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A friend sold me an original kindle for maybe $20 one time. I used it to read about 75% of Orson Scott Card's novels within the Ender's Game series. After about

A friend sold me an original kindle for maybe $20 one time. I used it to read about 75% of Orson Scott Card's novels within the Ender's Game series. After about a year, it stopped turning on. It was probably 7 years old by then, so I just got rid of it. I bought a 2" thick sci-fi book a few years ago, "Pandora's Star". It seemed pretty interesting, but way too much book to carry around. I got a kobo and put what I vaguely recall was named "koreader" on it. It was pretty nice. It stopped working after 6 months, though. I took it apart, and at least one power management IC is shorted out. Its e-ink display permanently says, "Sleeping..." It's been a paperweight on my nightstand for about 2 years, and a minor source of anxiety for me. I don't plan on buying another kobo device any time soon because I hate e-waste. My wife got me a kindle paperwhite to replace it, and it didn't take much work to get the same book onto it. I think I'm maybe 25% of the way through the book, but I can't really say because I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean. I also printed the Rust programming language manual to PDF and managed to copy it onto the kindle without much fuss.

dendodge 4y ago
> I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean If you tap on the numbers in the lower corner, you can cycle through various options including % read. My personal preference is for time left in chapter.
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  My preference is for number of pages left in chapter, but for some reason Amazon doesn't seem to be able to implement that.
  - dendriti 4y ago
    Some Amazon Kindle books DO have "real" page numbers. It's an additional feature that must be supported. The problem of page numbers on reflowable text is much more difficult than it may appear.
    - alanbernstein 4y ago
      Not totally trivial, sure, but I have a hard time believing that it's difficult. Maybe for complex documents, but just plain text? Not really. I use Moonreader on Android, it shows page numbers with no trouble.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    It depends on the book. Some have them, some do not.
    - alanbernstein 4y ago
      Ok, well it has been available for zero books I've read on Kindle, and 100% of books I've read on moon reader. Whatever the challenge might be, other people have figured it out and Amazon hasn't. It's embarrassing.

dendodge 4y ago

> I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean If you tap on the numbers in the lower corner, you can cycle through various options including % read. My personal preference is for time left in chapter.

alanbernstein 4y ago
My preference is for number of pages left in chapter, but for some reason Amazon doesn't seem to be able to implement that.
- dendriti 4y ago
  Some Amazon Kindle books DO have "real" page numbers. It's an additional feature that must be supported. The problem of page numbers on reflowable text is much more difficult than it may appear.
  - alanbernstein 4y ago
    Not totally trivial, sure, but I have a hard time believing that it's difficult. Maybe for complex documents, but just plain text? Not really. I use Moonreader on Android, it shows page numbers with no trouble.
- fullstop 4y ago
  It depends on the book. Some have them, some do not.
  - alanbernstein 4y ago
    Ok, well it has been available for zero books I've read on Kindle, and 100% of books I've read on moon reader. Whatever the challenge might be, other people have figured it out and Amazon hasn't. It's embarrassing.