Just a quick note on Kindle failure. There is a Chinese factory that can supply new screens for your Kindle right back to the V2 with the keyboard. While they are not easy to replace they can be done with a little care. The replacement screens are about $30 each for most screens unless you are replacing the colour screen. I cannot find the web address at the moment but a quick Google search will bring up the site. And also get yourself the plastic toolkit that allows you to split things like iPhones and tablets. The tool kit is extremely expensive, I paid $25 for the top brand!! (attempted humour).
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Thank you for your advice. Will keep it in mind.
Just want to point out that there are libraries in Australia which let you borrow e-books: I’m lucky enough to have access to the Rockhampton Municipal Library which is a member of ‘Borrow Box’! One can borrow e-books and audio books. Just borrowed one on my tablet.
We’ve updated our ereader reviews.
Which do you prefer - book, ebook reader or tablet? Answer our poll below.
- Books
- eReader
- Tablet
- All of the above
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I see that in Jan 2021 e book readers are tested in the Choice magazine. A few years ago I bought a Sony reader and was generally quite happy with it but we decided a second reader would be a good idea for when we go caravanning to keep ourselves occupied during covid. So the next reader was a Kobo. Since that purchase the Sonly died so now we would like another and, as I’m not delighted with the Kobo, I was happy to see that there are others to be reviewed - but disappointed in what those reviews don’t tell me. For instance little is said about downloading free books though OverDrive is mentioned in some 'Good Points", not in Kindles, and I find that my library, Central Coast, is best accessed through Borrow Box which is not mentioned. More than possible that I just don’t understand enough about how downloading it all works and I’m happy to be pointed in the right direction.
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Welcome to the community @Rel
I moved your query into this older topic.
For completeness as you mentioned the newest review is 14 Jan 2021.
Perhaps some ebook users can answer your questions, and Choice might take your questions on board for future buyer guides or tests.
Hi @Rel, and welcome.
There are many complications to ebook readers. The process of accessing content is complex and prone to failure. For a start, could you outline the process by which you access ebooks from your library?
You might find some answers in this thread:
I’ve never borrowed an ebook from a library. Nearly all of my reading is in the public domain. There’s more than a lifetime’s reading, freely available from sites such as:
Project Gutenberg’s Australian incarnation: http://gutenberg.net.au/
The Internet Archive: https://archive.org/
and the Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/
For the record, my reader is a Kobo Clara HD. I’ve never tried the options built in to the reader for purchasing books. After figuring out how to download books to my PC, then copy them to my reader, there hasn’t been a hitch. Yet.
I had a message from PhilT saying he had moved my conversation to an older topic for completeness ?? however part of what I wrote refers to the e book readers review in Jan 2021 so I don’t quite understand? Does this mean it is now under an older topic and under the newer topic?
When the Sony was usable (in its younger days it was very good and downloads were easy) I used BorrowBox - Sony now dead and can’t be replaced. The Kobo Libra H20 will only use OverDrive and on the whole I’m not finding anything to do with it user friendly so far. I have also been able to borrow a book on my iPhone (only one borrowed so far) by logging onto the Central Coast Council website then downloading it through BorrowBox. I don’t intend using my iPhone while away in the caravan as we will usually be free camping, with power only available every week or so, so an e book reader - pre loaded - has to be it the way I do it. We would like to buy another reader and I wanted something other than a Kobo but it seems it’s either Kobo or Kindle isn’t it? I just want something easy that works every time I want to borrow!!!
I suppose it qualifies as an E-reader, I use an 8 inch tablet. This allows me to load a variety of software readers and it has many other functions as well. It has an excellent screen and is light enough to read anywhere including in bed with one hand. It costs a little more than a dedicated reader but I get much more use out of it too.
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Apologies for any confusion. A number of ‘older’ topics already have related or relevant information that could be helpful for a poster, and many topics are managed in an ‘encyclopaedic’ manner. When a ‘topic’ is moved into another topic its topic gets closed but remains indexed so any reader can see where it was moved to.
This does not imply they are necessarily ‘old’ or ‘outdated’, just that they are ‘older’ than the new post. When a topic is merged the ‘old inclusive topic’ will show at the top of the ‘latest’ and thus attract attention.
Prior to this post the ‘Best e-readers’ was indexed as being 1 hour old to make the point.
You may notice the topic has 28 replies to the original post in it, and 1,200 views so there is definitely interest in e-readers. Every comment and every question becomes value added to the topic.
Does that clear it up?
After looking a bit further (reading older comments that is) it seems I’m quite naive in my expectations of something simple which will ‘just work’. I think I will give up and accept what I have - the Kobo Libra H20 - as getting involved with a Kindle (really the only other reader even vaguely worth considering in narrow choices) and yet another system will just take up too much valuable brain space. Thanks for the comments.
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I used to use Project Gutenberg all the time, but after the site redevelopment last year, the function to sort a bookshelf by author has disappeared. According to the site blog, they are working on restoring that function. It can’t happen soon enough for me !
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I have 3 ereaders, none of which i use regularly. I kept trying to find the ideal but in the end keep going back to my phone.
gutenberg is/was OK, but theres another site which takes those and reformats them into very nice editions. https://standardebooks.org/
There’s also a forum called Mobileread.com and members there have done an awful lot of uploading of PD books to the MR library. Pretty impressive.
I have used an ereader since 2014, and use, with regret for the loss of the sensation of reading from a real book, for 90% of my reading. I can take it anywhere, i prefer reading to watching a movie (especially on a plane) and it is lighter to hold than a book, so better for arthritic hands.
I have taken mine to bed in a swag so i could read when i woke in the middle of a pitch black night.
So i dispute Choice’s rating for readability: “E-readers using e-ink deliver the best reading experience you can get with an electronic device, but suffer the same limitations in lower light as a traditional paper book.”
The screen is backlit and there is no reflection - so is far and away a better option for reading in poor or non existent lighting than any thing else.
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Thanks for the feedback, mudpuppy ! I am usually the tester of e-readers, so have checked, and the descriptive text that goes with the bedroom score was incorrect. We do, of course, take screen lighting into account. The relevant content producer has adjusted that text accordingly (online).
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Does anyone know what e-reader formats are fully searchable? I don’t have an e-reader but I bought an eBook from Amazon in .azw format (suitable for Kindles) and used an application on my PC to read it. I wanted an eBook so that I could search it easily. The book I bought was a technical one that I use for reference (I also have a paper copy) and it was expensive. I was very disappointed that I could not search for words shorter than four characters as technical books use a lot of three letter acronyms so the search function was very limiting. I can’t tell which formats are suitable for me and I have not been able to find such information.
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The Amazon Kindle reader will search for any string AFAIK, it certainly finds strings and substrings that are 1, 2 or 3 characters long using books from Amazon. I think it is free even if you don’t buy their books. Whether it will work correctly with your book in all respects I do not know. I suggest you download it and find out.
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There is a Wikipedia page that will give some guidance about many formats.
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Thanks for that although I have seen that Wikipedia page. However that the page does not address my specific problem of how good a particular format is for searching for text. Certainly there are a lot of e-book formats listed there. The number of formats is somewhat intimidating.
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The Amazon Kindle reader was the first software I tried but, for my book, it limited the the word search length to four or more. It was a few years ago now so maybe it’s better now.
I am also a little wary of Amazon and kindles because of someone I’d heard (an unverified story) about someone who Amazon thought was cheating on them somehow (eg faking an identity or some such) and deleted their whole eBook collection. I think eventually the books were restored but I do not want that happening to my reference books even temporarily.
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