9 thoughts on “Watch out for the joy-stealers”

  1. Well, my wife has just run into a real joy stealer, the Kindle software developers, who have just updated her Paperwhite with version 5.14.2. This has turned out – despite the lies in the “what’s new” description – to be a total rewrite of all the navigation and organisation software.

    It is the worst piece of software I’ve seen in many a year and can only be explained by assuming that everyone involved is a total incompetent who has never actually used an e-ink Kindle (and probably thinks they should look like the Kindle software on tablets). The actually reading of a book is fortunately not affected, in the not too likely event that you can find the title that you want to read.

    I strongly advise anyone who has a Paperwhite or Oasis and is still on version 5.14.1 to permanently turn off the wi-fi before there device is infected with this malign crap. I’m going to be approaching Amazon to ask for a refund as they’ve made my wife’s Kindle unusable.

    If anyone can recommend a good e-ink reader – roughly Kindle size – on which I can sideload all my de-DRMed Kindle titles, I would be happy to hear about it.

    • Look at the various Android eink tablets at…Amazon…
      (Best, safest place to get a China, Inc gpbiche device.)
      You can load the Android Kindle app and be good to go.

      Alternately, if you convert to epub, lots of folks at Mobileread love their Kobos.
      There is a tendency for them to launch with…issues that eventually get settled so a model that’s been around might suit you.
      Another option is Pocketbook.
      At one time tbey were third globally behind Kindle and Sony.

      Fially, some folks prefer to jailbreak their Kindles and install an alternate reader: same hardward, more elaborate software.

      https://epubor.com/how-to-jailbreak-kindle-paperwhite.html

      • China, Inc niche device.
        (sigh)
        Also, the jailbreak process starts with roling back to an older firmware.
        It might be all you need.

        • Thanks for this Felix. I’ve checked the jailbreak link but am not sure that it extends to the recent software versions.

          My first comment may have been a little over the top – in reaction to my wife’s impassioned complaints – as I spent some of this morning playing with her Kindle and think that I’ve got it to an almost usable state. However, it’s a sad reflection on Amazon’s developers that we both think that our old Paperwhites, stuck on software version 5.6.1.1 have a much better user interface than anything more recent: it’s a pity they have far too little memory.

          Thinking about why this occurs I wonder whether the developers actually read books as they seem to believe that adding totally useless images enhances an interface. Maybe they are jealous of people developing for phones and tablets and don’t understand that a book reader is going to be happy with image free text?

      • I’ve been a Kobo ereader user from Day One, sweetened by hearing my husband’s complaints about his Kindle. Between us, we buy 1000+ ebooks/year.

        Committing to an epub universe can require its own ecosystem (c.f., Calibre) and a little bit of tinkering with the Kobo ereader defaults. Since Amazon is giving up mobi as a required filetype for publishers (which it always converted to epub internally anyway), the disjunction may gradually disappear.

        OTOH, I find the Calibre / unlocked file environment to have many great side benefits re: providing a permanent modifiable/correctable/enhanceable database of ebooks bought, something I’ve always wished for (and will never achieve) for in our vast physical book universe.

        • I’ve read some very good reviews of Kobo’s Libra 2, but the hardware differences didn’t seem sufficient to have a significant affect on the reading experience and the reviews never talk about the software. Do you know of any way to get a feel for the software, short of buying the device?

          I am at times envious of your set up but am curious about one point. If you are buying some of your books from Amazon what do you do about picking up the updates to books that they slip out? And another question, which is of course none of my business, but how do you manage the processing of 1,000 titles per year? It sounds like a full time admin job.

          • 1) Don’t know any way to preview the software. As a casual comparison, the Kobos I use aren’t particularly different from the Kindles, though (thankfully) lacking the Ads and Previews and other Amazon marketing. I would call the Kobo setups “straightforward”.

            As each new model is introduced & I buy one, I may have to follow a slightly different/new process to get it properly hooked to Calibre for upload/download. That moves around a little bit, but I’ve never found it a barrier, and it only occurs for each new device. Calibre takes advantage of features supported by Kobo that the Kindle does (did?) not, such as Collections and Series (intrinsic or defined).

            2) I ignore the updates to books. Nothing prevents me from downloading them (I buy almost all my ebooks from Amazon) and updating if I want to.

            3) I’ve lived with too-many-books syndrome all my life, and married the only man I ever met who had more books than I did. So these neuroses are, shall we say, deep-seated. (1100 boxes of books in storage, 30 bookcases in our current log cabin. And growing…).

            Practically speaking, on the ebook front…

            a) For each of my purchases, as they occur, I run it through my “Kindle to PC to Calibre” process, correcting metadata/covers as needed, and adding other metadata (e.g., series entry number, collection) where useful.

            b) If my husband wants one of my purchases, it’s available to his Kindle ereader via the “family sharing” process and he just grabs it that way.

            c) If I want one of his purchases, I can see on Amazon (family-sharing) what he’s bought that I didn’t know about, and run it through (a) after the fact.

            The only reason I don’t run the combo of his & mine through (a) from the get-go is that the volume is too high, and (a) takes a couple minutes per book. If I did that proactively for all of his, well, we’ve been married a very long time, but it ain’t long enough. (At a guess, he probably picks up 2-3 times as many as I do.)

            When I give a “count” of ebooks/year for our collection, I’m only talking about (a) and (c) — only god knows how big the count is for books he bought that I don’t covet.

            Considering the madness of this activity at this scale, I’ve often wondered if we can claim it as a medical expense…

Comments are closed.