Goat Toy (Tool?) Day 16

If you read books a lot you really need an e-ink reader. They are so much easier on the eyes, and work great in direct sunlight. And there’s no distraction from reading, most don’t have any way to check email or Facebook. The battery life is usually measured in weeks or months instead of hours. Some models are waterproof, so that’s an improvement over paper. (Don’t get me wrong, I still love a good dead trees book, but I also like being able to carry hundreds of books around.)

Amazon’s Kindles are probably the best known, but there are a lot of others as well: Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Kobo, Sony, etc. You need to specifically look for e-ink models, as all of them make tablets with normal color screens.

E-ink uses a different technology from normal screens, they only use power when changing state, and continue to display when off, so they use very little power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink

I can only really speak from experience on the Kindles. I’ve owned several of them, from the 3nd generation with a keyboard and no backlight, to the Paperwhite, Voyage, and Oasis which traded the keyboard for a touchscreen. The expensive ones add lightness (per Colin Chapman), and bells and whistles, but don’t really “read” any better than the cheap models.

A funny thing about the keyboard Kindle: everyone I showed it to tried to use it as a touchscreen. Even when I said as I handed it to them “This is not a touchscreen”, the first thing they tried to do was swipe. And when it didn’t work they’d say, “Oh, yea, you told me that.”

Of course part of the e-reader question is what formats the device supports, how many and which books are available, and if you’re locked into the company’s store.

While the Kindles only support buying e-books from Amazon, you’re not completely locked in. You can e-mail most document types to a dedicated email address for your Kindle (the default address is usually gibberish, but you can change it to anything not already taken, via the web site), and they will be converted and sent to your Kindle. The Kindle’s format is called AZW, but it’s a variant of Mobi, so any Mobi e-books will work without conversion.

And there’s a wonderful open source program for converting ebooks from one format to another called Calibre.

https://calibre-ebook.com/
The Calibre site also has a free e-book archive.

There are public domain e-book sites like Gutenberg.
https://www.gutenberg.org/

Here’s a good list of sites:
https://mashable.com/article/free-ebooks/

And if you like science fiction, don’t miss the Baen Free Library! https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012
The only catch is they are often the first book or two in a series, to get you hooked. But there are a lot of great books there, and the selection changes from time to time.

In my experience, e-readers are not great for reference works. Skipping back and forth to different sections or following footnotes can be cumbersome. Though Amazon has made some improvements to that in recent years, with their Page Flip and Smart Lookup features. But I think they’re still much better suited to linear reading.

And yes, the main reason I’m posting this today, is there are some cheap e-ink Kindles over on Woot today. They are scratch & dent items, but for $35 it’s a good way to get into e-ink, and see if it’s really that great.

Of the two, the 8th gen 2016 is the newer model, BUT has NO backlight.

The 2012 Paperwhite model does have backlight. Personally I’d get the backlight.

https://computers.woot.com/plus/amazon-tablets-kindle-e-readers-sd-1

And if scratch & dent doesn’t appeal, keep an eye out, the older models are always going on sale. And the latest & greatest go on sale occasionally.