Kobo standalone? (never want to connect to Kobo, or activate)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by VA1DER

Privacy disappears in inverse ratio to your willingness to fight for it. If you don't fight for it, you don't get it. More than that, it's not up to you to tell other people that they shouldn't strive for it.

I just bought a used Kobo GLO HD to replace one that won't USB-connect any more. I used the sqlite method and inserted a row to give me access without registering. I used DB Browser for SQLite for the editing.

The best thing this buys you isn't even the privacy, it buys you a MUCH better firmware. The current firmwares are nothing but ads all over the front page. I have firmware 3.19.5761 on mine. My home screen is a thing of beauty. Books I'm reading, collections I've accessed, books I've just finished. Not an ad anywhere.

And even better, it has a removable sdcard so I can back up my entire firmware and collection.

Online privacy is a fallacy. You cannot do much these days without having to give information about yourself. You want to buy an eBook, you have to give the site some information about you. You want a library card, you have to give information. You want a bank account, you have to give some information. You want to pay be a credit card or PayPal, you have to give information.

The problem that you may run into is that any sort of add-ons you may want to run may not work because you are on so old a firmware. The other thing is that Kobo has sped up reading ePub. It's faster and highlighting it a lot easier then it was back in your firmware's day. Also, Kobo has really improved the dictionaries. If you want all the improvements to your reading experience, you'll need to update the firmware.

I've had a Kobo for almost 10 years. Black Friday weekend will be 10 years. I've never had any privacy issues with with my Kobo or with Kobo. Kobo is a Canadian company and they take privacy laws very seriously.

I do keep WiFi off because I don't sync and I don't want to get hit with a firmware update that I don't want just yet.

[Apollyon202]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

KOReader is not to everyone's taste. I've tried it and found it lacking in some areas important to me - no library manager (I've heard they're planning to add it) and very slow with large multi-volume omnibus editions, of which I have many. No, I don't want to split them up. So I use the stock reader instead of KOReader. Patched stock does everything I want and I'm not worried about someone seeing what I read - my reading tastes are boring. They're (whoever they are) welcome to my lowbrow genre fiction collection.

Yes, I've lived under a government that banned some genres and many books. If history ever repeats itself, then I'll behave accordingly. At the moment it's not necessary.

As for library management I have Calibre to do that. It's faster and more convenient. Previously I was also prefering the stock reader as it's a bit cleaner way to get on my reads, but I gave KOReader another try and it worked. It cost around an hour to figure out how it works and set it up but was worth it. Now I prefer this over Nickel, as I have way more options to customize the reading screen, page turning is faster, I can leave my books in epub and like the utilites it has (reading and battery statistics etc).

About privacy, it's not just about to prevent who sees what I read and who doesn't, it's the principle.
One can do this with everything else, there are lots of alternatives and most of time it is even better and more convenient than what Big Tech can offer.
If you give up on your privacy and principles, you are welcoming 1984 with open arms.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Apollyon202

As for library management I have Calibre to do that. It's faster and more convenient. Previously I was also prefering the stock reader as it's a bit cleaner way to get on my reads, but I gave KOReader another try and it worked. It cost around an hour to figure out how it works and set it up but was worth it. Now I prefer this over Nickel, as I have way more options to customize the reading screen, page turning is faster, I can leave my books in epub and like the utilites it has (reading and battery statistics etc).

It's not that KOReader was hard to figure out - I did that quickly enough. As I said, KOReader has two fundamental flaws that make it pretty much unusable for me. Yes, I also use Calibre, but I like to keep lots of books on my ereaders and a file explorer just isn't enough for me. The other drawback - slowness with large books - is even more unforgivable. I was not able to even search for a word in some of them with KOReader and there was one KOReader didn't open at all (a whopping 14-volume omnibus, yes, but the stock reader had no issues with it).

About privacy, it's not just about to prevent who sees what I read and who doesn't, it's the principle.
One can do this with everything else, there are lots of alternatives and most of time it is even better and more convenient than what Big Tech can offer.
If you give up on your privacy and principles, you are welcoming 1984 with open arms.

Thank you, but no. If I lived for hundreds of years, maybe; as it is, life is just too short. I don't want to spend half of my free time searching for those alternatives every time I want to use a program and it only runs on Windows or MacOS. Which is often. And sometimes there is no other alternative at all. I'm not going to make my life complicated just for principles, but then I have very few principles overall and most of the time I don't follow even those I do have. For me, convenience almost always trumps principles. YMMV.

[shamanNS]

Reading omnibus-es is the worst thing

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Apollyon202

As for library management I have Calibre to do that. It's faster and more convenient. Previously I was also prefering the stock reader as it's a bit cleaner way to get on my reads, but I gave KOReader another try and it worked. It cost around an hour to figure out how it works and set it up but was worth it. Now I prefer this over Nickel, as I have way more options to customize the reading screen, page turning is faster, I can leave my books in epub and like the utilites it has (reading and battery statistics etc).

About privacy, it's not just about to prevent who sees what I read and who doesn't, it's the principle.
One can do this with everything else, there are lots of alternatives and most of time it is even better and more convenient than what Big Tech can offer.
If you give up on your privacy and principles, you are welcoming 1984 with open arms.

Not registering your Kobo is not privacy. It's paranoia. However, once you do register you can keep WiFi off. I do. I don't do it for so-called privacy, I do it because I don't sync.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

Reading omnibus-es is the worst thing

The plural of omnibus is omnibuses.

[shamanNS]

[Apollyon202]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Not registering your Kobo is not privacy. It's paranoia. However, once you do register you can keep WiFi off. I do. I don't do it for so-called privacy, I do it because I don't sync.

For you it's paranoia, for me it's just a routine to keep all my devices under my control. I think there is nothing wrong with that.