There's been chatter, if not mild uproar, on the interwebz lately about Amazon pulling the plug on downloading your "purchased" Kindle books. At first, I dismissed it because I have only ever read on my Kindles, buying books from the Kindle Store; nothing would change for me. Nevertheless, this news may lead to the Biggest Change Ever. It has caused me to seriously consider switching eReaders from Kindle to Kobo.
Having said all that, I admit that my Kindle Paperwhite, released in late 2021, is doing its job perfectly well. The newest Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is attractive. And maybe the Colorsoft issues are sorted out — it periodically goes on sale for about $50 less. My eBook library is all Kindle, so it’s easiest to not switch. The choice is a tough one — Kindle or Kobo? I’ve never been faced with this before, but Amazon’s recent changes pushed me to take a look at the competition.
I had never before thought about ditching the Kindle. It's been one of my favorite gadgets and truly helps me to enjoy the magic of reading books. And since Kindle is one of the earliest eReaders, I’ve always considered it the gold standard. Kobo or others were, to me, playing catch up. Alternative eReaders, I thought, did not have greener pasture.
But that changed.
With the recent furor over Amazon's announcement that you'll soon no longer be able to download your “bought” eBooks to your computer, I finally looked into it thanks to Jason Snell at Six Colors. He's a longtime Apple journalist and eReader aficionado whose opinion I value and respect. So when he wrote about the recent Kindle news (controversy?), I paid attention.
In his post, he mentioned that he had switched from Kindle to Kobo. That planted the seed in my brain. I then read about his switching, which opened my eyes to look and see what Kobo has to offer. I discovered there is, in fact, greener grass on the other side of the eReader fence. Indeed, I learned that Kobos have several compelling reasons to consider using them over Kindles.
The main one for me is that Kobos make it super easy to read not just eBooks but also web articles thanks to their Pocket integration. Pocket is an established read-later service and app, owned by Mozilla, makers of Firefox. I enjoyed Pocket before, so once I learned it works on Kobos, I dusted off my account and jumped back into using it. This so happens to be the solution I’ve been in need of for a while now. Saving web articles to read later has been difficult since Chrome and Edge lack good built-in offerings (like I enjoyed in Safari).
Whether or not I switch from Kindle to Kobo, I'm happy to once again enjoy Pocket. I can easily share articles to read later from my RSS reader, Feedly. And I can share directly from web pages thanks to the handy Pocket web extension I'm now using in Edge.
Ultimately, though, due to the other features of Kobos, I’m leaning towards my next eReader upgrade being a Kobo, not a Kindle. The reasons:
- Pocket integration
- Affordable color eInk options
- Physical page-turn buttons
- Overdrive/Libby integration and ease of use
- Open to more eBook file formats (epub etc.)
- Stylus and handwriting on the Libra Colour
I'm considering either a Clara Colour or a Libra Colour. The Libra is more expensive, but in contrast with the Clara Colour, it provides a larger display, physical page-turn buttons, a one-handed design, and the option to add the Stylus for writing directly in or on eBooks and handwriting journals, planners, and notes.
There's also another reason that fuels this. Although Amazon finally released a Kindle with color eInk last Fall, called Colorsoft, the launch was kind of a disaster. There were significant display quality issues, bad reviews, many returns, and a delayed fix. Plus, the Colorsoft is costly at $280. Expensive, questionable quality…these things leave a bad taste. And paired with the facts I just learned, that reliable color eInk can be had on a Kobo for a mere $160 — wow!
|
| Now reading this long eBook on Kindle Paperwhite. |
In any case, I have manually downloaded most of my library of Kindle eBooks from Amazon to my local storage drive. So if I switch to Kobo, I should be able to remove the DRM from the eBooks I bought (Fair Use) and install them on, say, a Clara Colour.
No comments:
Post a Comment