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PaperclipPerfector  20hr ago (text post)   490 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 4, 2025

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Little by little my Nook ST is beginning to wear out so I'm thinking about what I should look for when it's time to buy a new one. What are some of your must have features / biggest annoyances / missed opportunities in e-readers?

It's table stakes but I still love having an instant dictionary. Instant translation would be nice. Instant wikipedia would be good too. The more quick-look-up reference resources the better.

I like the idea of bookmarks and highlights/margin notes but I don't use them as they're not well implemented, for example when moving books between devices and different software. That raises the issue of software and hardware. Call me old school but I'm a firm believer in removable local storage as a means to preserve data should the device fail.

Not once have I wanted to install additional apps. I also don't particularly care about having a fancy OS/UI since I spend 99.999% of the time inside the book, not outside. I guess that audiobooks could be a relevant feature but I never listen to them and it's a slippery slope to podcasts, music, and just using a fully featured tablet. Ideally there would be a read-out-loud feature that used the ebook as the source rather than a separate audio file, and I imagine it's not far off if it hasn't been done already but again it feels like that would require a much more powerful device for only marginal benefit.

I have a Kobo and I can't recommend anything else. It has an integrated dictionary and basically no other functionality besides reading books (though it does have those annotation features you said you don't use). It supposedly has an associated store, but I've never used it. I bought it because it's the only reader I'm aware of that allows you to sideload books on it without jailbreaking it. That and they made a sensibly-priced waterproof version before anyone else.

You can also find 3rd party OSes (KOReader, Plato) that work noticeably better than stock.

Dictionary? Translation? I guess, but in the current year, if you're not running every page through Claude to see what you missed, what are you doing?

Like an idiot I'm still running every page through 5434a at 1x speed.

You say UI doesn't matter, but Amazon's enshittification of the Kindle OS is a crime. My library is buried beneath ads.

As others have said I only read pirated books now. I don't trust publishers as license holders/DRM so being able to easily side load is key.

What ads are you talking about? I just got a new Kindle, and I don't see any ads at all. Just go to Library on the front page, it stays there, and you only see your actual books and their contents. If you go to the Home page, you see some recommendations, which I suppose you could consider ads, but it doesn't ever seem to switch over to that from Library by itself.

Of course, there is the option to save a few bucks on the purchase price in exchange for seeing ads. I hate ads as much as anyone, but I don't have a lot of sympathy if somebody takes the $20 cheaper option for ads and then complains about the ads.

You're correct that I purchased a subsidized Kindle. However the ads have gotten more obtrusive as updates have come in, and the subsidization is ONLY for the lock screen. You still get ads embedded in the OS, they're roughly 75% of the screen real estate.

It's honestly horrible.

Are you talking about the "Home" screen recommendations? I agree that it's an annoying layout, but don't you have the "Library" page too? On mine, that shows only your books, with a bunch of layout options. Mine also never actually goes to the "Home" screen unless I actually tap on Home to go there, so I only really ever see the "Library" page. So it doesn't really seem like that big of a deal to me.

Agreeing to pay less than the normal price in exchange for seeing ads is one thing, but it does bug me when the big providers pull a "we are changing the deal", like Amazon Prime video's apparent stance that they will actually start showing ads unless you agree to pay them even more. Fortunately, for now at least, uBlock Origin Lite, which is Manifest V3 compatible, works fine at blocking them, and YouTube ads too.

It's a widely held opinion around here that ads that can be removed for a nominal payment still constitute a violation of one's human rights.

I've never used a Kindle, the Nook is my first and only e-reader and jail breaking it was the first order of business. If I couldn't sideload pirated files and had to view (spits) ads I'd have stuck to acoustic books.

Those features are so essential that I take them for granted and so forgot to include them in the OP. Is there a reason you haven't jail broken it? I only did a quick search but it seems doable.

You say UI doesn't matter, but Amazon's enshittification of the Kindle OS is a crime. My library is buried beneath ads.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS. I have a huge Kindle library that I read through, and I personally find that Fire tablets are cheap and serviceable enough to serve as my readers but even with the ability to cut out the ads the experience has steadily declined. I still love to buy books to support the "independent" authors that I like rather than subscribing to Kindle Unlimited but even so, Amazon seems to have their fingers in every piece of that pie as well, be it books from 47 North or serials from Royal Road curated into Kindle books, and the bookstore itself is utter shite to browse now that every. Single. Damn. Page. Consists of about 25% of the same four "sponsored" books at the top and bottom of each page.

The latest Kindles have very dim amber backlight settings, which are very useful when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall asleep but don't want to wake up my wife.

For me it is always display second is support of sideload of books. That are the only really important features. Even for books i own, usually I read pirated versions anyway.

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