The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet [LWN.net]

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 17:42 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
In reply to: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet by boudewijn
Parent article: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

software bugs on one device will not kill all e-readers

I have the kindle DX because of it's larger screen, the kindle 2 screen is about the size of a paperback, but it changed pages slowly enough to be an annoyance to me, the DX had enough text on the screen to make the annoyance significantly less. The kindle 3 and newer devices have a newer generation of screen that changes significantly faster (as well as providing significantly better contrast)

the kindle DX has problems with pdf books similar to what you describe with long documents, but not with any other format (and I understand newer devices are signficantly better)

The other problems you are dealing with are software bugs on your reader, and not ones that I have heard of on kindles.

your conclusion that these will doom e-readers is like saying that one model of smartphone has problems, and so all smartphones are doomed.

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The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 20:39 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

I haven't seen anything that makes the kindle software actually better -- it might not crash, but it still sucks for anyone who really reads books.

And, of course, there's no way I'm going let Amazon know what I read and on which page I pause.

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 22:08 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

> I haven't seen anything that makes the kindle software actually better -- it might not crash, but it still sucks for anyone who really reads books.

as someone who reads a lot, I disagree with you.

> And, of course, there's no way I'm going let Amazon know what I read and on which page I pause.

you don't have to. Just don't buy any books from Amazon, and turn off the syncing of where you are in the book.

90% of the books that I have are not purchased from Amazon (and are DRM free, before you trot that out). In my case, Amazon knows that I have most of them because I use the 'e-mail to device' option, which runs them through the Amazon servers, but you could just load them via USB.