Kobo reader

[BOAC]

Way cheaper than the others - any views?

[exeng]

Hi BOAC,

Don't be mean - buy an Ipad. You deserve it after all that time at LGW. You can do a lot more with it than read a book.

I went for the 16GB version with 3g, working on the basis that I don't need a lot of memory as I have no music loaded whatsoever. Fantastic for the internet on holiday. On 6 hour legs I can generally read half a book - depending on the F/O.

Go on treat yourself.


Regards
Exeng

[BOAC]

Thanks and hi, ex - it is not for me!

[Mr Optimistic]

You seem a very frugal chap. The new kindle touch gets good reviews however you could afford both that and the kobo and then you could tell us how they stack up. I suspect anti-empire bias, whether that be amazon or apple (or perhaps any company with a name starting 'a' :}

[BOAC]

Hmm! Interesting psychological profile, there.:) So, you think I should buy both and report back - brilliant! That's what this forum is all about:ugh:

PS I have no idea (a-z) who makes the 'Kobo'.

[Mr Optimistic]

Well kobo gets a good write up in reviews and is dominant in Canada. Daughter loves cheepo £89 kindle. It does the job brilliantly but you may want additional functions or not wish to be in thrall to the river empire.

[McGoonagall]

Well, Argos are selling a Kobo wireless reader that holds 2000 books and comes with 100 pre-loaded classics at £44. Must be worth a punt at that price.

[Mr Optimistic]

£44 Really? I will buy one myself and let you know if that's the case.BOAC will have more time to fix the Hillman Imp......

[McGoonagall]

Don't want to be thought of as advertising but here is the link.

Buy Kobo Wireless EBook Reader - Onyx at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Ebook readers, Ebook readers, Laptops and netbooks, E-Readers, E-Readers. (http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5073496/Trail/searchtext%3EKOBO+EBOOK+READERS.htm#pdpFullProductInformatio n)

[green granite]

I presume you've seen this page

Kobo eReader Touch review | from TechRadar's expert reviews of Portable media players & recorders (http://www.techradar.com/reviews/gadgets/portable-video/portable-media-players-recorders/kobo-ereader-touch-1037152/review)

I'd go for the 'touch' version because of it's file type capability:
ePub, PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, CBZ, CBR

and you're not tied into Amazon.

[BOAC]

fix the Hillman Imp - yes, still getting carb icing on it.:)

[Mr Optimistic]

Touch version £80 but still not bad. Wife seems to think I should read all the books I've got which 'are littering' the place up first.

[Shandy52]

Son got me a Kobo Touch for my birthday. I'm now converted to e-readers!
The Kobo store seems well supplied, though I've only given it the merest scrape so far. The machine itself seems reliable, though there are a few extras, like a browser, which are not supported and may cause the odd funny behaviour - cured by a restart.

[Genghis the Engineer]

So far as I can see the kobo touch is basically identical to my Sony Reader but cheaper!

My Sony is about 2.5 years old now, hundreds of books on it, and absolutely ideal when away from home.

Totally different beast to a tablet/iPad/laptop - I take my laptop as well, but if I choose to spend my evening reading the latest Terry Pratchett in bed, the Sony is perfect, easy on the eye, and needs charging up about once a fortnight.

Also as I do sometimes spend a month or so away from home, the ability to just go online and choose then buy the next novel I want to read, is much valued. As is the ability to take work papers (the Sony takes Word files fine) to meetings, then when it gets boring and I know I've nothing useful to say for a couple of hours, to switch to a novel or some research papers I want to read through.

Compare to Sony / Kindle / etc. but in principle - go for it.

The one thing my Sony does badly is pdfs - so if that *might* be important, try a few out on a demo model.

G

[OFSO]

The one thing my Sony does badly is pdfs - so if that *might* be important, try a few out on a demo model.

I have a freebie running on my PC which converts .pdf formats to Kindle. I now go to meetings carrying only my Kindle (which of course has loads of novels on it), my official documents, and usually one piece of paper, the agenda, to doodle on. Unbelievable freedom from carrying 50 or more A4 sheets of paper.

All of the books on my Kindle are freebies from Gutenberg, Kipling, Jerome K. Jeroma, Haggard, Wells, Wodehouse, etc.

With hindsight, I would not have bought the Kindle but would have gone for an Android tablet from Maplin, Amazon, or Morgan. They are the same price, have backlighting and a touch screen. Still, the Kindle's battery life is amazing.

[green granite]

I use a PDF to E-PUB converter, there are several free ones about, but it will only work for text based PDFs, if you got a PDF made from scanned images it wont work, you'll need to use OCR software to turn it into text, well try anyway.

[Genghis the Engineer]

That's interesting; I'll give that a go.

I often use my Sony Reader for reading scientific papers - the problem is that they are sometimes A5ish on A4, or have very small print that I want to zoom in on to read, causing all sorts of formatting and related issues. It will be interesting to see if that cracks the problem.

Reading them on the laptop solves the problem of-course and it was always clear that the Sony is designed and optimised for leisure reading - which it does really well.

G

[BOAC]

Thanks all for the useful comments.

[OFSO]

Mrs OFSO buys some novels for her Kindle yesterday, turns WiFi off afterwards as she's been trained to do to save battery.

This evening, without her intervention, while reading the WiFi turns back on again, message from the S. American River Company appears, "do not turn your WiFi off as the software is in the process of being updated..." etc. Following which a friendly message appears telling her it HAS been updated and all the new features that have been installed in the new OS.

Didn't know that the SARC could do this, but it's obvious they can. Must have downloaded a timed command into the Kindle during previous WiFi use.

[MG23]

With hindsight, I would not have bought the Kindle but would have gone for an Android tablet from Maplin, Amazon, or Morgan. They are the same price, have backlighting and a touch screen. Still, the Kindle's battery life is amazing.

I have both. As you say, the Kindle's battery life is better than the tablet, and the e-ink display is much easier on the eyes... a dedicated e-reader is still a better choice than a tablet if you're going to read a lot. Even with the backlight turned down to low, I can't read e-books on the tablet for anywhere near as long as I can on the Kindle, and I prefer using buttons to change page rather than the touch screen.