I have a kindle tablet that I’ve had for years now and I’ve been using it more often but it doesn’t fit my reading style very well. In general, it’s on the older side so I need to use my phone to transfer my books on from libby and the kindle app doesn’t always update very well between the devices. I’ve tried jailbreaking it because I’m not a huge fan of what Amazon as a conglomerate has been up to (I also don’t have any particular ties to Amazon because I don’t pay for kindle unlimited). I also don’t like the interface for highlighting and annotating and I’ve heard good things about the kobo. My kindle is also giving me a ton of trouble to read using audiobooks so I’ve been researching an alternative.

So far what I’m thinking is: is the price worth it or should I just buy the physical books and write on them? That would be a bit of a hassle though because where I live a book is like 100 dollars and the range isn’t really good. I also prefer e-books anyways. Is the subscription fee worth it? Ten dollars a month feels like a lot but idk. Should I just repurpose my old iPad and pirate pdfs to annotate? I’m only leaning away from this because it feels ethically wrong especially to the authors that I really appreciate.

I also know that a kobo allows you to use audiobooks and that’s a big plus for me because I listen to books pretty often.

I might be gaslighting myself into thinking it’s useless too. Because in all technicality my phone can do most of the same functions if I need it to but I don’t want to fall into the hole of opening my phone and then not even opening my book.

A few months ago I bought a 4th gen kindle, the one with all the buttons all over it, and I do love it dearly. This kindle was a bit busted up when I got it. The person who sold it to me says they're not certain but they're pretty sure it used to be a display device in a store, which would explain the scratches on the casing and the one on the screen that cut deep enough to damage a little bit of the e-ink. These don't affect my reading experience at all so they're pretty easy to ignore, but sometimes it does make me wonder how long it has til the e-ink gets stuck, or until one of the more essential buttons fails to work (esp since the right side experiences 'sticky page' issues, where when you go to flip the page it will load two pages at once and end up skipping the one you were turning to. Sometimes it takes a few tries of back-and-forth for it to settle on the correct page, but the left side buttons do not have this issue yet). But one thing I've come to understand about this kindle is that you can under no circumstances have the device on when charging, which is something I didn't expect since this isn't an issue for my 11th gen paperwhite. Both of my kindles are jailbroke and run on KOReader, so even though they functionally work the same (besides one being a touchscreen and the other using buttons) the thing about using it while charging is the only difference in usability and it scares me every time I forget. If you try it, it will cause the screen to completely freeze and none of the buttons will work. Whenever this happens, holding down on the power button the first time just causes the screen to go completely white, and then you have to hold down again for 30 seconds, let go, and then press down again for around 5 seconds for it to reboot. After that it works like normal, but every time this happens it gets harder and harder to successfully get the reboot screen to trigger and I have a moment of resigned acceptance like "this might be the one. This might be the day it finally kicks the bucket." But so far that has just been a bit of over-reaction on my part. This old thing is a tough little cookie and remarkably resilient (side-eyeing most of my past phones as I say this) and I am always acutely aware of how precious it is to own an old piece of technology that still works and has full functionality, so to everybody old there who also has a senior e-ink device... remember to cherish it while you still can 🥹🥺

Okay so - I already owned a kindle which I bought 2 years ago, a 11th gen paperwhite, and it's perfectly fine. HOWEVER. Back when I bought it, I had no idea that other ereaders besides kindles even existed - which I could kick myself for, because I would've loved having a Kobo but by the time I learned about Kobos it was too late :') Ever since I first got my kindle, I was annoyed by how locked down it was, and how any time you're not in a book it's trying to sell you something, but I endured. Well! Fast forward to last week, and I finally got around to jailbreaking it and I love it now. I'm free from Amazon's shackles, and can load all my books onto my kindle without having them encrypted and it's so straightforward and easy. But it was only a few days after I jailbroke that I was like - okay, I need a backup incase anything ever happens to this one, since I know that of course Amazon won't just let us get away with this. So I went on ebay, bought a 4th gen kindle (the one with all the buttons on it) for $20, and not even two days after I bought that kindle there's an update that Amazon released an update that prevents people from jailbreaking and potentially even breaks kindles that are already jailbroken upon update (luckily for me, I already had mine set up to block updates, but it was a really close call). So I really patted myself on the back there for having the foresight to get a backup just in case. You might be wondering why I bought another Kindle if I was already complaining about Amazon's lockdowns, but trust me, I did my research, I knew my budget, and the 4th gen was the best pick for me - abandoned by amazon so doesn't get updates, fully functional, right AND left-handed buttons(!! Huge for me, as a leftie), and only $20 to boot. I was sold! And so it was only a matter of jailbreaking it, which is still possible since, again, it doesn't receive updates. I got it in the mail today and feverishly went through the complicated set-up and jailbreak process and voila, successfully running on KoReader and downloaded my books onto it. I love it!! I cannot even tell you how much I missed buttons and I absolutely adore the chrome casing. I'm so excited to read on it!

I have a kindle tablet that I’ve had for years now and I’ve been using it more often but it doesn’t fit my reading style very well. In general, it’s on the older side so I need to use my phone to transfer my books on from libby and the kindle app doesn’t always update very well between the devices. I’ve tried jailbreaking it because I’m not a huge fan of what Amazon as a conglomerate has been up to (I also don’t have any particular ties to Amazon because I don’t pay for kindle unlimited). I also don’t like the interface for highlighting and annotating and I’ve heard good things about the kobo. My kindle is also giving me a ton of trouble to read using audiobooks so I’ve been researching an alternative.

So far what I’m thinking is: is the price worth it or should I just buy the physical books and write on them? That would be a bit of a hassle though because where I live a book is like 100 dollars and the range isn’t really good. I also prefer e-books anyways. Is the subscription fee worth it? Ten dollars a month feels like a lot but idk. Should I just repurpose my old iPad and pirate pdfs to annotate? I’m only leaning away from this because it feels ethically wrong especially to the authors that I really appreciate.

I also know that a kobo allows you to use audiobooks and that’s a big plus for me because I listen to books pretty often.

I might be gaslighting myself into thinking it’s useless too. Because in all technicality my phone can do most of the same functions if I need it to but I don’t want to fall into the hole of opening my phone and then not even opening my book.