Bought a kobo recently. Bought it direct from Kobo, Walmart wasn't involved at all in any step. Worked perfectly out of the box with Caliber too. Nice little device, library interface could use some work but it's functional.
Nice to know. I thought about buying from Walmart so I'd have recourse w/ retail, but if they have any change in firmware, I'll just buy straight from Kobo.
"make" usually implies already having one, advising to just go out when given the option to recycle an existing kindle with a debloated experience to instead go and buy something else is encouraging ewaste
Don’t let the ugly UI scare you off. Once you get past that awful first impression, Calibre turns out to be a pretty great app.
Couldn't have said it better myself. The UI looks ancient and cartoonish, but once you actually start using it, you don't even notice because of what it can actually do.
I run that, but somehow the web database got borked when I setup the Kobo Sync. DB works fine in Calibre desktop but web UI only shows new books unless I search for them. Haven't messed with it much, but on my to-do list to figure out why.🤦♂️
Well what were you expecting? This is like when people install GrapheneOS on Pixels, because it's still the best platform to have a Google-free device.
It's entirely possible that someone wants to buy a Kindle because of it being a great device, but not want to be tied to Amazon's data mining exercises and/or buy books from them because of their behaviour as a publishing company.
I think he's trying to point out that if someone were that concerned with trying to not be data mined by Amazon, they wouldn't have an Amazon account to be able to order a Kindle in the first place.
It's perfectly reasonable to want the hardware of a Kindle, while not wanting to deal with the software shenanigans. I'm sure plenty of people on Lemmy have bought a laptop before then put a different OS onto it, for example.
Even putting that aside, did you not read the first paragraph? The author clearly states that alternatives like Boox and Kobo aren't available in their country.
You actually as if their position is unreasonable. It really isn't.
My mother in law had a nook, and that was one of the worst goddamned devices i'd ever used. Low res screen and cheap buttons, buttons that you had to use all the time because the touch controls were so awful. The interface was just extraordinarily bad.
I hate to say it, but the Kindle line are the best devices on the market for ebooks. But I'd pay a little extra if Besos got kicked in the balls with every purchase.
It's a shame indeed. Kobo used to sell their devices here, but they pulled out years ago. We also had a local bookseller that tried to face off Amazon, Saraiva, that released its own e-reader in ~2017, called Lev. (Probably a rebranded Chinese device; it was awful.) It didn't last. Right now, we have only Kindle devices for buying, and even that isn't complete — Kindle Scribe hasn't arrived yet.
I bought one years ago. Maybe 2018? I think it's a kindle touch 8th gen, ad-supported. Cost me ~60€, ad-supported. It got jailbroken and KOReader installed. It has stayed offline since, so those ads have long since expired.
It gets the job done. I've never been in the amazon e-book ecosystem, and I don't want to be licensing my books at their mercy.
I've had a Fire 8 for a while now that I bought because it was cheap as hell, thinking I could subvert it to the side of good. To an extent I guess I did, but I'd still rather use an old android 4.1 7" that doesn't have a lock screen I can't get rid of, so I have one less swipe to read for a few minutes when I wake up in the middle of the night.
I wish I could make it work like that one, but so far no go. And you can't get rid of some of the Amazon bullshit, so there's that. It just feels like its sitting there waiting to fuck me over somehow so I don't bother.
Kindle Fire is a different beast: they run Android AOSP modified by Amazon and usually has low-end specs. I'd not recommend getting one anyway — tied to Amazon or otherwise.