linux-friendly ebook with decent support in Israel?

[Steve G.]

I'd say that the e-ink is not yet obsolete. B&N and Amazon still sell them
and will continue to do so, as the tablets are not a friendly device to
read a long book or document. e-ink readers are not good for video, or even
web browsing, but they are umatched for reading books on the road/plane.
They are small, batteries last a long time, you can get one that is backlit
for reading in the dark, etc.

That said, I have yet to find an all around good arrangement for reading
pdf files, especially scanned ones. The 6" devices are too small, the iPads
and Nooks of the world either have a horrid path to get to the documents
(library metaphor in Apple, plus books are divided between their own reader
app and Adobe through two different UIs. The Nook and even Kindle app on it
do not retain the last page read info, so you have to look for it every
time. The 10" Kindle might work (in B&W at least), but is not worth the
money.

At least that was the situation when I gave up. If anyone knows an android
app that resumes reading a book at the last page reached, and/or has
bookmarks to easily reach that place manually, do let me know.

Thx.

Z


On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 4:24 PM, geoffrey mendelson <
geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/9/2014 3:08 PM, Vassilii Khachaturov wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your answer. When I posted a link to a matrix of all the
>> current eink-based readers, I assumed it is obvious I want an e-ink based
>> one. I'd think dedicated reader would be more energy/weight/price efficient
>> than a general purpose tablet, but anything with e-ink will do! Also, as I
>> had stated, I'm not interested in buying DRM books anyway...
>>
>
> Not really. You can buy an active display android tablet for about the
> same money. E-ink displays are more energy efficient, but slow. You end up
> hitting the next button before you finish a page in the hope that it starts
> to refresh before you get to the last word in the page and finishes as you
> do.
>
> They also suck for displaying material that was originally color or
> scanned material. I have many books that were scanned and they are
> unreadable on an e-ink display,
>
> E-ink was an idea which came and went.
>
> I also found that battery life was exaggerated by the vendors, being a
> fast reader, I got about 6-8 hours of reading out of a charge. This was
> both on an original Kindle (with a new battery and cellular turned off) and
> an original nook with wifi turned off. They list some enormous number of
> "page flips" which does not mean a lot, your average paperback book needs
> 3-4 "flips" to cover one page of paper. An A4 page of 10 point type takes a
> lot of them.
>
> As for DRM books, I figured that out, but they do drive the market. People
> are no longer satisfied with only one vendor and want the ability to buy
> them from many vendors which means a tablet, not a reader.
>
> Just for the heck of it I looked up original iPads on Yad2. They go for
> about 600 NIS, which makes it not worth buying a dedicated reader,
> especially if you have to pay postage from the US and VAT.
>
>
> Geoff.
>
> --
> Geoffrey S. Mendelson 4X1GM/N3OWJ
> Jerusalem Israel.
>
>
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> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
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>



-- 
Sincerely,

Steve

http://www.words2u.net - GPS points and tracks (mainly in Costa Rica)

http://www.words2u.net/recipes - Recipe collection
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