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   ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:36:45 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

   why did it take me so long to buy a e-reader

   i got a kobo forma for 130 GBP (it's a display unit. if i'm unsure about an electronics purchase i ~always buy used) and i feel like it's already paid for itself in a sense

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:39:24 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     i had one before but it was one of the first e-readers ever, sony prs-505. it was bulky, slow, with a sluggish display, no touchscreen, fairly bad battery life, and no backlight. we've come a long way since in terms of the finished product even if the core technology (EPD) hasn't changed _that_ much

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:40:43 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     one thing i wish i could have that basically no modern e-reader has is a microSD card slot. everyone expects you to use their cloud service. i suppose also it's harder to claim you're waterproof with an exposed slot (not that this device has a cover for the microUSB port)

     i ended up installing tailscale on the kobo, at which point i can drop pdfs into the internal storage in one click from my desktop or in a few more taps from the phone

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:43:02 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Brian Swetland

     @swetland oh yeah i researched what i can install on it before committing to buying; i have NickelMenu, Tailscale, and Plato, but i don't like Plato: even though it has a better rendering engine (muPDF) it somehow has worse controls than the vendor reader, which is an impressive achievement

   • Embed this notice
     Brian Swetland (swetland@chaos.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:43:04 JST Brian Swetland

     in reply to

     @whitequark If you're feeling adventurous, KOReader is installable on Kobo devices without too much convoluted nonsense and addresses some annoyances in their standard reader software (in particular having one global font size setting that I tend to have to change every time I open a different book drives me nuts):
     https://koreader.rocks/

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:43:33 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Brian Swetland

     @swetland i'm going to use it for 80% PDFs, so being able to render PDFs (especially A4 ones) well is a must-have for me

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:45:41 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     my selection process was basically "can it render A4 papers in a readable way? can i put a PDF onto it with little enough hassle i will actually do it? if the answer to either of these is no i don't want the device"

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:47:58 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     it's very light, which i like. i'm still unsure whether i should've gone for an A4-ish-format; i feel like it could go either way, but in any case splitting A4 pages in half and reading them on this A5-ish device in landscape is basically fine for most things. sometimes i get a figure i have to zoom out for, that's fine

     in exchange i get something that doesn't tire my wrists when i'm in pain, which is a very big plus

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:49:01 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Brian Swetland

     @swetland i figured the tablet form factor is basically dead except for the ipad, so i didn't look much into one

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     Brian Swetland (swetland@chaos.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 02:49:02 JST Brian Swetland

     in reply to

     @whitequark I use mine primarily for epub stuff (novels, etc), migrated from Kindle after Amazon disabled any ability to download your own purchases (DRM or not), so I haven't dug into PDF reading much. I've got a Pixel Tablet that I use for larger, color, or more random-access-desirable content (comics, manga, databooks, etc)

   • Embed this notice
     jeeger (jeeger@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 03:13:49 JST jeeger

     in reply to

     @whitequark I *loved* the PRS, I think it's a great device for it's time m

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 03:18:56 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Brian Swetland

     @swetland oh, koreader is so much better and more professional than plato

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 03:22:46 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Brian Swetland

     @swetland oh yeah, i just went through nearly every one and i actually like it. KDE vibes

   • Embed this notice
     Brian Swetland (swetland@chaos.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 03:22:48 JST Brian Swetland

     in reply to

     @whitequark It suffers a little from "enormous raft of options for everything", but I'll take that rather than having no control over stuff I care about.

     Also, something that I didn't realize initially -- on almost every setting that applies to the current book, if you long-press you can save it as the default setting.

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     Lucas_fb_ (lucas_fb_@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 08:41:22 JST Lucas_fb_

     in reply to

     @whitequark didn't know I could use Tailscale for that. Need to check how it works

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 14:11:35 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Pxl Phile

     @ppxl no it got improved a lot, see kobo-tailscale on github

   • Embed this notice
     Pxl Phile (ppxl@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 14:11:37 JST Pxl Phile

     in reply to

     @whitequark Short question regarding the kobo tailscale if you don't mind?

     ~~Which kobo did you use?~~ (edit: I reread your first toot.) I still had this comparatively bulky tailscale installation report in my head and wonder if it's still like that?

     https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4256526

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 23:11:25 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @hendric "Palm (old PDA vendor)" 💀

     i know what Palm is <.<

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     Richard Hendricks (hendric@astronomy.city)'s status on Friday, 01-Aug-2025 23:11:26 JST Richard Hendricks

     in reply to

     @whitequark A coworker was visiting Palm (old PDA vendor) and the reason they moved from the nice tactile side click wheel to buttons was because their ESD test using a 5 kilovolt probe would send a spark right through the click wheel to the PCB and blow up parts.

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     Leonid Belyaev (aeblyve@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 03-Aug-2025 01:47:55 JST Leonid Belyaev

     in reply to

     @whitequark I used to have a pretty nice e-reader (remarkable 2) but moved to using Zotero's reader on Android and Linux.

     Some reasons:

     1. My main smartphone, unlike an e-reader, is ALWAYS on me, leading to the most availability to read something in an idle moment
     2. With cellular data it's easy to do research on the web on the same device about what I'm reading with low latency
     3. Better typing and highlighting