A Bit of Electronic Advice

[ecosophia]

These days an enormous amount of old occult literature is available in PDF format. For ecological reasons, I'd prefer not to print out everything on paper, and it gets old having to sit at my computer desk rather than lounging on the couch, so I'm considering picking up some kind of electronic e-reader for the purpose. The difficulty, of course, is that I'm about twenty years out of date when it comes to technology and I have no idea what's available. 

What I'm looking for is a simple device that will allow me to read PDFs. I don't want it to be connected to the internet if I can avoid that, and I certainly don't want it to be dependent on one of the big predatory internet firms; I can get all the books I want from archive.org and iapsop.com, and I'm not averse from using USB drives to get them to my e-reader. 

Do such devices exist? Have you used one? Would you recommend it? Inquiring Druids want to know. 

(If I can get it used, that would be a plus -- I prefer to get all my technology that way, to keep things out of the e-waste stream..)

Comments

[open_space]

Hi Russel and JMG!

1) I was going to suggest this so I opened an old homeopathic book from archive.org (The Homeopathic Domestic Physician by Constantine Hering) on my Kindle and it was a terrible experience. The colors were inverted sometimes because the yellow of the pages probably confused the thing from distinguishing font and background. Also, kindles are so small and e-ink slow that zooming in and out is not an option, unfortunately. E-ink is wonderful for paper-like reading experience but it takes a while to render the screen. Since E-ink doesn't have a refresh rate but rather inks the screen with something that makes light bounce off it is basically a one frame per action screen --that is great for battery life but if you want to zoom in it has to refresh the whole screen again and if it's a scan, like this one, it took several seconds per render of the page. I also opened a Monthly Letters from Manly P Hall and though it got the colors right the small size made it unusable because of the zoom issue. I love e-ink, it's good tech really and that is saying something these days, but since I also do most of my digital reading on PDF and not ebook formats my kindle is mostly just gathering dust on my shelf. However I've seen some big e-readers (not Kindle) coming out with a pen to annotate but they are considerably pricier, tablet price basically but they could be worth looking into. Those would not have the zoom issue but I can't speak for the quality of displaying not-pristine PDFs. It was the two generations ago Kindle Oasis by the way. E readers are also much more tied to the companies "ecosystem".

3) I think this is the right option considering the issues mentioned above. What I use and do recommend though, given quality/price is a refurbished iPad that supports the "Files" app. It was an improvement they did on how you manage files and now you can do so as it's done on the File Explorer on Windows (Mobile devices had taken the strategy of storing files inside the apps themselves instead of having a central file system which the user can use.) I basically downloaded a big zip file to it years ago, opened it inside Files and that's it. I would get a refurbished last years 10.2 inch preferably but not much before that since "Files" was released on 2019 and bugs corrected 6 months after. Looking at their website, this years refresh which I think just happened last month or so (small bumps but same overall) apparently it is cheaper than getting a used one from last year so probably used and refurbished prices are going to come down in the next few months for this model. They come with a finger print reader so if uncomfortable you could tape it or disable the scanning of the fingertip to unlock the device. (the main button is also the reader for many mobile devices, not only apple ones).

As for android, I've never used one for more than a few minutes but I can tell you that overall, because of a much broader gamut, you have to be careful with brands and tiers as there is a lot of low quality tablets that don't really work well and degrade fairly quickly. The ones I know are good are Samsung's Galaxy Tab. These ones have the advantage over apple that I think their storage is removable and upgradable and come with a stylus (apples pen is quite expensive and not included).

I know you have an old computer running some old Windows so probably having wifi on it wouldn't be as bad an idea given that I don't know if your computer would support the accompanying software, perhaps yes but future problems are likely. You could download files using the tablets browser and then go into "airplane mode" and shut off wifi and bluetooth. (Android also has its Files equivalent) Per this article (https://support.google.com/android/answer/9064445?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwindows-computer) I think android tablets can be connected into computers as usb flash drives though so if you really wanted to you could brick the tablet by removing, if removable, or cutting the wifi antenna. The mobile device repair shops could do that in under 15 minutes, so I think this is your best bet.

4) Here is a list of sites ti get used electronics. I've used amazon(their refurbished electronics website) and newegg from the list. https://hometoys.com/best-discount-electronics-sites/

[(Anonymous)]

FYI, not all Android devices can be connected to a computer as a mass storage device. Android 2.3 could be. Android 3 I'm not sure about. The Android 4 device that I have can't be - it requires bluetooth for file transfer. Presumably later versions behave the same as Android 4, but I've not had an opportunity to verify this. Android 4? supports OTG flash drives (a flash drive with a micro USB connector, or an adapter on a regular USB flash drive)

However, as long as the device has a micro SD card, you can always shut off the device, remove the card and transfer the books directly to the card. A trifle awkward, but it works.

[open_space]

Good point about just removing the micro SD memory card and from the tablet and getting the adapter to connect to the P.C. That would actually get close to what JMG asked about transferring files. I can see a de-wified tablet being used like that: just removing the SD card and plugging it in to the computer to copy files and insert again to tablet. SD cards JMG,in case you didn't know, are like USB drives but tiny, that is what electronics use these days as removable media and AFAIK many android tablets if not most use them or used to use. It gives you the ability to also increase the storage of your device and also swap stuff like books, say, if you decided to download the whole iapsop into several cards and just exchange them. So that could be another point to consider, swap anel and upgradable drive memory.

Regarding Android, hmm that is something that I have to check since I don't know about it but seems odd to me. You are required to use bluetooth in what scenario?

Not all droids have the same abilities enabled

[chaosadventurer]

My Android 11 device (old handbrain doubled it size with battery bloat, I miss a real keyboard) as well as others I've dealt with have had the ability to use a USB cable connect.
What it appears to be is a driver issue on the host computer you are connecting to as I multiple ones installed on my Windows box that connected just fine after their installation.
How you look at files is also an issue, most should work just fine with Windows Exploder in mean Explorer, and I have had little issue with my preferred File Manager, TotalCommander.

As for the micro SD card, there are a range of adapters such as micro to full size SD, and SD to USB for the boxes that don't have an SD slot. Many Micro SD cards come with the full size SD adapter.