Modern e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle are incredible pieces of engineering, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. A device custom-built to your own specifications …
  • CMahaff@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    10 hours ago

    Super cool project. FYI it does require converting your ebooks to a special format.

    I suspected as much since it’s using an Arduino Mega - very battery efficient I’m sure, but very underpowered.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      7 hours ago

      Epub, the most popular format, is a fucking website, not very efficient. And it even allows the author to set font size and stuff, i mean, use a pdf then.

  • doug@lemmy.todayEnglish
    5·
    12 hours ago

    I still kick myself for not getting one of the first Kindle models that had free 3(4?)G built in.

      • orhtej2@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        7·
        6 hours ago

        No, it was free. Not really usable for web browsing given abysmal performance of Kindle Keyboard, but 100% free.

        • tunisandwich@lemmy.vgEnglish
          3·
          5 hours ago

          Huh how does that even work? Amazon doesn’t have a mobile network so were they just paying some third party and eating the costs?

          • raptir@lemmy.zipEnglish
            5·
            5 hours ago

            Yeah they were using AT&T. Remember that at the time Kindle books were limited with respect to images so you’re talking a couple megabytes tops. The Lord of the Rings trilogy in its entirety, images and all, is 12MB. The primary use case was whisper sync which is just sending page numbers.

            Plus this was on 3G while AT&T had moved mostly over to LTE, so you weren’t competing for bandwidth with most subscribers. I imagine Amazon got a pretty good deal, but more importantly it helped cement them as the default option for e-readers.