eReaders Ressources

Foreword

As any avid reader, I have had a look at eReaders. In that respect, I must say that I find the anti-ereaders' reaction very funny and very similar to what I heard many years ago when microwave ovens started to appear. Many people were objecting to microwave ovens on various grounds, but there was one common feature: they didn't seem to understand that the microwave was not there to replace the cooker, but to supplement it.
What we hear today about ereaders goes very much in the same direction. Most of the objections start from the premisse that if/when you buy an ereader, you will stop buying/using/reading paper books. I personally don't see why. I happily continue to use both. And even if you do at some point, I guess it will be for the same reason the car replaced the horse. End of the subject as far as I am concerned :-)
Last comment: I also have tablets, and of course I sometimes read on those as well. However, whatever the quality of the display, I find the tablet/phone screens more tiring for the eyes than the eInk.
Une partie des informations de cette page est disponible en français ou sous forme d'ePub.
A previous version of this page is available here, with the obsolete information / machines I've removed.

Machines


So far I played with 5 families of machines: the Sony, the kindle, the Kobo(s), the Touch Lux, and the Trekstor, but there are many others: Tolino, nook, iriver, pocketbook, vivlio, etc.
ALL of them use the free ePub format, except the kindle which uses a proprietary, closed format.

The Kobo(s)


<== Kobo WiFi
Let's be clear: at £50 (€60), the Kobo wifi was a bargain ! It was probably the cheapest ereader on the market, and it did its job very well. It was my first reader, and I loved that machine. I say was because unfortunately it has been phased out.


<== Kobo touch // Kobo mini ==>

I also have a Touch, because I travel a lot and the Touch features a browser, which enables me to check my emails or read the paper (so to speak !!) on the go on a bigger screen than my phone. It also sports other improvement compared to the basic model, but apart from a slightly longer battery life, none of those mattered to me. Some extra gadget are a sudoku (and now a Chess game), stats on your books/reading, possibility to share directly on facebook, "badges", etc.
Kobo (a Canadian firm now Japanese-owned) was smart enough to make its device the exact same size as corresponding kindle model, which means that any kindle accessory will also work with the Kobo :-)
One thing I like about the Kobo is that you can hack it: change dictionnaries, add fonts, etc. Very useful if you want to read books in a less-known language that uses special fonts!
Two notes on that: I had the opportunity to see the inside of a broken kobo wifi. The hard disk is in fact a 2G sdcard under the main board. I took it out for examination (of course), and here are the results of the Luxemburguese jury:
3 partitions: 2 of 250M, 1 of 140M

Device Boot      Start          End           Blocks    Id    System
/dev/sdf1          19456        543744       262144+    83    Linux
/dev/sdf2          543745      1068033       262144+    83    Linux
/dev/sdf3         1068034      3862527      1397247      b    W95 FAT32

2 Linux  partitions, one Fat32 partition
sdf1 seems to be the active partition, while sdf2 would be a back-up partition, with an image ready to run or be restored in case of problem. Once archived, the sdf1 partition tgz sizes at 5 megs and sdf2 at 150 megs.
sdf3 is data only.
Examination of the linux system partition doesn't reveal anything specific, except that it is a minimum linux system based on busybox and the QT libraries.


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TrekStor Pyrus Mini

Since I have used the Kobo mini extensively and found the 4'X 3' screen not to be too much of an inconvenience, I thought I would give the trekstor mini a spin. At €29, I didn't have much to lose anyway. (Update 2018: no longer exists unfortunately)
Note: you can't change fonts to make epub easier to read with the trekstor (except for .txt), but you can hack the epub. When I find an epub hard to read, I use Sigil (see below) to include a font (Roboto or droid serif work fine on small screens) and force the @font-face to it.

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The Kindle


The kindle has become the synonym for ereader in many people's mind.
However, it is not the machine of my choice, for various reasons.
  1. First of all, there is the tie to Amazon. Amazon has been known to erase books you have bought from your kindle remotely without asking permission. This happened in July 2009, and again in November 2010, and again in October 2012. Whatever the reasons, I haven't seen anybody from WHS Smiths breaking into my house to reclaim a book I had bought at their bookstore.
  2. Amazon may also simply decide they don't like you, erase your kindle and remove your account, no explanation given, like they did with a Norwegian lady.
  3. More horror from amazon in 2009
  4. Or the book you want to read may have too many hyphens, in which case amazon will also remove it. (Dec 2014)
  5. Another problem I have with the kindle is a more practical one: the format of the books. The default formats of the kindle, AZW3 since Kindle 8 (.mobi before that), are closed source (even if the earlier versions were reverse-enginneered). This means that there are very few tools that enables you to create your own books to put on your kindle. If you do, you have to create an ePub and use a converter. This extra step is not only annoying, but despite the best efforts of the people behind the conversion software, sometimes the result isn't optimum (mangled toc, etc).
  6. I find the ergonomy of the kindle lacking. For example, it is fine if you have few books, but I routinely carry hundred of books, and the "catalog" system of the kindle is not very practical or ergonomic - not as easy as the Kobo anyway.
  7. The strict management right of amazon causes problems for travelling people. This is a milder version of (1). An example of this: you buy a book in the UK, but your reader refuses to allow you to read it when travelling in Norway (or the US). Even inside the US, you might not be able to cross a state border.
  8. Milder case of the above: if you live in a country NOT on amazon list, good luck to buy some books available to anybody else.
  9. And then there is the tracking. Bezos is selling your data and profile to whomever pays, and that includes US federal agencies. Yes, you read that right. See the details here (12/2023).

For all those reasons, I do not want a kindle (unless I find a very cheap second hand that I never connect).

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The Touch Lux

The Touch 5 is sold under various names: Vivlio (ex-TEA), PocketBook.

What can I say ? When I offer a reader, this is what I go for. For €100, it has wifi, dictionnaries, 6G storage, backlight, everything you want and more. It even has several games and applications: browser, sudoku, etc.
When my trusted kobo finally dies, this is the one I will buy.
It is also powered by linux (one single partition), and you can sideloads fonts by putting them in /system/fonts. Couldn't be easier.
There is an OTA update mechanism for the firmware as well, but I guess it must be possible to sideload via the pc. It can be used without any registration.



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Tolino

A friend drew my attention to the Tolino, which fits perfectly in the category of readers I like. I haven't tried it yet, but the description seems to be what I want. More on this when I can actually play with one :-)

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Others

I explored a bit the other ereaders on the market. Here are the results (original Nov 2013 - updated 20220919):
Terms of reference are:
Mandatory:
  • eInk
  • screen min 5"
  • price <= €100 /£90/$110-120
  • decent battery life (>8h)
Nice to have
  • WiFi
  • SD Card
Small devices (Pyrus, PocketBook Mini, kobo mini) have all but disappeared; obviously, I'm the only one who like them. Hunting on amazon and the like might get you one still.


The solution might simply to build your own.
With cheap chips like the ESP32, the arduino or the raspberry, this is actually quite feasable for cheap.
See for example the Open Book project, or simple machines like this one.
I'm thinking about building my own based on an esp32.


Other worth investigating:
Conclusion:

Considering the terms of reference, the best are (Sep 2022):
NameTouch
Screen		Diction-
nary		WiFiPriceRemark
Tolino Page [OK] [?][OK]€74NOT on amazon (110!)
PocketBook touch lux 5 [OK] [OK][OK]€105


  • Dictionnary: touch a word and
    get a translation or definition.
  • Wi-Fi: used to update firmware or
    send books to reader;
    with crude browser
    also allows for checking mail
    or reading online newspaper.

If you are in the UK, check out Argos. They did carry both Kobo and Nook £50 at some point.

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Envoi

That's all there is to say, really. My advice is to try and borrow one (or several) before you make your choice. Obviously there is room for many readers out there depending on what you do with it. They all offer pretty much the same functionalities. I have done a very rough comparison between the prices of the 10 most read books on amazon and the top ten on kobobooks, and they are roughly the same. So whatever works for you. What matters is that you read ! :-)
You can compare most of them by yourself on ReaderRocket
Unfortunately, small readers seem to disappear from the market: first the kobo mini, then the TrekStor mini. So if you see one, grab it before it disappears. I've had mine for years and they last forever anyway :-)
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Ressources

Tools

As explained above, I create a lot of ebooks. The reason is very simple: like most people, when I am on the internet I don't always have the time to read interesting stuff I come across. One possibility is of course to bookmark the page, but we all have gazillions of bookmarks we will never read. So what I do is simply to capture the page(s) into an epub, and send it to my Kobo to read on the train / bus.
Un excellent tutoriel sur la création d'epub

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References



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