Tag: calibre

The New Kindle Oasis and Fabric Standing Cover

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Well guys, here it is! My review of the All-New Kindle Oasis. This review is for the 2017 version at 32GB with Wi-Fi and Cellular. I also want to state that I’ve read a lot of reviews for the Oasis, so I will also be referring to things that I’ve seen many others talk about.

My first impression of the Oasis was “square.” I’m used to my Paperwhite, which is rectangular. This was because of the larger screen size, which is 7″ compared to the 6″ on the other Kindles. While an inch may not seem like much, trust me, it is. While reading a book, I compared the same page on both my Oasis and the Paperwhite, and the Oasis fit an entire paragraph extra on the screen. This would lead to less page turns, which is handy.

In terms of the design, it’s beautiful. It’s a lot lighter than I had expected, especially with the metal back. I had read that the edges of the screen were rather sharp, and I do have to agree. If you hold it wrong, it could cause some discomfort. I love the fact that there is no bezel around the screen itself. With my Paperwhite, there’s always at least one cat hair stuck in the bezel. It drove me nuts. I’m glad it won’t happen with the Oasis. I love the little area to the right of the screen where the buttons are. It gives you a place for your thumb to grip onto the reader. I also had not realized how much I missed the buttons that were on my Kindle Keyboard. While the default setting for the Oasis’ buttons is to have forward at the top and back on the bottom, I swapped them so that they were more like the layout of my Keyboard’s buttons.

I started the Oasis up, and boy is it snappy. It flips pages far faster than my Paperwhite, which is amazing. I immediately loaded it up with all of my books using Calibre (if you want to know more about this amazing program, check out my review here.) With my Paperwhite, if I added a bunch of books, it would take them forever to load, if they loaded at all. On the Oasis, it did take a little bit of time (to be fair, I was adding over 600 books), but it was FAR faster than on my Paperwhite. And it loaded all of them up, which was a surprise.

One thing I liked was that it listed all of my collections on the new Kindle, which makes sense because the collections are actually saved on the cloud. What surprised me, and made me love the Oasis even more (though it may be just a Kindle thing) was that after I had all of the books loaded up onto the Oasis and connected both that and my Paperwhite to the internet, it put all of my books into the right collections! I thought I would have to spend days sorting through and adding things to the right collections, when there it did it for me! It did forget some of the items in collections that had over 50 items, but it had about 40 of them in there. I must also note that these were not books purchased from Amazon. I expected my Amazon purchased books to be in the right collections, but not the ones from Calibre. As I said, it was a pleasant surprise.

One thing that had concerned me was the price. A lot of reviewers stated that they preferred the Paperwhite over the Oasis because they did not find the Oasis to be worth the hefty price tag. I personally have to disagree. While it is pricey, I feel that the 32GB and water-resistant aspects of the Oasis made it well worth the price. If you don’t mind spending the money, I highly recommend purchasing the new Oasis.

 


 

I also got the Fabric Standing Cover in Indigo from Amazon for the Oasis. I was concerned because I had read quite a few bad things about the cover. Many people stated that it doesn’t stay attached very well. I do have to say that this is a partial truth. You can indeed hold the Oasis by the cover and it will stay attached. However, if you fold the cover back like a book and then go to flip it back, you have to do it a certain way or else the case may pop off. I would like to have seen the magnets on the case be a little stronger, so that it stayed attached more strongly.

As you can see I did add a sticker to the case, which makes using the “standing” part of the case obsolete (it pops part of the sticker off). If you plan on using the “standing” aspect, do not attach a sticker across the crease.

Altogether, I love the Oasis and I really like the Case. While there were some things I would like to see changed (stronger magnets for the case, rounded edges for the Oasis), I feel that it was a great purchase and I look forward to using them for many years to come.

 

You can get the new Kindle Oasis here and the Fabric Standing Cover here.

amazon, calibre, ebook, ebooks, kindle, kindle keyboard, kindle oasis, kindle paperwhite

Calibre

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Wow, somehow I must find words to describe the awesomeness that is Calibre. Like, I mean. Seriously. I love Calibre. Almost as much as I love my fiance. Yeah, it’s that awesome.

So, I guess I should tell you guys what Calibre is. According to the website, it’s “the one stop solution to all your e-book needs.” And boy, is it ever!

I have used this software almost as long as I’ve had a Kindle, so quite a few years. It’s so easy to use, especially if you want to put books onto your Kindle (or other device) and it’s in the wrong format. Calibre not only converts, it bulk converts! I’ve done a select-all and bulk converted many times, which saved me so much time. You can sort by author, title, or even file type. This is especially handy when you need to bulk convert from epub to mobi, which I’ve had to do numerous times.

If you get your books from a place other than the official Amazon/B&N ebook store, you can add your books to Calibre. It allows you to edit the metadata so that you can fix the name. This is handy if you have multiple books in a series and want to change the title to reflect which number the book is in the series. I did this with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Now, even if I don’t have internet, I know which book is next in the series.

I also love the convert method. Almost every book I’ve put on my Kindle has had to be converted from epub to mobi. One handy feature is that if you have a lot of comics in the CBR file format, you can use Calibre to convert them into mobi. It doesn’t ruin the comic and the text is still very easy to read.

Then there is the saving grace: you can copy your entire library from your Kindle and put it in a file on your computer. This was very handy for me, as I had most of my ebook files on my other computer. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I’m getting a new Kindle on Friday. I want to have my entire library transferred onto my new Kindle. With Calibre, I was able to take all of my books (many of which were not purchased in the Amazon store) and put them onto my other computer. Now, I’m ready to load up my new Kindle when it arrives.

The one thing that kinda bums me out about Calibre (which is not their fault) is that you cannot natively create collections and add books to them on an un-jailbroken kindle. This is more Amazon’s fault than Calibre, as it requires special access to your Kindle to manage those collections. Kind of a bummer, but with everything else made so easy by Calibre, I’ll take this one caveat.

So, if you’re looking for an effortless way to manage your Kindle or ereader device, I HIGHLY recommend Calibre.

Oh, did I mention it’s FREE!? And available for both PC, Mac, and even a “mobile” version (for Chromebooks!!!)

Yeah, you’ll want to get it here.

calibre, discworld, ebook, fanfiction, kindle, reading, terry pratchett

I’m Getting The New Kindle Oasis

Hey all!

So, my topic of today’s blog post is the “All-New Kindle Oasis.”

Now, before you start, I know a lot of people don’t like ereaders and prefer to read a physical book instead. I love physical books as well (especially my 1st American edition of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux), but you have to concede the convenience of ereaders. Kindles in particular, since they sync across many devices.

Anywho, back to the Oasis. Now, normally I would shy away from something that’s priced near $300. I mean, who in their right mind would spend that kind of money, especially if they already have a working Kindle? Well, it turns out that person would be me.

BUT GUYS. IT’S WATERPROOF. Like, IPX8, which means it can be held underwater (fresh water, mind you) for near an HOUR. Now, for those of you (like me) who love to read in the bath, this is a must-have feature.

Let’s go Billy Mays and say BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!!

It also comes in an 8gb version OR A 32GB VERSION. Now, the current Kindles (at least the Paperwhite, Voyager, and Oasis) are only 4gb. That is a good amount for ebooks, even if you have a ton. I have over 1,000 ebooks on my current Kindle Paperwhite, and it’s only halfway full. But I don’t have all of my comics on there, so I don’t know how much room that will take up. I like the idea of 32gb because it future-proofs your Kindle experience. That, and it allows for the audiobooks you can get from Audible.

So, excited, I went over to Amazon and hit pre-order. The next thing I saw made my jaw drop.

IT WOULDN’T BE DELIVERED UNTIL NOVEMBER 21ST.

This thing comes out on October 31. If I ordered it today, it should be here on release day. That gives it time for the Prime free shipping to get it here. But noooooooo. They wanted me to wait almost a month to get my new toy! Not fair!

So I Googled “Kindle Oasis delivery delays” and boy, am I glad I did! I found a blog post that had a bunch of comments on it with different people listing their arrival dates for their Oasis’s. Some people were apparently getting it on release day, but they ordered it the day it was announced. Everyone else showed sometime mid-to-late November.

Except one person. They posted that they ordered it the other day, and were getting it on release day. But they didn’t order it from Amazon, they ordered it from BEST BUY!! I didn’t think I would be able to get my 32gb version from Best Buy, but lo and behold, it was there! I was so excited. I immediately cancelled my Amazon order and placed one for Best Buy. My new delivery date is November 3rd. I could have paid an extra $20 and gotten it on release day, but I can wait four days and save the money. It’s still better than mid-November.

So, lesson learned. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new Kindle Oasis and will be sure to post a review for it a few days after it arrives. Keep an eye out!

-Jen

calibre, ebooks, ereader, kindle, kindle oasis, oasis, reading

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