The subject deserves a few toots rather than a post, however, I would like it to stay here. I don’t read many e-books, prefer paper, and I won’t list arguments against the e-publishing practices, even Stallman had a say more than a decade ago. That said, Russian books are not traded in the EU (whenever they are, the pricing is funny — I have two copies of Patriot, the Lithuania-printed Russian original plus delivery literally cost me twice), older books are often out of print, Swedish customs makes orders from the UK inconvenient. Not everything is sourceable as a physical copy, or can be acquired timely for a reasonable price. There was also a year with a 90-min one-way commute, so I actually have an e-book reader, Kobo Libra H2O. The reader is 3 to 4 years old, has seen very light use, and is in a pristine condition.

Suddenly and sporadically, it has started draining the battery. A single charge used to last for many weeks, no more — while on idle or in use, the apparent power draw seems normal. Yet now and then, few times per day, 10 to 30% of the charge drops. I don’t feel the device heating up and seldom it computes in the background — it is also never connected to the network and I don’t really care about the updates, though, there could be something I’ve missed. I tried hard resets, to no avail, rolled older firmware (downloads are here, great website), changed config files to disable home callings. Some search showed that the problem isn’t just me, I won’t say that Kobo’s readers are trash — tough luck, perhaps, the battery has died indeed. Still, such a short life span is hardly acceptable. One can change the battery (LiPo flat pack, glued), with a hassle, but the fix isn’t guaranteed.

The activities led to a small discovery, though. Haven’t paid attention before, but there is a mandatory activation step. Workarounds are simple, but why? Then, there is a splash of the contemporary newspeak, SideloadedMode=true. I get that all that e-commerce mandates security, but it is foremost a reader, at least, that’s what I thought — what is the “side loading” then?

I decided to get a new device, to find out that the market is straight stupid. E-readers are expensive, major models go for 150-250+ EUR. To no surprise, these are no readers — WiFi, Bluetooth, speakers, support of audiobooks, “premium materials” because the modern electronics is not for use, but for worship. That the book reading qualifies as an almost premium activity I did not expect, neither did I expect that most of the readers available within the officially imported mass market are extensions of the related platforms (Amazon, Kobo, etc.). Somehow, I thought that the supply should mirror that of other consumer electronics, e.g. Android phones — they can be dirt cheap in all the flavors possible. This was a flawed thought, the subject is articulated further in the Terence Eden’s blog post.

In southern Stockholm, the second hand options were scarce. Eventually, I went for the cheapest e-reader available, the basic Kindle. Luckily, brand new it came with the firmware version 5.17 (the persistent sneaky attempts to pull an update were comical), so with a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC 20500-based throwaway account it was immediately WinterBreak’ed, and switched to the evergreen airplane mode. I also installed KOReader, a great viewer, genuinely good — didn’t use it before, unfortunately. And only then did I get the reader that I thought of — a simple device with simple, reader interface; with a minor annoyance — no normal mount, contemporary Kindles use MTP connection. To make it work with calibre 8.13 (Kovid Goyal is a real character, btw, check him out!), I had to lightly tinker the autoconnect settings. Then, beating the horse yet again, I find the overall experience expensive, sums to ca. 125 EUR.

Still kinda weird. While not complex and step-by-step documented, to do the jailbreak is an extra effort. I doubt that the native support of normal formats and offline usability chase the core user base away — the users that I personally know do think that shadow libraries are evil, don’t sense the DRM vs DRM-free debate, and won’t bother sourcing books outside the paved ecosystem anyway.

Cayce Pollard’s copycat, I put a piece of silver tape over the Amazon logo.