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from the there's-an-app-for-that dept.
An Open Source eReader That's Free of Corporate Restrictions Is Exactly What I Want Right Now:
I get it. The Kindle and its ability to shop for and instantly buy books anywhere using wifi or Whispernet are incredibly convenient, and it’s what’s made Amazon’s hardware the obvious choice for consuming ebooks. But supporting awful companies like Amazon is getting harder and harder if you were born with a conscience, and right about now, an open source ebook reader, free of corporate restrictions, sounds like the perfect Kindle alternative.
A fully open-hardware eReader, it includes the following design specs: ARM Cortex M4 processor, 400x300 monochromatic resolution, microSD card reader, lithium-polymer rechargeable battery, audiobook-capable headphone jack, and audio-command-capable microphone.
The Open Book Project was born from a contest held by Hackaday and that encouraged hardware hackers to find innovative and practical uses for the Arduino-based Adafruit Feather development board ecosystem. The winner of that contest was the Open Book Project which has been designed and engineered from the ground up to be everything devices like the Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo are not.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:45PM (16 children)
I'd like me an e-ink screen phone or a nice, but not terribly expensive e-book reader. My old Nook seems to have been cut off from the mothership. At lest it has side loading capability with the MicroSD card slot. Which apparently was removed from the latest Nook . . . that's sitting at a nice 2 1/2 stars on the B&N site. Yeah, guess I won't be getting a new one.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:32PM
I don't know how old your Nook was when it got cut off, but I have an old Kobo Touch from 2011 which is still officially supported, and got a software update just four months ago.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Magic Oddball on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:20PM (2 children)
I had a Nook Simple Touch that I used to death several years ago, and hunted all over for a device with the features I wanted before I settled on getting a used Kobo Glo HD... It doesn't have the hardware buttons I'd hoped for, but it does have a SD slot, ongoing firmware updates, an active community of firmware modders, a basic web browser that can download books from Project Gutenberg, and uses epub/kepub files. So, good enough for now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @10:28AM
This is of interest, as my Nook Simple Touch is just now failing...not electronically, but the casing is starting to suffer a bit from the 7 years of daily use (the membrane covering the front buttons in particular, has become very brittle).
I''ve been looking for a used Nook Simple Touch, to use as as either a replacement or as a donor for parts for mine, unfortunately, more of the the Glowlight models show up, unrealistically priced, and, fine as they might be as donor machines, as a replacement ISTR they had screen issues.
So maybe it's time to look at a Kobo then.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 31 2020, @06:32PM
Yeah, Kobo seems to be the only cheapish/goodish alternative to Nook/Kindle. Sony's been in the game a long time, but they've always been a bit expensive while seeming to not have much in the way of innovation.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday January 31 2020, @01:42AM (6 children)
Have you tried Calibre? I don't imagine they'd remove support for older devices.
Of course, you need to let it manage your non-DRM ebook collection for it to be able to transfer books to eReaders. But there seems to be a real dearth of alternative ebook managers, so really it's whether you can live with their folder heirarchy
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday January 31 2020, @02:11AM (3 children)
https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]
Just get rid of the DRM and let Calibre manage them all.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 31 2020, @02:24AM (2 children)
True. It would be nice if doing so were legal though. Some people are a stickler for such things, and the DMCA is insidious.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday January 31 2020, @02:46AM (1 child)
Just don't distribute them. As long as it's for your personal use I see it as less unethical than them putting the DRM on in the first place.
Also, as long as you don't distribute them they will never bother you even if they somehow found out. It is a court case they really, really, do not want.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 31 2020, @03:48AM
Oh I agree completely - but I'm talking law, not ethics. The two have very little to do with each other.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 31 2020, @06:30PM (1 child)
I liked the simplicity of treating it like a flash drive to drop my Project Gutenberg books onto it, while at the same time using the B&N store to get newer copyrighted material.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 01 2020, @02:47AM
Yeah, I can see the appeal - I did similar with early mp3 players. A (non-bloated) "iTunes for eBooks" is handy though, particularly when looking for something (possibly non-specific), or otherwise managing your collection.
...at least assuming your meta-tags are all in order. Which I've sadly had absolutely terrible luck with. Still, it's not *that* bad spending a few minutes now and then downloading and proofreading tags and notes for the recent entries to your library, and it is nice to have at least a nice cover image, a synopsis, and and a few other details normally found on the cover that ebooks can so sorely lack.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 31 2020, @06:08PM (4 children)
Unfortunately due to the current state of E-ink displays, if you want to have your cake and eat it too you will need both a phone and e-ink reader, or a hypothetical foldable phone with both displays.
The main reason is because the dog-slow refresh rate and refresh flicker that makes watching videos a major headache with e-ink displays. Even though color e-ink displays have been invented, the color is obviously inferior to your typical cell phone screen and the slow refresh issues remain. This is why all e-ink example applications are either e-book readers or static displays of the kind you'd see at bus stops or bus terminals.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday January 31 2020, @06:24PM (3 children)
I'm not much of a video consumer on my phone, but I get there are a lot of people who do.
I was looking into playing with some small e-ink screens, but eventually came to the conclusion that the screens I could get had too slow of a refresh rate for what I was wanting. Even with refresh rates like on my nook simple touch from 2011, I'd happily tinker with one and my Raspberry Pi Zero. The refresh rates on the screens I was seeing were even slower than that. Which means, either the hardware/software/drivers needs to be tweaked to a degree that I'm not ready to get into or I'm seeing the cheap junk. From what I see of the Open Book Project, things haven't improved any since I last looked. Even the Simple Touch from 2011 had 800x600 resolution, it was and is very readable. I love my Simple Touch, but apparently the new edition took away features that I like and use upon occasion.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday February 01 2020, @01:46AM (2 children)
It seems like nobody makes a perfect e-reader, they all have some problems. The thing to do is list all the features you want and then see which one matches the best. In my case I came up with the Kobo Aura One. The minuses didn't matter to me, and it had almost all the features I wanted. (If I have to replace it now though I'd probably get the Forma because of the landscape mode it has.).
The other thing is that many people seem to want to turn e-books into phones, with colour video and sound. I didn't. I wanted it to be a book.
Aura One :
pros - big screen, waterproof, reads any format, huge memory, Pocket, WiFi, hi-res (300dpi), excellent backlight, USB charging
cons - need to convert Amazon books, expensive, Kobo store is smaller than Amazon's, too big to fit in most pockets,
The cons didn't matter to me and I dont use Pocket or the wifi. I manage all my e-books with Calibre, and simply load them on it like a usb drive. There's about 500 on it at the moment and it's about 10% full. Some reviews complain about the backlight being uneven, but I can't see it. I think they may have been pre-production review models. The big screen was the clincher for me. I can set the font slightly bigger, read without glasses and still get a decent amount on each page.
I strongly recommend getting the official Sleepcover for it. Provides great protection for the screen, but more importantly it just turns it into a real book. Shut the cover and it goes to sleep, open it and you are instantly back on the same page. Power usage is tiny while in standby - weeks to months on a single charge. (I think, mine never gets left for that long, but the charge level hardly moves while it's asleep). If you use the backlight you will have to charge it more often. I generally run it at 10% because I read in dim rooms and I get 10 to 15 hours use per charge. I have a small powerbank I usually keep with it, provides 3 or 4 recharges.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 01 2020, @02:50AM (1 child)
Waterproof you say? Intriguing...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:18AM
Technically, nothing is waterproof, it is water resistant. They quote 60 minutes at 2M depth in fresh water. I wouldn't take it into the sea, but it's fine on the beach, at the pool, and in the bath. I usually take mine when I go fishing. :)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.