"Locations" vs. Pages in K3 - AAAAAAAH!

[TheKindleWorm]

Originally Posted by ylsul

I purchased a textbook on my Kindle for a class I'm taking. I encountered this problem the first time I tried to read "pages 231-254"

Mind, you, the textbook I got was the same as the paper version (Blabla Textbook 2nd edition blabla). I wonder how hard it would be to map the page numbers from the textbook to the proper regions in the kindle version?

Have you tried the Kindle Page numbers tool at:
http://www.bookmonk.com/labs/numbers.php

[Andy216]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

So what printed page is Sony's page number based on? Hardcover? Trade Paperback? Mass Market Paperback? US version or UK?

I just don't get people's beef with locations at all. They give you a quick and easy way to determine exactly where you are in a book. What good would it do to give you the corresponding "page number" of a version of the book that you're NOT currently reading?

A page number is a reference point in the book you are reading. A location number is a reference point in the book you are reading. Is the main beef really all about terminology?

Because I know what a 300 page feels like. And I know what being 200 pages into a 300 page feels like. I have no idea what a 10438 location book feels like. And I didn't get used to it after years of reading on the Kindle.

The page numbers on the Sony don't vary when you change font size. How much of one page is on one screen varies. Page 54 is page 54 is page 54.

I don't know what the pages correspond to because I don't own any ebooks and dead tree versions of the same book. I don't really care either. I just read for enjoyment, so I don't have to cite anything. But pages seem to go by at approximately the same rate as when I'm reading a paperback.

If you don't mind locations, then that's cool. I just find them distracting and disorienting from the reading experience I had for the past 30 years.

[DiapDealer]

If you don't mind locations, then that's cool. I just find them distracting and disorienting from the reading experience I had for the past 30 years.

That's fine. Different strokes and all.
I just know that it would drive me nuts to "turn the virtual page" 3 times and still show the same page number. Locations were an easy natural transition for me.

I don't know what the pages correspond to because I don't own any ebooks and dead tree versions of the same book.

The question was answered on the previous page. They don't correspond to any printed version... they refer to 1024 bytes of content.

[foghat]

Originally Posted by gca3020

Don't even get me started of F to C conversions. In my world, 35 degrees is freezing cold, and no one will ever be able to convince me that Celcius (centigrade?) makes more sense for weather reports. Chemistry, maybe, but when the difference between a sweltering day and a freezing cold day is only a handful of degrees, the system is broken.

It's all about your frame of reference.

Not to go way off on a tangent, but the system is broken?? 0C water freezes, 100C water boils. Simple. You exagerate greatly in saying a handful of degrees is the difference between freezing day and a sweltering day.

Granted each 2 or 3 degrees does make a reasonable difference in temperature - which is a good thing. Of course it comes down to what you are used to.

[jondelfin]

If you are using the kindle for academic work and need to go back to specific references / quotes etc, you don't want to have to flips to page 245 and then go through 3 screens of this single page - with the kindle and its more specific locations, you can pretty well go to the exact spot

[Bookworm_Girl]

I am a new Kindle owner and currently reading my first Kindle book. Locations has been the least intuitive Kindle feature for me compared to my experiences on other ereader brands. It bothers me that I have no sense of how big my 6841 location-sized book is. I had to look up how many pages are in the print version for a comparison. Therefore, I agree it's all about the frame of reference. To me the ereader should immerse the reader in the text of the ebook without missing the feel or smell of a paperbook. So why not use a frame of reference like pages that is universally recognized by most people? I don't want to have to stop and calculate in my head that location 4542 is like 252 pages. That breaks the fluidity of the reading experience. If I am overseas, I don't walk outside and think it's a brisk 12C morning. I look at the weather forecast and relate it back to the temperature in degrees F that I am accustomed to.

On the other hand, I really like how the Kindle has the status bar at the bottom of the screen that shows chapter/section markings and the percentage of the book that you have read thus far. I am sure after several books I'll have a better sense of locations, but I'll also still probably be trying to relate back to my reference frame of pages.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I don't want to have to stop and calculate in my head that location 4542 is like 252 pages. That breaks the fluidity of the reading experience.

Give it a while. It took a week or so for "locations" to become second nature to me. Now I've gotten to only care about the percentage and where the mark is on the position indicator. I don't care how many pages an ebook has. It's a different paradigm. Locations are, to the best of my knowledge, in increments of 128 bytes, which includes any formatting codes (italic, bold, etc.).

As has been discussed a number of times, the rationale for locations is that they don't change when the font size changes or when the Kindle is put in landscape mode. You always have a dead certain reference point, which you don't have with pages, which vary with the edition of a book, whether it's hardcover or paperback, etc. It can even vary with the country where it's published.

[lene1949]

After having read many book on my Kindle, I really love the locations... It's so much more logical than having page numbers...

I read some books on my Hanlin (gave it to my daughter), and for quite a few pages kept giving me the same page number, and even more when I increased the font...

Page numbers don't work on digital devices.

[gca3020]

Originally Posted by foghat

Not to go way off on a tangent, but the system is broken?? 0C water freezes, 100C water boils. Simple. You exagerate greatly in saying a handful of degrees is the difference between freezing day and a sweltering day.

Granted each 2 or 3 degrees does make a reasonable difference in temperature - which is a good thing. Of course it comes down to what you are used to.

Sorry, perhaps broken was harsh, I was using a bit of hyperbole to emphasize my point, I certainly don't want to alienate the 95% of the planet that uses Celsius temperatures , but for me it's not intuitive.

As far as I know, the F scale was chosen based on how the temperature feels to us. 100 is very hot, 0 is very cold. I will admit that C (or Kelvin, as mentioned before) is better for just about anything else, but for weather reports, I will go to my deathbed believing that the Fahrenheit scale is better.

Anyway, I think my greatest takeaway from these locations vs. pages threads is that for a quick conversion, just divide by 10. E.g. location 2046-52 is really page ~204.6. Why Amazon couldn't just do this from the get-go, I don't know, since it would probably save hundreds of virtual trees worth of message board posts.

[foghat]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I am a new Kindle owner and currently reading my first Kindle book. Locations has been the least intuitive Kindle feature for me compared to my experiences on other ereader brands. It bothers me that I have no sense of how big my 6841 location-sized book is. I had to look up how many pages are in the print version for a comparison. Therefore, I agree it's all about the frame of reference. To me the ereader should immerse the reader in the text of the ebook without missing the feel or smell of a paperbook. So why not use a frame of reference like pages that is universally recognized by most people? I don't want to have to stop and calculate in my head that location 4542 is like 252 pages. That breaks the fluidity of the reading experience. If I am overseas, I don't walk outside and think it's a brisk 12C morning. I look at the weather forecast and relate it back to the temperature in degrees F that I am accustomed to.

On the other hand, I really like how the Kindle has the status bar at the bottom of the screen that shows chapter/section markings and the percentage of the book that you have read thus far. I am sure after several books I'll have a better sense of locations, but I'll also still probably be trying to relate back to my reference frame of pages.

You just need to read a few more ebooks and you will start to get your frame of reference - as I said before, I like to just drop the last digit on the location and say that is the number of pages.

So a book with an ending location of 6841, I would read as 684 pages. While this no way represents a true printed page number - it brings the number down to something reasonable and easily comparable between other kindle books.

What you have to keep in mind is that even if there were page numbers instead of locations, the 'pages' would still not be equivalent to the pages in a printed book. So, I don't see how that would give you any better frame of reference.

I find locations really can be used like page numbers in a printed book (granted with much higher numbers) - perhaps even more so than ebook pages which change when font size changes.

[foghat]

Originally Posted by gca3020

Sorry, perhaps broken was harsh, I was using a bit of hyperbole to emphasize my point, I certainly don't want to alienate the 95% of the planet that uses Celsius temperatures , but for me it's not intuitive.

As far as I know, the F scale was chosen based on how the temperature feels to us. 100 is very hot, 0 is very cold. I will admit that C (or Kelvin, as mentioned before) is better for just about anything else, but for weather reports, I will go to my deathbed believing that the Fahrenheit scale is better.

Anyway, I think my greatest takeaway from these locations vs. pages threads is that for a quick conversion, just divide by 10. E.g. location 2046-52 is really page ~204.6. Why Amazon couldn't just do this from the get-go, I don't know, since it would probably save hundreds of virtual trees worth of message board posts.

Yep. Divide by 10. Even easier, just drop the last digit.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

On the other hand, I really like how the Kindle has the status bar at the bottom of the screen that shows chapter/section markings and the percentage of the book that you have read thus far. I am sure after several books I'll have a better sense of locations, but I'll also still probably be trying to relate back to my reference frame of pages.

Where do you see chapter/section markings? I have a Kindle WiFi LG 3 and only see percent read, location number and total locations in the book.

If I was going to cite references, I would start with Amazon Kindle Location 408 and then just use 1002, 2009, etc. One could also use AKL 5006 as well if many books including pBooks were referenced.

For comparisons one could always get the number of pages in a pBook from the Amazon site. I use that number combined with the price to sort books on my wish list to maximize the number of pBook pages / dollar cost to choose my eBook purchase from my Wish List which could include hundreds of equally valuable eBooks for me to read.

So far as the value of printed pages while reading, I always used to divide my current page number by the total pages to get the percent read at the moment. That number is already calculated and shown at the bottom of each eBook location which makes it a lot more convenient than doing the calculation in my head.

I used to use the Sony PRS 900 and their page numbers each encompassed many screens which made them really unusable to find where I was located specifically.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Where do you see chapter/section markings? I have a Kindle WiFi LG 3 and only see percent read, location number and total locations in the book.

I mean the very tiny, barely visible, little dots in the horizontal status bar. Not all books have them. The book I am currently reading does not. If your book doesn't have them, then you will see them show up where you have made notes and marks. If your book does have them, then you can click left and right on the 5-way controller to jump between the dots. I have one book where the dots jump between "Sections" (groups of chapters) rather than the individual chapters. For most books, the dots are usually chapters. Blogs and periodicals have them too, and the dots jump between articles. It's a nice way to move quickly through the book without using the Go to > Table of Contents Menu.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by foghat

You just need to read a few more ebooks and you will start to get your frame of reference - as I said before, I like to just drop the last digit on the location and say that is the number of pages.

So a book with an ending location of 6841, I would read as 684 pages. While this no way represents a true printed page number - it brings the number down to something reasonable and easily comparable between other kindle books.

What you have to keep in mind is that even if there were page numbers instead of locations, the 'pages' would still not be equivalent to the pages in a printed book. So, I don't see how that would give you any better frame of reference.

I find locations really can be used like page numbers in a printed book (granted with much higher numbers) - perhaps even more so than ebook pages which change when font size changes.

Thank you for the advice. Yes, I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually. I'm just going to have to shift my thinking. I still like my Kindle regardless!

I think it's the large quantity that throws me off. Why not have a tenth of the locations? Most people are used to paperbooks with page quantities of hundreds and not thousands. It doesn't bother me that the number of ebook pages would not be the exact same as a paperbook. After all paperbooks come in many sizes and font formatting too. Yet people still have a general sense of a "page". I am also used to reading ebooks in the EPUB format. And, EPUBs can adjust font size without affecting the total number of pages. Also if I open an EPUB on my 6" reader and then also on my 7" reader, Page 97 is Page 97 on both devices regardless of screen size or font size. Since the Kindle is not my only ereader, it's just more difficult to convert my brain to thinking of locations only.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by cvkemp

I am not crazy about locations. But I realize that page numbers would mean nothing see that any time you change font size or font style that it would change the page numbers, but with location that does not change. Seeing I believe that the location is by the number of characters and I believe that each location change is 128 characters.
If that is not correct I am sure that someone here will correct me.

Chuck

Heck, Chuck, someone will correct you even if you are right!