Author Topic: To Kobo or to Kindle?  (Read 10527 times)

Woofage

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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #25 on: 30 April, 2015, 10:10:15 am »
Not a Kindle owner but I recently borrowed Mrs Woofage's basic touch-screen model and really enjoyed the experience. I'm no big fan of Amazon (other tax-dodging multinationals are available) but as others have stated the whole system is very slick.

On the plus side: it's very light, battery life is measured in weeks and it's easy on the eye. Also, our router had a brain-fade recently ::-) so I had to re-configure its wifi settings and this was very straightforward.

On the minus side: it sometimes jumps more than one page (both back or forward). This can be very inconvenient >:(.
Pen Pusher

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #26 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:05:59 pm »
On the minus side: it sometimes jumps more than one page (both back or forward). This can be very inconvenient >:(.

From experience, they ALL do this, regardless of make.
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

ian

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #27 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:08:27 pm »
On the minus side: it sometimes jumps more than one page (both back or forward). This can be very inconvenient >:(.

From experience, they ALL do this, regardless of make.

It's not just me then. It is an occasional pain. I thought I'd activated some weird jump ahead fifty pages feature.

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #28 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:24:11 pm »
A minor inconvenience I can happily live with considering I have some 1000 books to play with on holiday instead of inspecting a pile of dog eared paper backs in a so called hotel library and finding most are in German.

Ah the joys of ereaders.

PH
Bees do nothing invariably.

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #29 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:25:29 pm »
My Kindle started doing more and this after four years of ownership. I opened it up and blew out the page turn buttons than gave it a quick spray with switch cleaner. Been much much better since. I think crap gradually seeps in especially since it gets used a lot in restaurants, had a fair bit of coke and wine spilt on it amongst other things. Not sure why one with a swipe to change page should do it.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Dibdib

  • Fat'n'slow
Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #30 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:31:19 pm »
On the touchscreen Kindles, it seems that swiping left/right will navigate pages and swiping up/down will skip chapters. I've no idea how "crooked" one would have to swipe to accidentally get an unintended response.

I don't know if they do multi-touch (doubt it) but if so, a two-finger swipe might have been a better option for chapter navigation.

ETA: actually it looks like they do support multi-touch for text size (pinch) and brightness (double swipe up/down) so maybe it's just poor UI.

Kim

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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #31 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:33:41 pm »
On the minus side: it sometimes jumps more than one page (both back or forward). This can be very inconvenient >:(.

From experience, they ALL do this, regardless of make.

But much less often than dead-tree books do, so you're still winning.

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #32 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:38:27 pm »
To me, there are two places where the ebook will win over a dead tree book, any day:

1) Whilst reader is prone (in bed, lounging by the pool on holiday etc), and ebook is lighter than most paperbacks and it is requires no effort, if bored of the one you are reading, to switch to another one (no need to get out of bed, find the book, get back in bed etc)

2) Whilst on public transport, especially trains. If you have to stand (which is a regular occurance on commuter trains) you can still read to pass the time.  I always found it really inconvinient to try and read a dead tree book whilst stood up, I constantly lose my place, drop the book etc.

Where they lose out is that you don't have to remeber to charge a dead tree book!
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #33 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:41:07 pm »
Luckily the Kindle only needs charging once every few weeks and it starts whinning about low charge when you have about two days light use to go.
Ten minutes plugged in will keep it going for another day or so as well. If only my phone and iPad were so parsimonious with electrons.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #34 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:45:25 pm »
My Sony only needs charging about the same, at a rate of 60-70 pages/night.

The major downer I have on it is that, unless you go back to the home page, it doesn't show you how much charge it has left.  This has, more than once, led me to be halfway through an evening's reading only for the damned thing to shutdown on me.  That and the fact that, if you stick it on charge, it does a full discharge first.  Forget about that and remove it from charge after 10 mins or so and you find you actually have fewer electrons than you started with!
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #35 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:54:20 pm »
It's not just me then. It is an occasional pain. I thought I'd activated some weird jump ahead fifty pages feature.

Rather than swiping, you can change page by tapping on the right-hand 3/4 of the page (forwards) or left-hand 1/4 of the page (back). The text can have hyperlinks in, and if your page-turning tap hits a hyperlink that you haven't noticed, you jump somewhere else. Top tap & Go Back to return.

There's also a swipe up from the bottom edge that brings up a navigator bar that allows you to drag the current page forwards or back or jump chapters, with a preview pane of the new location. Tap preview to go there, use left or right markers to adjust, or close to stay at original location having glanced at the preview.

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #36 on: 30 April, 2015, 05:09:06 pm »
Another handy site for free and or cheap books (if you insist on paying...LOL)

http://uk.kindofbook.com/

PH
Bees do nothing invariably.

Eccentrica Gallumbits

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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #37 on: 30 April, 2015, 06:38:05 pm »
The other good thing about Nook is that you can lend certain Nook books to other Nook users.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #38 on: 01 May, 2015, 12:09:42 am »
After some thought, I went for a Nexus 7 rather than a dedicated e-reader. The disadvantage, of course, is a general-purpose screen rather than one specially for reading. The advantage is that I run Kobo, Kindle and other e-reader packages on one device, along with specialist readers and general (non-reader) apps, so I only have one thing to carry. I'm happy with it as a choice.

Among readers, I prefer Kobo if possible, partly because it takes generic epubs rather than Kindle's proprietary files. However, Kindle books are often cheaper where both are available. In practice I buy books of both types.

Kim

  • Timelord
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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #39 on: 01 May, 2015, 12:19:48 am »
Similarly, I went for a Nexus 7 because I wanted an internet device, and discovered much later that it was actually pretty good for reading books on.  As mentioned above, an electronic device - even a relatively hefty one like the Nexus - has huge ergonomic advantages for reading in bed.  Not to mention the screen being inherently backlit in whatever colour you like (I prefer a medium grey on a black background, with Twilight lowering the colour temperature at sunset).

I still lust after backlit e-ink, but not to the point of justifying the purchase of a dedicated device.  With the networking turned off, the Nexus battery life is adequate for the amount of reading I'm likely to do in a weekend away from power, which is the main advantage of a dedicated reader at this point.

Piemaster

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #40 on: 01 May, 2015, 12:52:52 am »
To me, there are two places where the ebook will win over a dead tree book, any day:

1) Whilst reader is prone (in bed, lounging by the pool on holiday etc), and ebook is lighter than most paperbacks and it is requires no effort, if bored of the one you are reading, to switch to another one (no need to get out of bed, find the book, get back in bed etc)

2) Whilst on public transport, especially trains. If you have to stand (which is a regular occurance on commuter trains) you can still read to pass the time.  I always found it really inconvinient to try and read a dead tree book whilst stood up, I constantly lose my place, drop the book etc.

Where they lose out is that you don't have to remeber to charge a dead tree book!
3) You can read in the shower. Ok, it involved a zip-lock bag and I was only doing it to prove a point, but still. You could put a dead tree book in a bag as well, but turning the page will be a little more challenging.

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #41 on: 01 May, 2015, 07:18:18 am »
Given Calibre can format from what you get to what you want being tied down by a format is just not required.

PH
Bees do nothing invariably.

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #42 on: 01 May, 2015, 11:54:50 am »
Given Calibre can format from what you get to what you want being tied down by a format is just not required.
It won't reformat DRM-protected eBooks that it can't read, so you have to set it up to remove encryption first if you want to change format.

fuzzy

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #43 on: 27 July, 2015, 04:25:00 pm »
So, can Calibre or similar software covert Kindle e books to other (Kobo/ Nook) format?

Biggsy

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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #44 on: 27 July, 2015, 04:55:48 pm »
So, can Calibre or similar software covert Kindle e books to other (Kobo/ Nook) format?

Yes.  Calibre for Kobo (via MOBI format) at least.  Other software can do others.

But don't underestimate the goodness of Kindle Paperwhite/Voyage screens.
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fuzzy

Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #45 on: 27 July, 2015, 04:58:17 pm »
Don't worry Biggsy, I'm not underestimating anything.

My conundrum between the two platforms is the ability (or not) to access Library e books and the ability (or not) to access output by the likes of our estimable friend SAA Calvert.

contango

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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #46 on: 28 July, 2015, 04:12:06 am »

I've used Kindle for ages. The first one was an impulse buy from Radio Shack (not a place I'd normally buy anything like that, but they had a special on and I had a decent coupon). My wife and I ended up arguing over who got to use it, so we bought another one. Now we both use Android tablets with the Kindle app installed.

It's handy having links to the US (which we had before we moved here). We may have accidentally registered as members of the local library, which means we can borrow library books on Kindle at no cost. One real annoyance with Kindle on Android is that it seems very bad at removing the borrowed books from my collections.

Another app I've used on Android is Adobe's OverDrive. It's a reader kind of like Kindle, but manages returned books better than Kindle does. Whereas on the Kindle I found the icon for the book stayed until I specifically deleted it even though touching it gave me a "this book is not available" kind of error, on Overdrive the error is more useful (something more like "this borrowed book has been returned") and then the book disappears.
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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #47 on: 28 July, 2015, 08:25:32 am »
Don't worry Biggsy, I'm not underestimating anything.

My conundrum between the two platforms is the ability (or not) to access Library e books and the ability (or not) to access output by the likes of our estimable friend SAA Calvert.

AFAIK you can't "borrow" eBooks from your library for a Kindle. And that situation is unlikely to ever change, given Amazon give them (Kindles) away below cost so you buy eBooks and audiobooks from them.
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tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #48 on: 28 July, 2015, 08:29:32 am »
Don't worry Biggsy, I'm not underestimating anything.

My conundrum between the two platforms is the ability (or not) to access Library e books and the ability (or not) to access output by the likes of our estimable friend SAA Calvert.

AFAIK you can't "borrow" eBooks from your library for a Kindle. And that situation is unlikely to ever change, given Amazon give them (Kindles) away below cost so you buy eBooks and audiobooks from them.

Correct, hence why Kobos, Nooks and the (lamented) Sony PRS-T series are popular (FCVO popular)
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Vince

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Re: To Kobo or to Kindle?
« Reply #49 on: 28 July, 2015, 09:58:10 am »
Can you read borrowed books with the Calibre application (and convert to MOBI format)?
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