everything directly from their online store.
“Me, too!” :-). I am quite happy w/ my Aura, with the possible exception of Kobo trying to tell me (on the Home screen) what other books I will like. Like Kindle and Nook, you can install a Kobo-reader app on any platform IIRC and sync your library, etc. Frankly, given the 1984 CharlieFoxtrot and a couple other dick moves by Amazon, I really don’t trust a reader which can have its library remotely “modified” by the service provider, and so far as I know Kobo has no such capability.
I just bought one this weekend. It’s the first e-reader I’ve ever tried. I’m loving it so far.
I’m pretty ignorant of the latest developments, but what’s the “state of the art” when it comes to finding and identifying DRM free ebooks for use with the Kindle, or any other ereader for that matter? Whenever I’ve researched this in the past, all I’ve turned up is a lot of articles on removing the DRM from protected files, which I’m really not interested in doing: I want to support authors and publishers who are putting out DRM free stuff, and not support those that are using DRM. For instance, are any of the ebooks sold by Amazon DRM free? This difficulty is one of the main reasons why I continue buying print; getting sucked into an ecosystem that hasn’t caught up with music (I have no trouble finding DRM free music) isn’t something I want to deal with.
There are quite a few online stores that sell DRM free books.
smashwords.com and baenebooks.com are two of my favorites. Both have large free libraries.
But DeDrm (google it) isn’t just for piracy: I am a big believer in supporting authors too. But I use it on anything I buy from Amazon, because everything I own is in my Calibre library in both epub and mobi formats, because I do switch back and forth from time to time.
I buy nothing to download directly to my Kindle. Mostly because of the old screwup: If wifi is on, and I can download books from Amazon to the Kindle, then Amazon can also delete them if they choose. I don’t particularly WANT a bookstore on my reader, I just want it for… um… reading?
I like my first-gen Paperwhite, though I wish it was faster… page turns seem a tad slow, and active content games are impossible to play. But the backlight is great.
I buy most of my books from Amazon because I like syncing across devices (I read on Android sometimes as well). But I use Calibre to remove DRM from every Amazon book I buy as a backup…just in case Amazon ever does decide to wipe my library, I’ll just sideload or even get an EPub reader.
Remember that the author doesn’t usually have any control over DRM – that’s a publisher thing. It’s certainly good to support publishers who don’t require DRM, but on the other hand I want to read what I want to read, and it what I want to read has DRM, well…
I thought about getting a Paperwhite after I lost my Kindle Keyboard on a plane trip, but went with a secondhand KK instead because it has the Text-To-Speech feature.
TTS lets you listen to a book without having to buy the audio editions, which aren’t always available and are usually far more expensive when they are. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Kindles stopped having this feature just after Amazon bought Audible!
Admittedly the robot voice isn’t anything like as pleasant to listen to as a proper audiobook with a good narrator but it’s usually quite acceptable and can be applied to my personal documents as well.
I’ll keep my Nook. They had the “paper white” concept down before Kindle, and a great book store to back it up.
I’m not knocking Amazon, but for books, I give my business to the book store every time.
I hate the lag on epaper. Its atrocious. Other than that ts great stuff.
May favorite ebook reader is my Nook, rooted with the cyanogen mod to make it a regular tablet… making it a $139 Android tablet with a remarkably beautiful screen.
Best place to get DRM free ebooks? From pirates. Feel bad about not supporting authors? Paypal.
I love my paperwhite and consider it superior my favorite e-reader to date. My one disappointment was I like the page buttons on the side of the original kindle. I typically read with just my left hand and that makes page turning on the paperwhite somewhat difficult.
Actually it’s easy to turn pages - you just swipe an inch or so with your thumb.
