In which she asks for advice

[zeborah]

At the moment, I can't deal well with unsolicited advice however kindly meant (and I know it's meant kindly). I think it infringes on my desperate attempts to pretend I remain competent and independent and in control. I'm proud of my ability to adapt and survive: it's one of the few things an earthquake can't take away.

Plus, I've spent six weeks reading official advice about both the practical things and the emotional things - no, make that six months - and working out how this applies to myself (and I know myself pretty well) so it's fairly unlikely that someone outside what's going on will be able to offer any good and appropriate advice that I don't already know.

And I find it hard at the best of times and particularly stressful at present to have to find ways to say "Yes, already doing that, thanks," or "No, that'd be utterly useless for me," without sounding terse and ungrateful and otherwise disappointing people who only wanted to help. I don't want anyone to think I don't appreciate the motivating sentiment, because I do, I just can't cope with the external manifestation of it.

Also at the moment I am, quite frankly, in a state of controlled falling apart. (A lot of people are really struggling right now, six weeks on. My own recent symptoms - other than weepiness brought on by going to work, choir, the bus, or the shops, or by thinking about any of these, or by thinking about almost anything at all really - include leaving my bag with wallet, cellphone and (expired) passport on a bus last night (tracked it down late this morning, Deo gratias, just before admitting defeating and reporting it lost to all and sundry; relief is a powerful drug) and using the wrong toilet this morning (oh well, I'll "let it mellow" and get some more uses out of my mistake).

I don't need advice or help or even sympathy; I just need a really good rest, which I'm communicating with my manager at work about arranging so that's all under control.

However. I do need advice on one thing, which is: Which e-reader should I buy?

I'm not fussy about features.

• I basically want to read books on it, synced from my (Mac) laptop.
• I rarely if ever read anything that requires colour.
• It must have native ePub capability (I'm not buying a Kindle); ideally I'd like it to support a range of basic formats like pdf, txt, rtf, html, but can survive if some of these have inexplicably not been implemented.
• I like the idea of e-ink but am comfortable with LCD screens too.
• Storage space and battery life are important though not to the exclusion of other considerations (including price).
• Something RSI-friendly would be nice - lightweight, comfortable, with left-hand/right-hand redundancy

I think I'm probably looking at a Nook or a Kobo and of the two I think I like the Nook better, but this is based entirely on looking at websites and feature comparison charts. All the charts say you should try them out yourself, but last time I saw anything one could try out was in a bookstore just before Christmas, and as near as I could tell approximately a gazillion other customers had already tested them and broken them. As for now... half the bookstores in town are destroyed or inaccessible and the other half are on the verge of bankruptcy (okay, I admit it, I can name two exceptions, but neither has e-readers) and I'm tired of travelling around anyway.

Bonus features I'd like but aren't necessary since I don't know if they really exist:

• Full Unicode support (including Māori macrons). You wouldn't think this would be so hard, and yet... Seriously, let me know if you know of anyone doing this.
• Note-taking functionality - but not if to get that I have to also get a thousand other features and pay through the nose for the combo. An iPad, for example, would be ridiculously overpowered for my purposes.

Experiences, (dis)recommendations?

Comments

[dendrophilous]

See here: http://www.elizabethshack.com/blog/2010/06/15/ebook-reader-comments/

Addendum to that post:
* the color Nook wasn't out yet when I wrote it
* the iPad is too heavy to use as an ebook reader if you want to hold it up in one hand in front of your face
* I still love my Sony, but haven't investigated the exporting-notes problem yet. I'm currently taking notes on one book by highlighting, and when I'm done with the book I'll compile all the highlights into a text file in Evernote, and I have a feeling that might involve retyping them all.

[zeborah]

Thanks! I recall the Sony coming up in my research as a strong third contender, can't remember why I ended up discounting it so shall add it back to the list.

[green_knight]

I love my iPhone (and if I hadn't _needed_ a new phone I'd have coveted an iPodTouch). For me, the 'does lots of other things' is a feature - the ability to stay in touch via Twitter, look things up via Google, quickly check my e-mail to see whether anything important arrived in my inbox, keep an addressbook/calendar in one accessible place etc has been exceedingly useful. I also _write_ on it - no more paper notebooks, yay, no more 'OMG I need to transcribe 2K of lousy handwriting'.

Is there anyone who can lend you either type of device for an afternoon? I don't feel that shop trials are giving you the full feature - I liked my friend's Kindle a lot better after handling it in my own time than when I had only seen it in shops, weighted and tied down.

[zeborah]

I've played with a friend's a bit once. It's really nice, it's just that if I want a powerful device I've got my laptop which remains a lot more powerful. (Heavier than an iPad but the only reason I've stopped carrying it everywhere is for the sake of my RSI.)

Part of my aversion is to unnecessary duplication, part is that when a device is trying to be all shiny things it can't focus simply on being a really good ereader, and that's what I want. (Apple's website that takes ridiculously long to load on my poor struggling and refuses to tell you anything useful doesn't help my aversion but isn't the foundation of it.)

Another part is that I'm currently enamoured of open source, open access, and general cross-compatibility and I don't feel that Apple's endless aps really embody the spirit of that (not to even speak of its unjustly applied rules about which aps it accepts). Really the problem is the endless aps: I don't want to have to think about what ap to open, I just want to open my ereader.

[(Anonymous)]

Buy a Ki.. oh crap! Well that's me out of advice :P
I have a friend who has a Nook ( http://whitelock.livejournal.com/ ) and he says it's pretty good. :) Otherwise the Sony e-readers are supposed to be OK. But really, for decent e-readers, your only choices are the Kindle/Nook/Sony e-readers.

[zeborah]

:-) The Kobo is the main one promoted by one of the bookchains here, I forget which, which is why I'd been considering it.

[keieeeye]

Whitcoulls, according to my vague research.

[zeborah]

Further exploring agrees with you.

I may be getting close to summing up my options: it will, alas, involve a circle of tradeoffs. More after work.

[njs]

We have a Pocketbook 360. It's about as no-frills as a device can come -- no color, no brand-name, no internet access, no note-taking, just an e-ink screen and some buttons and a USB port (and a built-in case that's actually surprisingly pretty). I like it a lot. You attach it to the computer where it shows up like a disk drive, drop files on it in whatever format (I think nominally it prefers ePub, but in reality it doesn't seem to care much), and then you can read them. And it fits in my pocket. Its one snazzy trick is that you can turn it in any of 4 directions and read (hence the "360"), so in practice it has two very different grips for each hand; I find it nice to be able to switch around occasionally during extended reading.

No clue about Unicode support in general, but I just dropped this HTML page on it and when I opened it on the reader, the macrons seemed to show up correctly.

(Also, hello! Here via Shweta Narayan.)

(Shweta's 2c)

[(Anonymous)]

we = njs and me :) I asked him to reply cause I don't have the brain, but wanted to say: I like our ereader a lot too! For aforementioned reasons and also, it's light enough to not strain my wrists!

One thing I don't like though (and I dunno if all ereaders do this...) is that it takes juust long enough to load new pages that I get frustrated. If others are closer to instantaneous when you click, and that's a factor for you, be warned.

(also, hugs if you want them.)

[zeborah]

Hello! And thank you and Shweta both! Reading the specs and other reviews, this looks like a very serious contender. I may even be drooling slightly.

It sounds like the pageturn speed is fairly competitive - I gather it's a frustration with most if not all ereaders at least partly because you lose out on the tactile experience that keeps your brain busy with print books.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Have you considered an iPod Touch (AKA iTouch)? I use Stanza as my reader app on my iPhone, which uses epub (I use Calibre to convert if required). I don't know how the native iBooks handles things other than DRM'd stuff from iTunes.

The iTouch has the benefit/disadvantage of being small and fairly light (somewhat less than an iPhone). Not sure what battery life is like when reading, I can ask people if you are interested.

Are you planning on limiting yourself to free and made-available-by-publishers-to-NZ works, or are you prepared to by-pass geographic restrictions?

[keieeeye]

I find, incidentally, that anything with the i-prefix is horrifically expensive. I've mostly found this checking into things like mp3 players where you could get something with basically the same features for sometimes as little as half the price as long as you didn't desperately want an Apple product. (Apple computers are also on the expensive side, but in that case I find it worth it.)

[zeborah]

To be fair, when I lost my first iPod and got an mp3 player instead, it was so clunky it was impossible to use. Granted I'd got the cheapest available which isn't a fair comparison. But... it only had a couple of features, how could they possibly have made it so difficult to understand? There's features and then there's interface, and Apple does make nice and usable interfaces.

[keieeeye]

haha this is true. I think the big advantage of buying Apple products is that you do know what you're getting; if you get an off-brand you have to really research pretty hard, otherwise it can be hit or miss.

[zeborah]

Yes, this exactly.

Plus the shiny.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

I'm taking an interface design class this semester and we've gotten into this conversation several times and the general opinions seem to be

1) People are taken in by the shiny - do not be taken in by the shiny!

2) Apple consistently makes interfaces that (aside from a few obvious problems/out of stepness with the rest of the world) are really easy for people to understand out of the box. This makes them very appealing when something is new (home computers, mp3 players, netbooks, ereaders, etc) - or new to the buyer.

3) Apple deliberately aims to be moderately expensive and usable but not meant to be tinkered with. This makes them unaffordable to the lower end of the market and hated by the experts and tinkerers, but appealing to a lot of other people.

As I am always taken in by the shiny, I tend to go with 2 and 3. (Also, I argue that shiny tends to improve usability of interfaces, as harmonious design is easier to read than discordant design. Pretty is not a substitute for clear meaning and logic, but it can enhance it.)

[zeborah]

The iTouch comes a bit close to "too many additional features pushing up the price" for me. And... while I still like iThings, I'm getting a bit disenchanted with their locked-in nature.

Knowing myself, I'll probably be tempted to bypass geographic restrictions if it's fairly easy to, but mostly I'll take what I can get. :-) Just being able to carry Gutenberg books will be a huge step up.

[ex_heleninwales860]

I am a total convert to ebooks now and I'm just reading them on an iPod Touch. I bought a slightly older model on ebay, so that made it a bit cheaper. The most significant change in the latest model was the camera and I already have plenty of cameras! :)

For me, rather than "too many additional features pushing up the price" it was a case of "This thing does so many useful jobs that I can justify the price whereas I don't know that I can justify paying that much for something that will only display books."

The iTouch will read epub using the Stanza app (I've been reading lots of classics from Gutenberg) and also Kindle books (It's possible to buy from Amazon.com via a workaround that involves paying a "virtual visit" to the US). I've also successfully converted MS Word docs to epub in order to read them on the iTouch for critiquing purposes.

The downside is that you have to manage files via iTunes, which is a bit clunky, but doable, and you have to have access to WiFi to get Kindle books onto it. I also haven't tried to do any sort of note taking whilst reading. It may be possible, but if that's an important feature for you, then something with a keyboard might be better.

[ex_heleninwales860]

PS Re the Kindle books, of course I can buy from Amazon.co.uk and normally do, but when things are only published in the US, like Jo's latest, it is possible to buy them for Kindle. I couldn't, however, find any way around the geographic restrictions on the Barnes and Noble site.

[ajk]

I read my ebooks on my phone. There are, to my knowledge, reader programs for most formats for most smartphones.

But I don't know if I'd call that a recommendation. The good thing is, I always have it with me. One of the bad things is battery life, which for my N900 is atrocious.

I've been thinking about buying an actual reader device, but the cost has not yet been outweighed the benefits for me.

[zeborah]

My phone appears to have capability for accessing the web but I've never investigated this and it certainly isn't what one might call "smart". I'm not really a smartphone person; I'm barely a cellphone person, and wouldn't be at all if a certain pair of earthquakes hadn't caused me to re-evaluate the utility of contactability. Anyway so I expect upgrading my cellphone wouldn't cost much less than buying a dedicated ereader, so...

[ex_heleninwales860]

I don't know whether you have a contract for your mobile or how phone companies work in New Zealand, but it might be possible to get a new phone for next to nothing, depending on what deals are available.

My son has the Samsung Galaxy S (which I would recommend over an iPhone as it's open source). It was playing with his phone and looking at ebooks on it that led me down the iPod Touch route.

[keieeeye]

Typically to get the really cheap handsets you need to be on a contract plan (usually at least 24 months), which is only worth it if you make a fairly decent number of calls. If you only use your phone occasionally, especially if you're mostly texting, it's far more economical to use a prepaid system which doesn't allow you to get discounts on the actual phone.

[zeborah]

I've got a prepaid cellphone and ordinarily use it so little that NZ$20 lasted me for two or three years. The earthquake has upped my usage a lot but only comparatively - still nowhere near worth buying any sort of plan.

[ex_heleninwales860]

In that case, if you have to pay full price for the phone, that's not a good option. I just thought it was worth mentioning it.

I took out a contract for a couple of reasons. One was that if you don't use your pay-as-you-go phone in the UK, they cut it off and take the balance. You can get it reinstated, but they don't give the money back. After that happened to me once at a time when I needed the phone urgently, I took out the cheapest contract I could find because though I don't use the mobile much, when I need it I NEED it, for example because I've broken down in the middle of nowhere and need to call for help. I felt it was worth paying more for the reassurance that the phone would work even if I forgot to use it or top it up. But of course if this doesn't apply to you, then pre-paid is definitely cheaper.

[zeborah]

Gah, sounds like a nasty system - I hate places that take money back from you just because you haven't used it recently. But given that system then yes, having the security is worth it.

[poetrychook.blogspot.com]

I can't comment on which e-reader, but I thought I would just note that the two chains "on the verge of bankruptcy" look likely to survive a while longer in NZ at least - it is the Australian shops that are being sold off to rescue the company.

Of course if they did go belly-up there might be an issue with after sales service, but I'm not sure where else you could buy an e-reader at the moment - Dick Smith Electronics maybe? Or online, of course.

[zeborah]

It'd be nice if they'd honour the terms of the bookvouchers, in that case...

I'm looking at buying online, yes. Way more choice.

[(Anonymous)]

Becky here. I have a Nook, about a year old, and I'm pretty happy about it. It's certainly saving me shelf-space, and it has a lot more available to it than the Kindle does. Now, I haven't a foggiest clue as to how it adapts to NZ standards, but it would be lovely to send you some books on it. And of course many hugs about the earlier part of the entry.

[zeborah]

Thanks, I think the Nook is one of the top-selling ereaders in NZ so it must be okay in general, though individual titles will depend on geographic restrictions. I look forward to the day when publishers have adapted to how the world actually works these days (by which time of course the world will have changed yet again).

And thank you.

[keieeeye]

The thing that annoys me about ebooks is how variable the prices are. Sometimes they're like US$3.99 or whatever and then other ones the prices are more like what I'd expect to pay for a hardcopy. In NZ dollars. (Seriously I was skimming through bestsellers on one site and they had one listed for like US$34.99, and that was less than the "listed price".) There's someone on my LJ (maybe DW as well? can't remember) f-list who's quite into digital publishing and he has posted a few things about how they're also extremely variable quality sometimes as well, and how the industry would never cut down on piracy until they could guarantee that paying would get you a better product.

That said, I have kind of wanted an e reader for ages, because physical books are really bound by space, availability if you're buying bricks-and-mortar, weight if you're buying over the net, and are prone to damage from being bent wrong or eaten. With a benefit as sole income though I pretty much had it shelved as a "sometime when I'm back to earning my own money" thing. Which, I'm putting a decent amount of my Red Cross money onto my credit card but maybe as we start finishing up I'll see how much I have left over and if I can justify it.... FWIW I kind of like the look of the Kobo, partly because it is cheaper and lighter on features I'm not going to use. It's the same thing with phones, I get irrationally annoyed that they have a thousand special features. I JUST WANT TEXT MESSAGES AND ALARMS. I was glancing over the Augen as well, but the review pointed out that the screen is 800x480 rather than 800x600 and I suspect that could get annoying for files that have hardcoded margins, and pdfs.

[zeborah]

US$34.99 is nothing. E-textbooks can be hundreds. Because of course print is a fairly minor cost compared to the editing and proofing and laying out and everything that makes it a quality book (and what makes a quality ebook is different from what makes a quality print-book so you've got to do it twice, and ideally then test on a bunch of different devices). E-textbooks are hundreds because there's a limited market and publishers have to recoup the money; e-novels will have a larger market but even so... And the varying prices are because publishers are still trying to figure out how exactly the supply/demand/recouping costs curves work out.

I do feel things are slowly improving.

Check out the PocketBook 360 that njs and Shweta mentioned; it might suit you.

[cyphomandra]

I've been reading books via Stanza on my ipod touch for nearly three years now, and I love it - portable, easy to read, good battery life (if just reading - will do 12 hour plane flights), ability to add notes/bookmarks, and good support for most formats. Disadvantages to Stanza as a program - it's not great at pdfs (and they admit this), and if you import massively large Word files over it can stuff up the chapter separations, resulting in four 100K chapters that take over 30 seconds to load and one 10 word chapter (to be fair, I think I could probably fix this if I went back and sorted out the original file a bit better). I have not had major problems with geographical rights restrictions, but the vast majority of my reading has been word files/fanfic from AO3/Project Gutenberg. I've recently been buying more ebooks, and had no problems with the small publishers.

Disadvantages to the ipod - well, yes, locked-in stuff, although I don't feel Stanza as an app has restricted me. Cost - I switched to the iPhone last year, and that is a lot more expensive. I have however just talked a friend into an entry level iPod via loaning her mine (stacked with ebooks) for comfort reading post-earthquake, and that was ~$330.

I don't consider it a substitute for my own collection, tho', because so many of my books are out of print and unlikely to ever be available as ebooks, as well as missing the physical nature of reading. But for travel, for convenience, and for a lot of comfort reads, it's ideal.

[zeborah]

Oh yes, definitely not a substitute for my print books, but for reading on the bus and so forth.

Hmm, I'll take another quick look at the iTouch just in case...

iTouch

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the 2nd-hand option for the iTouch too.
If you have a deDRM'd file you can now transfer into Stanza (and various other apps) via iTunes fairly painlessly.
I assume that using the Kobo app on an iTouch is fairly seemless, and even if you don't strip the DRM you _should_ be able to use on new devices in the future. Should be fine for library loans.

In understand that there are 3rd-party add-ons to the Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) application (at least the PC version) that makes the legal-in-NZ removal of most DRM from epubs straightforward. Unfortunately you need to trust that writer of the add-on isn't doing anything they shouldn't. Personally I have a mate who has used the same underlying code-breaking in a slightly clunky MS Word macro, and I trust my mate.
I always immediately strip DRM from any purchased file, as I don't trust any vendor to maintain the ability to update devices that I use. Note that Adobe's support of it's DRM (which is common on epubs, e.g. stuff you buy from Whitcoulls) is basically non-existent.

Re: iTouch

[zeborah]

I had a look at the iTouch but alas doing so instantly confirmed my current aversion to all its bazillions of features. I absolutely can't rationalise it but there it is: I think I'd almost be willing to pay for simplicity....

Thanks for the Calibre tip! I don't think circumventing DRM is really straightforwardly legal in NZ: my reading (226E) is that if DRM gets in your way you can either write to the publisher and ask nicely or, if you've asked and they refuse, you can ask a librarian or some such to do it for you. However, that really is a tremendous hassle; a Calibre plugin sounds much handier and I think may resolve my one last dilemma...

Re: iTouch

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I didn't include the 'removal for non-infringing purposes' (see definitions of that section). Removing region zoning is ok, having DRM-stripped files for own use ok, giving copies to your mates not ok.

Errolwi

Re: iTouch

[zeborah]

Yes, but even for a permitted use, the Act doesn't give you permission to remove the DRM yourself, only to ask certain others to do it for you. That is, the DRM isn't allowed to stop you exercising a permitted use, but if (when) it does stop you then the Act only allows you to ask the owner or a qualified person to use a "circumvention device" for you.

Possibly I'm taking an overly strong interpretation of "cannot practically do so because of a TPM"; but looking at subsection (3) I think they really are trying to prevent ordinary people from using "circumvention devices" ourselves.

Re: iTouch

[zeborah]

Wait, I think you're right and I'm wrong: 226E(1) is fairly unambiguous and although it limits itself to "to exercise a permitted act under Part 3" and technically speaking "reading a book you own" isn't explicitly mentioned in Part 3 I think it is or ought to be understood; so subsection (2) is then only intended for situations where the user can't circumvent it themself. Awesome-dawsome.

Re: NZ DRM removal (was iTouch)

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Yep, that was my main argument.
The entity that you gave money to for 'your' copy of the file would probably argue that you are violating the terms of the limited licence that they have granted you (having not actually sold you the work), but that is different from violating copyright.
Also, the offences talk about selling/distributing/etc the TPM circumvention measures, but _using_ them is rarely mentioned. Just like Prohibition!

[shana]

In my professional hat as librarian, I was unable to figure out how to load something onto a Kobo for a patron. It might be that if I had the manual and a couple of hours, I could figure it out.

On the other hand, the Sony Pocket reader the library bought, I was able to figure out how to load books on in about 30 seconds. It really fits in your pocket, has a touch screen, and has seduced two of my colleagues already. If you're going to put it in a pocket, I'd suggest a more protective case than the zip-lock baggie I put it in.

Personally, I have a Kindle, but most of the books loaded on it are from Project Gutenberg or from Baen.

[zeborah]

Ah, thanks for reminding me about library ebooks - my public library doesn't have them yet but they're coming soon so DRM support will be useful and I'd forgotten to think about that.

Have you seen the cartoon, something like "How to borrow an ebook from the library in 31 easy steps?" (The last step was giving up and going to a torrents site.)

[annathepiper]

I'm a nook owner and a Mac owner, and here's my two cents:

I love my nook to death but B&N's customer support for Macs is terrible. They still have not released a proper client for syncing your library with your nook, so Mac owners have to do various annoying workarounds if they want to do anything more organized than just manually copying books to the device themselves.

Also, as a non-North-America reader, you may have better luck finding titles you're interested in on the Kobo site. I've bought ebooks of Canadian and UK releases via the Kobo site that B&N didn't have.

(Although, to its credit, the nook happily talks to books from both sites. It's just vaguely annoying to have B&N books filed under one list on the device and non-B&N books filed under another list.)

[zeborah]

Very handy to know, thanks!

I think I'm not going to worry too much about site compatibility (to the extent that if the store's trying to lock me in to a single device then I don't want to support such behaviour, anyway - cf Amazon and the Kindle...) though I probably do want a device that can support basic DRM (much as I'm in principle opposed to DRM, in practice there seems little point to limiting myself). Which Nook and Kobo and Sony all would but for the Pocketbook mentioned above I'd have to go to the next model up. Ponder ponder...