6 ms·

This is the single biggest disadvantage with ebooks for me. I find myself carrying a small notebook with my Kindle, but it's obviously not as good, and digital

This is the single biggest disadvantage with ebooks for me. I find myself carrying a small notebook with my Kindle, but it's obviously not as good, and digital note input is nearly useless.

cryoshon 8y ago
about 10 years ago i had a sony brand e-reader that had a stylus which enabled seamless underlining / writing on the margins. it's since been discontinued, and i haven't ever found anything remotely comparable despite checking in on it every other year or so. it's a real shame.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  That's my biggest hate for Amazon; the kindle killed of the Sony e-readers. Admittedly they were pricey but they were so much nicer.
- cle 8y ago
  I do this with an iPad, iBooks, and an Apple Pencil. Works great, and GoodNotes is amazing for scribbling random thoughts and notes as well.
  - cryoshon 8y ago
    i understand that this is "the" way to do it these days, but it's way too expensive. the old ereader was maybe $120, and did what i wanted to out of the box and with stellar battery life.
- gfodor 8y ago
  Check out the Remarkable
  - komali2 8y ago
    Found it here: https://remarkable.com https://remarkable.com Looking through the marketing material, this may be exactly what I have been looking for. 600$ a steep price tag. You wouldn't happen to know the file format compatibilities? I'm off on a review search but nobody's mentioned it yet. Edit: according to this review [0], epubs and PDFs. Edit2: er, weirdly, this things pen tips need to be replaced like once a month lol: "An extra set of eight Marker tips costs $12. reMarkable says each tip should last at least three weeks, and that less pressure and usage could extend their life to six weeks." https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/tablets/remarkable-tablet https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/tablets/remarkable-tablet
    - huydotnet 8y ago
      There's a $200 Good e-Reader 6.8 [1], there's a bit delay when you making a stroke on the screen, according to the review videos on YouTube. Don't know if anyone ever used it yet, anyone? [1] https://goodereader.com/blog/product/good-e-reader-6-8 https://goodereader.com/blog/product/good-e-reader-6-8
      - komali2 8y ago
        Looks like just an Android tablet running an eink touch display. May be good enough, if there are Android apps available for editing ebooks. If I can't find reviews I might just take the plunge and do my own.
        komali2 8y ago
        Too late for an edit: I can't find a single review of this device by not-that-company, and also it's not even in stock lol.
    - azeirah 8y ago
      I own one. I use it daily, the part about the toys is very true. It's, I think, 4 - 5 months old now, and I've burned through 4 tips. It comes with 12 tips total though, so that'd be approximately 12$ a year. The bigger problem are not the tips, it's that there are barely any DRM-free ebooks available anywhere, even if you are willing to pay for them ;( I'm still using it on a nearly daily basis though..
- komali2 8y ago
  Same here!! Drives me crazy. I sometimes take notes in more technical volumes that I'm reading as PDFs on my thinkpad yoga, but I don't want to pull my whole damn laptop out just to read, so I'm reduced to tapping away misspelled notes in my Kindle... Very frustrating.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
pnutjam 8y ago
I use fbreader and anote and highlight ebooks all the time.
hoodwink 8y ago
I am an avid note taker on my Kindle Paperwhites and Voyage. The response time is frustrating at first, but you get used to it and the advantages are worth it. I remember when the iPhone first came out and everyone in my company said they’d never switch because the Blackberry thumbboard was so much better. We all know how that ended... If it’s helpful, you can reassure yourself that the slow response time is a feature rather than a bug. Being forced to type slowly and parsimoniously might cause deeper understanding: > "In a small but fascinating study, two psychologists tried to find out if it made a difference if students in a lecture took notes by hand or by typing them into their laptops (Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014). They were not able to find any difference in terms of the number of facts the students were able to remember. But in terms of understanding the content of the lecture, the students who took their notes by hand came out much, much better. After a week, this difference in understanding was still clearly measurable. There is no secret to it and the explanation is pretty simple: Handwriting is slower and can’t be corrected as quickly as electronic notes. Because students can’t write fast enough to keep up with everything that is said in a lecture, they are forced to focus on the gist of what is being said, not the details." (Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes) Resurfaced by readwise.io
- komali2 8y ago
  If I could write with a stylus on my Kindle I'd agree, but tapping and correcting the inevitably wrong input over and over doesn't do for me what handwriting does. Unless there's some hidden handwriting note option on Kindle that I missed?
  - Tomte 8y ago
    Marking a section that crosses a page change is sadistically hard. It always takes me four or five tries.
    - komali2 8y ago
      Hah! I don't even bother. I just mark both.
- 8y ago
Shank 8y ago
I think it's worse when you go from Kindle to a fully fledged tablet. iPad + Pencil seems like the best way to do this, far and above, and yet virtually no apps support markup with the Pencil. Lost opportunity, if you ask me.
- Engineering-MD 8y ago
  Once again DRM is the root cause here. There are many great pdf readers that support Annotations with the Apple Pencil, but it is not possible to import the book. And unfortunately (especially for non fiction) there is a lack of services which provide drm free ebooks.
  - komali2 8y ago
    No starch press is great for DRM free, but only if you want books on programming...
- mbrock 8y ago
  Going split screen with Notability is still a good way to read a book. I usually note down chapter headings and sometimes copy out sentences mixed with my own thoughts or summaries.
lima 8y ago
I have a Remarkable paper tablet for full-size PDF reading, and it's perfect for scribbling on the pages. And I get SSH access out of the box, so I can bypass their cloud service! [0]: https://remarkable.com/ https://remarkable.com/
- komali2 8y ago
  How'd you set up ssh access? Their proprietary cloud thing is a major blocker for me.
  - lima 8y ago
    You can literally SSH into it, the password is in the GPLv3 license text. I just mount the data directory via sshfs and run the unofficial Linux app: #!/bin/bash fusermount -u ~/.var/app/com.remarkable.desktop/data/remarkable/desktop sshfs -o nonempty root@rmk:.local/share/remarkable/xochitl ~/.var/app/com.remarkable.desktop/data/remarkable/desktop flatpak run --filesystem=~/myBooks/ com.remarkable.desktop read -p "Restart xochitl? " -n 1 -r if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]] then ssh root@rmk systemctl restart xochitl fi fusermount -u ~/.var/app/com.remarkable.desktop/data/remarkable/desktop There's a wiki: http://remarkablewiki.com/ http://remarkablewiki.com/ A subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/ Toolchain: https://remarkable.engineering https://remarkable.engineering Unofficial ePaper library: https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable flatpak package for the Linux client: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.remarkable.reMarkable https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.remarkable.reMarkable It's by far the most open ePaper device right now :)

This is the single biggest disadvantage with ebooks for me. I find myself carrying a small notebook with my Kindle, but it's obviously not as good, and digital note input is nearly useless.

cryoshon 8y ago

about 10 years ago i had a sony brand e-reader that had a stylus which enabled seamless underlining / writing on the margins. it's since been discontinued, and i haven't ever found anything remotely comparable despite checking in on it every other year or so. it's a real shame.

aidenn0 8y ago
That's my biggest hate for Amazon; the kindle killed of the Sony e-readers. Admittedly they were pricey but they were so much nicer.
cle 8y ago
I do this with an iPad, iBooks, and an Apple Pencil. Works great, and GoodNotes is amazing for scribbling random thoughts and notes as well.
- cryoshon 8y ago
  i understand that this is "the" way to do it these days, but it's way too expensive. the old ereader was maybe $120, and did what i wanted to out of the box and with stellar battery life.
gfodor 8y ago
Check out the Remarkable
- komali2 8y ago
  Found it here: https://remarkable.com https://remarkable.com Looking through the marketing material, this may be exactly what I have been looking for. 600$ a steep price tag. You wouldn't happen to know the file format compatibilities? I'm off on a review search but nobody's mentioned it yet. Edit: according to this review [0], epubs and PDFs. Edit2: er, weirdly, this things pen tips need to be replaced like once a month lol: "An extra set of eight Marker tips costs $12. reMarkable says each tip should last at least three weeks, and that less pressure and usage could extend their life to six weeks." https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/tablets/remarkable-tablet https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/tablets/remarkable-tablet
  - huydotnet 8y ago
    There's a $200 Good e-Reader 6.8 [1], there's a bit delay when you making a stroke on the screen, according to the review videos on YouTube. Don't know if anyone ever used it yet, anyone? [1] https://goodereader.com/blog/product/good-e-reader-6-8 https://goodereader.com/blog/product/good-e-reader-6-8
    - komali2 8y ago
      Looks like just an Android tablet running an eink touch display. May be good enough, if there are Android apps available for editing ebooks. If I can't find reviews I might just take the plunge and do my own.
      - komali2 8y ago
        Too late for an edit: I can't find a single review of this device by not-that-company, and also it's not even in stock lol.
  - azeirah 8y ago
    I own one. I use it daily, the part about the toys is very true. It's, I think, 4 - 5 months old now, and I've burned through 4 tips. It comes with 12 tips total though, so that'd be approximately 12$ a year. The bigger problem are not the tips, it's that there are barely any DRM-free ebooks available anywhere, even if you are willing to pay for them ;( I'm still using it on a nearly daily basis though..
komali2 8y ago
Same here!! Drives me crazy. I sometimes take notes in more technical volumes that I'm reading as PDFs on my thinkpad yoga, but I don't want to pull my whole damn laptop out just to read, so I'm reduced to tapping away misspelled notes in my Kindle... Very frustrating.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

pnutjam 8y ago

I use fbreader and anote and highlight ebooks all the time.

hoodwink 8y ago

I am an avid note taker on my Kindle Paperwhites and Voyage. The response time is frustrating at first, but you get used to it and the advantages are worth it. I remember when the iPhone first came out and everyone in my company said they’d never switch because the Blackberry thumbboard was so much better. We all know how that ended... If it’s helpful, you can reassure yourself that the slow response time is a feature rather than a bug. Being forced to type slowly and parsimoniously might cause deeper understanding: > "In a small but fascinating study, two psychologists tried to find out if it made a difference if students in a lecture took notes by hand or by typing them into their laptops (Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014). They were not able to find any difference in terms of the number of facts the students were able to remember. But in terms of understanding the content of the lecture, the students who took their notes by hand came out much, much better. After a week, this difference in understanding was still clearly measurable. There is no secret to it and the explanation is pretty simple: Handwriting is slower and can’t be corrected as quickly as electronic notes. Because students can’t write fast enough to keep up with everything that is said in a lecture, they are forced to focus on the gist of what is being said, not the details." (Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes) Resurfaced by readwise.io

komali2 8y ago
If I could write with a stylus on my Kindle I'd agree, but tapping and correcting the inevitably wrong input over and over doesn't do for me what handwriting does. Unless there's some hidden handwriting note option on Kindle that I missed?
- Tomte 8y ago
  Marking a section that crosses a page change is sadistically hard. It always takes me four or five tries.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Hah! I don't even bother. I just mark both.
8y ago

Shank 8y ago

I think it's worse when you go from Kindle to a fully fledged tablet. iPad + Pencil seems like the best way to do this, far and above, and yet virtually no apps support markup with the Pencil. Lost opportunity, if you ask me.

Engineering-MD 8y ago
Once again DRM is the root cause here. There are many great pdf readers that support Annotations with the Apple Pencil, but it is not possible to import the book. And unfortunately (especially for non fiction) there is a lack of services which provide drm free ebooks.
- komali2 8y ago
  No starch press is great for DRM free, but only if you want books on programming...
mbrock 8y ago
Going split screen with Notability is still a good way to read a book. I usually note down chapter headings and sometimes copy out sentences mixed with my own thoughts or summaries.

lima 8y ago

I have a Remarkable paper tablet for full-size PDF reading, and it's perfect for scribbling on the pages. And I get SSH access out of the box, so I can bypass their cloud service! [0]: https://remarkable.com/ https://remarkable.com/

komali2 8y ago
How'd you set up ssh access? Their proprietary cloud thing is a major blocker for me.
- lima 8y ago
  You can literally SSH into it, the password is in the GPLv3 license text. I just mount the data directory via sshfs and run the unofficial Linux app: #!/bin/bash fusermount -u ~/.var/app/com.remarkable.desktop/data/remarkable/desktop sshfs -o nonempty root@rmk:.local/share/remarkable/xochitl ~/.var/app/com.remarkable.desktop/data/remarkable/desktop flatpak run --filesystem=~/myBooks/ com.remarkable.desktop read -p "Restart xochitl? " -n 1 -r if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]] then ssh root@rmk systemctl restart xochitl fi fusermount -u ~/.var/app/com.remarkable.desktop/data/remarkable/desktop There's a wiki: http://remarkablewiki.com/ http://remarkablewiki.com/ A subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/ Toolchain: https://remarkable.engineering https://remarkable.engineering Unofficial ePaper library: https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable flatpak package for the Linux client: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.remarkable.reMarkable https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.remarkable.reMarkable It's by far the most open ePaper device right now :)