Help me find: Page-turn buttons & sideloading

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

Any idea how hard it is to change em?

Five screws, a rubber "bumper" (or seal) and carefully prying the battery up. It looks like it was actually made to be worked on. Here's a NewPower99 video on how it's done. Be sure to gently removed the bumper (seal), especially on the bottom, it has a lot of tabs there and they'll probably break if you yanked too hard. (I've worked on one of these before and I didn't break anything, but I expected the bottom to be same as the side without the tabs, so I was lucky I didn't break any off.)



Kind of s-l-o-w... reminds me of Mr. Rogers or the old Bob & Ray "Slow Talkers of America" skit — or maybe a combination of both.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I had a 650. So I can say that the reading experience is not nearly as good as it is on Kobo.

No hi-res screen. No side loaded fonts. No real italics (simulated). No margins and line-height. No ePub 3. There is no way I would go back to a Sony Reader.

But you don't care about page turn buttons or want a 5" eReader. There's almost always compromises — just depends on what features you want more and what features you don't want to compromise. Not everyone makes the same decisions.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I had a 650. So I can say that the reading experience is not nearly as good as it is on Kobo.

No hi-res screen. No side loaded fonts. No real italics (simulated). No margins and line-height. No ePub 3. There is no way I would go back to a Sony Reader.

Yes, a Libra 2 is far better. A Sage is better still, but the PRS-350 is very much smaller and 600 x 800 on 5″ is much nicer than on 6″. Embedded fonts work fine. Most epub3 features are irrelevant when reading fiction on a small screen. Also you can trim the margins on a PRS-350, unlike a Kindle.

If someone wants 5″ it may be a better choice than the Kobo Mini and it's far better than a new Yiben/Y-Ben P47L (4.7″ ereader with no touch and no collections). It's far better than the pre-2023 600x800 Kindle Basic 167 dpi (or was it 2022?), maybe about 200 dpi?. It's also more use than the PRS-T2 being same pixels and smaller. I have PRS-350, PRS-T2 and took back a PRS-T1 as it had the dictionary freeze issue).

However I'd recommend the Sage unless it has to fit in a smaller coat pocket, then the Libra 2. I'd not bother with any 6″ model.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Quoth

However I'd recommend the Sage unless it has to fit in a smaller coat pocket, then the Libra 2.

You really think the extra inch is enough to justify the higher price and worse battery life, even if you don't use any of the writing features?

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

...

But you do have to register Readers. That's the way it is.

...

I thought you didn't have to register Kindles?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rcentros

But you don't care about page turn buttons or want a 5" eReader. There's almost always compromises — just depends on what features you want more and what features you don't want to compromise. Not everyone makes the same decisions.

The buttons on the 350 are in a terrible location. And all the downsides I mentioned are valid compared to a current Reader. The 350 has way too many compromises to make it worthwhile.

I can't find any current 6" Reader with buttons in a good location. So that leaves 7" as the buttons on the Libra 2 are in a good location.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by John F

I thought you didn't have to register Kindles?

You don't, but then you can't use some features, e.g. collections.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But you do have to register Readers. That's the way it is.

There's sideload mode on Kobo.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Putting your library on Dropbox is a time bomb waiting for your library to become corrupt. Don't do it.

I remember hearing about this but wasn't sure if it was still a problem.

If your travel laptop had a card reader, you can get a memory card to put your Calibre library on.

My travel laptop is running Linux (Mint MATE) from a 256gb flash drive, which is more space than the internal drive has. And it freezes up when I have more than about a dozen tabs open in the browser; maybe it has 2gb of RAM but maybe not.

It has a card reader but then I'd be dealing with switching the card back & forth between that and my desktop.

"Put all the ebook in Calibre" is on the someday list of to-do items. I have over a decade's worth of ebooks scattered across three drives; it'd be nice to put them all in one place and adjust the metadata and so on. But that's separate from "want a convenient hand-held device to throw 2-5 fanfic novels a week onto, with occasional binges of 20 shorter ebooks."

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You do have to setup a UN/PW before you can start using Windows.

I can choose the "offline" option and set a user name and password without registering with Microsoft.

I also don't have to register with the device manufacturer.

But you do have to register Readers. That's the way it is.

And this is a strong negative for me. But it doesn't really matter, because Kobo doesn't have 6" readers with page turn buttons, and their larger ones are wide enough not to fit in pockets.

I am not looking for the best possible reading experience. I am looking for convenience for my specific circumstances.

Emoji support? That depends on the font being used. The 350 cannot support this as you cannot use a font of your choice unless you embed in the ePub.

I don't care about emoji support; I just care that it doesn't crash when it encounters them. Ignoring them is fine.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The buttons on the 350 are in a terrible location. And all the downsides I mentioned are valid compared to a current Reader. The 350 has way too many compromises to make it worthwhile.

Most of what you've noted as compromises are not problems to me. I don't care about a hi-res screen; I'm not looking at art. I was very happy with the Clié and only stopped using it because the battery died; if I could get another device like that, I would use it.

My main purpose is "download auto-generated epubs from archiveofourown.org." The formatting is terrible in some of them - there's fics that were imported from Google Docs with extra hard returns between each paragraph. (Those, I use Sigil to fix.) Don't care. My formatting standards are low.

I'm not reading Epub 3. Whatever the margin/line height settings are for AO3's auto-generated ebooks have been fine for me.

This is very much a "quantity over quality" situation - I want to read 30,000 to 100,000 words of fanfic a day, most days, and I am not going to spend valuable reading time doing formatting or metadata adjustments.

I can't find any current 6" Reader with buttons in a good location. So that leaves 7" as the buttons on the Libra 2 are in a good location.

The Pocketbook's buttons are in a fine location for me, and may be better than the Kobo ones that are only on one side. Would much rather buttons on the bottom than on one side only, which limits which hand I can use to hold the rail on the train.

But it doesn't matter, because their button ereaders won't fit in my pockets, so they're a non-starter.

(I'm not frustrated at the answers that are "this would be a good ereader for you if you totally ignored the features you care most about, especially if you cared about these other features that don't matter to you," because I assume that's good info for other people who see the thread later. But it's not useful info for me.)

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The buttons on the 350 are in a terrible location.

No, they aren't. I have small hands, but it's still easy to reach the 350 buttons with my thumb. It means the bezels don't have to be wide enough to accommodate buttons on both sides.

The 350 is truly a beautiful little device, petite and sleek.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

There's sideload mode on Kobo.

There is, but you have to register the device with Kobo to activate it at all. (Same for Kindle - you literally can't use it until you attach it to an Amazon account. You can't buy one for someone who doesn't have email.)

You can ignore it after that and never use the account or the wifi.

[Sirtel]

Given that your main requirements are a 6'' screen and physical buttons, most everything else is optional and you're not really a Calibre user, plus you've had problems with Pocketbooks, a Boox device sounds like the best option for you. Boox devices are well known and seem to be pretty good value. I wouldn't bother with old Sony readers.

The advantage of a Boox is that you can try out different Android reading apps, to find one best fitting your needs.

I have never owned a Boox device myself, so the above is just an opinion based on various posts read here on MR.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There is, but you have to register the device with Kobo to activate it at all. (Same for Kindle - you literally can't use it until you attach it to an Amazon account. You can't buy one for someone who doesn't have email.)

You can ignore it after that and never use the account or the wifi.

Not true for a Kindle, at least. You can sideload to your heart's content without ever registering or even turning on wifi. I've not used the sideloaded mode on my Kobos, so not sure about that.

But all this is beside the point, because neither Kobos nor Kindles have what you want, a 6'' screen with physical buttons.