Ha! though 'Farenheit 451' would have made for an even more perfectly ironic incident, had Amazon erased it instead (that book was the first thing I thought of when I heard that Amazon was making a reader called Kindle.)
parent may have been referring to actual incident (sorry no citation handy) in the early days of kindle devices, in which 1984 had its contents remotely altered (ie, subtly changed, not deleted). to me that's the most apt conceivable book title to make a pretty chilling point about trustworthy media.
I'm wondering, why buying a kindle if it's for going to such troubles avoiding using Amazon's services? I though the included store / library was one of the main selling point.
Are kindles that better than standalone competitors?
I went with kindle paperwhite simply because I wasn’t aware of alternatives, at least with electronic ink style display, and I have to assume Amazon is making the nicest e-reader since they have market dominance. Also I was trading a very old kindle keyboard, which took a little bit off the full price of paperwhite.
I have an iPad but don’t like reading on it (too big and heavy) , and was previously reading on an iPhone XS Max, but even the phone feels heavy to hold while laying down after a while.
> Are kindles that better than standalone competitors?
No, but the nearest competitor, the Kobo Clara HD, is rather recent, is only a tad smaller for the same screen, and also requires a "login" to activate.
However the Kobo takes .epub files without further ado. I think Amazon lost the format war, not that conversion is hard (cf. Calibre-ebook)
There's an additional advantage to the Kobo. The whole operating system is just on an SD card, unencrypted. You can copy it, image it, edit, modify it and so on very, very easily and it's impossible to brick it as long as you made a copy of the SD card.
I recently tried a kobo libra h2o and I had enough minor complaints about the UI that I returned it. I wouldn't say it's bad, just I prefer Kindle in a lot of ways. But if someone never used a Kindle I'd wholeheartedly recommend Kobo
kindle oasis is amazing imho
I read a _lot_, and its battery life, form factor, ergonomics, splash-proofness (non-submersible but practically impervious), legibility, speed... ROI in the first few months I owmed it and I've had it for a couple years (and expect to for many more). IOW, they finally got it right.
Interestingly that's the thing I miss most from the Oasis. I wish I could configure it to display a book I'm reading as the cover when it's in standby.
