Post a picture of your reading settings!

[haertig]

Originally Posted by shalym

...my font size is extremely large, mostly because my eyes are extremely irritated...

The best thing about digital readers for those of us in the no-longer-20-years-old category are the changeable font size and the illumination. It's also nice to have something that is lighter than a paper book and doesn't require the dexterity to hold open a stiffly bound book that wants to close itself.

There may be other critical features that I'm forgetting at the moment, but the three above are what will keep me reading (hopefully) into the twilight of my life. Other features are more or less fluff or icing on the cake IMHO.

Two downsides to digital reading as we age are that you have to remain technically astute enough to be able to get books onto the device, and be able to navigate the user interface. Both of these tasks I have seen the elderly struggle with. Those of us using Kindles, Nooks, and Kobos now will probably have their use ingrained into our brains so that knowledge will still be there as we age. But by the time we get to that point, it probably won't be Kindles, Nooks and Kobos that we will be reading on anymore. It will be something new, that we are not so technically familiar with. And therein lies the problem - having to learn something new at an advanced age.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by haertig

Two downsides to digital reading as we age are that you have to remain technically astute enough to be able to get books onto the device, and be able to navigate the user interface. Both of these tasks I have seen the elderly struggle with. Those of us using Kindles, Nooks, and Kobos now will probably have their use ingrained into our brains so that knowledge will still be there as we age. But by the time we get to that point, it probably won't be Kindles, Nooks and Kobos that we will be reading on anymore. It will be something new, that we are not so technically familiar with. And therein lies the problem - having to learn something new at an advanced age.

People can learn new things at any age, if they're interested (unless they have dementia, of course). Old age by itself is no impediment. My dad learned to use tablets and smartphones in his seventies, entirely by himself, because he was interested. And he was not hugely intelligent, just normal. My mom, on the other hand, never learned to use any smart gadgets, because she was not interested. She was not less intelligent than my dad, she just didn't want to learn.

So I guess any of us who want to learn to use new technology will probably be perfectly able to do so. I know people not yet fifty who can barely use a computer, and the reason for that is usually their lack of interest in such things. And there are people in their eighties who are computer literate. The main impediment to learning is not age.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

People can learn new things at any age, if they're interested (unless they have dementia, of course). Old age by itself is no impediment. My dad learned to use tablets and smartphones in his seventies, entirely by himself, because he was interested. And he was not hugely intelligent, just normal. My mom, on the other hand, never learned to use any smart gadgets, because she was not interested. She was not less intelligent than my dad, she just didn't want to learn.

So I guess any of us who want to learn to use new technology will probably be perfectly able to do so. I know people not yet fifty who can barely use a computer, and the reason for that is usually their lack of interest in such things. And there are people in their eighties who are computer literate. The main impediment to learning is not age.

My mom was using a Windows laptop, an iPad mini, and a Sony Reader in her old age.

[haertig]

A rather large, and one-time temporary thread tangent for @Sirtel ...

I never would have known where you lived were it not for today's game (guess the place by it's outline). https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/

Generally I start out with a pretty random guess - for a place who's location I can easily picture in my mind - then I look at the arrows indicating direction to the correct choice, and then the distance to that choice, and make additional guesses based on the world map in my head. After the second guess I was thinking "some island in the Baltic Sea or North Sea maybe?" so I guessed a country that borders the Baltic to see if I was close, and I stumbled into the correct answer by accident - Estonia!

Back to the regularly scheduled thread now ...

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My mom was using a Windows laptop, an iPad mini, and a Sony Reader in her old age.

My mom ends the few text messages she manages to send with:

Love you,
Bye

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

My mom ends the few text messages she manages to send with:

My mom never learned how to send text messages at all. She did use a cellphone, but it was a regular dumb phone without internet. The most technical thing she knew how to do was changing TV channels with the remote.

She was by no means a dumb person, however. Her interests just lay elsewhere.

[Apache]

My mother is in her late eighties and uses a computer. She has macular degeneration so she uses a 55" TV as a monitor.
My wife only learned to text about six or seven years ago when our son decided she needed to learn how.
Apache

[haertig]

I am only (!) 66, but I would not be able to help you one bit if you asked me how to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, TikTok, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, NextDoor or any of the other (useless IMHO) waste-of-time and suck-you-down-the-rabbit-hole apps. If I were forced to learn one, it would probably be LinkedIn since that one has the reputation (true or not) of being used by intelligent people to find jobs. The other apps appear to be more of a way to avoid jobs.

My avoidance here is indeed because I don't want to learn those apps, not because I can't. However, my comment on the elderly having trouble with eReaders is still valid. Their trouble may indeed be because they don't want to learn the devices. It's kind of like the Kindle vs. Kobo wars. It's not that any of us are incapable of using the opposing device, it's just that we're not motivated to. But the elderly - many, but not all of them - are still having trouble using eReaders, whatever the reason. And I'll bet that many of us here may not want to move on from an eReader to a newer device in, say, 10 or 20 years (depending on our age now).

[Sirtel]

Many people just aren't technically inclined, and if they didn't grow up with the technology or use it because of their job, they may not be interested or motivated enough to learn it. That goes for many other things too, of course (for example, I never learned to drive. I live in a largish city with a well-developed public transportation system and am not even remotely interested in cars or in anything related to them, so I never bothered to learn. Things would be different if I lived in a remote rural area). As to whether we want to adopt some new device or technology to replace our current ereaders, time will tell.

[Desertway]

It's a little of everything I think. I'm 60. I have no trouble gaining knowledge in areas with which I'm already acquainted, but starting something brand new is another story. I could learn brand new things much more easily in my 20's. I'm not saying I CAN'T, but it takes much more motivation and effort than it used to.

Because of this, I follow the forums here daily. Even though I use a Kindle, I follow Kobo developments (had one for a short while to learn it), as well as Android eInk. I bought a dead cheap Android eInk to learn that as well. I never want to be in a position in which eReader use becomes alien to me. Reading is too important, and my problematic vision can no longer do paper books.

[Renate]

Oh! This is a subject on which I am so dogmatic (for me only, of course).
I just love how people have such differences.
This is my Poke3 with custom reader and the Epub config dialog up.
The progress bar looks awfully wide, but this is a "full bleed" so it appear half as wide optically since the frame covers a lot of it.

@Apache I love your mother using the 55" display.

[Barty]

Custom Plato on Kobo. Wall of text, minimal info. Sorry for bad camera work.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Barty

Sorry for bad camera work

I see no camera work

[Aleron Ives]

You need to right click on the image and delete the useless mobileread.org proxy header. The actual image link is:

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20230629/46f72af57542118bbecc8e52097adb7e.jpg

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Barty

Custom Plato on Kobo. Wall of text, minimal info. Sorry for bad camera work

You will have to repost your photo. MR does not like tapatalk image links.

The best solution is to take a hi-res photo and then attach it to your message.