Kobo?

[selenay]

Question to the masses: we're thinking of replacing Mum's Sony eReader. It's becoming very buggy, the battery only holds its charge for a couple of days and overall it is so hard to work with that it's not a practical option for anything outside the house. As it was free last year, she's not too worried about replacing it and we're now looking at the options.

She borrows a lot of ebooks from the library, so the Kindle is out because there is no official word yet on when Kindle books will be available through libraries and she wants to replace her reader before a trip next month.

Although the Nook is a nice device, it's not available in Canada and you cannot purchase books for it up here. She splits her time between England and Canada and we need something that works fully in both locations. So we are starting to look at a Kobo. The WiFi Touch version of that has been out for a few weeks now, which is the option she likes the sound of best. We're going to go and play with some Kobos at Chapters later in the week to get a feel for how the work, what the screen is like etc.

The big question that I have is whether she'll be able to load the ePub books she already owns (bought from Waterstones) onto a Kobo. Is the Kobo open enough that, provided it's an ePub with Adobe DRM, she'll be able to buy from any ebook retailer? I.e. she'll be able to buy from Waterstones, WH Smith, Foyles etc. as well as from Chapters and the Kobo store?

That, for me, is one of the big things that I want her to be able to continue doing particularly with her jet-setting (heh!) life-style :-)

Also, anyone with a Kobo, does it let you load more than one library book on the device at a time? Right now, when she loads library books onto her Sony reader only one will actually be accessible. She has to finish that one and then re-load another to get it working, which disables any other library books (and sometimes purchased books as well) on the device. As you can imagine, this is incredibly frustrating and means her reader basically only holds one book at a time. Not useful when she's going away for two weeks!

I've been doing a bit of reading around and I think the Kobo will work, but some confirmation from other people would be lovely.


My poor little car got a rather large bolt jammed in its tire on Friday. Mum reports that the weird ker-thump noise started on the highway, so we suspect that something lost a bolt and it sat there waiting for my car to drive over it. Thankfully I have warranties on my tires so the removal and patch job that the dealership did was completely free. Yay warranties!

Also, loved Harry Potter :-) The changes they made were minor (mostly to do with making sense on screen without all the extra stuff you get in text) and the key bits that I really needed to have were there and done well. It was very yay-ful and I need to resist the temptation to go back for at least a couple of weeks :-)

It appears that my reading mojo is returning. I've got several things lined up that I'm really excited about (damn you, job, for getting in the way of reading!) and I've been seeing reviews and recommendations for a lot of things that have gone onto my wishlist. I may be burying myself in books for a while after the Tour ends.

Comments

[djonma.livejournal.com]

I know you're not after kindley info because of the library stuff, but I've never even heard of a Kobo, but wanted to help if I could.

How do the libraries work?
Because if the file can go via your pc, it can go onto kindle.

I've got non-kindle format stuff on my kindle by converting it in Calibre.

[selenay]

I'd need to strip the DRM to get library books onto a Kindle and that's just not something my mum will be able to do. I've now spoken to a librarian friend of mine who's Kobo works beautifully with our library :-)

I've got plenty of non-Kindle specific stuff onto my Kindle by emailing it. Haven't yet investigated converting ePubs for Kindle, but I haven't needed to either! I'm firmly in the Kindle camp but I know the library is a deal-breaker for Mum.

[fyrdrakken]

I don't personally know much about Kobo, but an Australian friend has one and loves it.

[selenay]

Yay! Good to know! So far, everyone I've spoken to that owns a Kobo loves it so hopefully this will be the right thing for her.

It can't be any worse than the Sony has been *sigh*

[fyrdrakken]

Now, the part I left out of the above comment as being tl;dr and probably irrelevant was that I know it's Kobo she specifically has (rather than some other non-Kindle e-reader) because of her recent difficulties with having one getting wet and dying and the replacement bricking very soon after she got it (or possibly never turning on at all) and since she bought it from Borders in the US and they're going bankrupt she's upset over the possibility of never getting a satisfactory replacement and having to rebuy one from elsewhere (unless she's got an applicable warranty with the Kobo people themselves).