I wrote my first post in this thread after I had only used the Aura for an hour or so. I have revised my thinking about some of what I wrote.
- I have gotten used to the new normal for Kobo in terms of how to access menus and "hidden" items and I am now fine with italics indicating that there are some choices that will display when the word in italics is pressed. It's not a happy thing for people using several different Kobo devices, but I'm OK with it.
- Now that I have used it for a longer period of time, I guess my muscles memory has kicked in and I am not getting having to double press at all. The downside is that I spent a little while on a Touch today and it seemed really clunky and I was double pressing a lot.
- It took me awhile to figure out what long presses do in various locations. The user guide was helpful there. Long press on a book in the library and the menu for putting books on shelves, deleting, etc is invoked. Long press on a shelf listing to rename or delete it. Long press on something displayed on the home page to dismiss it. That sort of thing.
- I still think the new home screen is too crowded and that the small size of some book covers makes them very difficult to read. Now that I have dismissed some things and opened a bunch of books, I have things arranged so that this is a bit better. I think that the new books on the homescreen are particularly annoying with tiny covers.
- I really like the fact that all of the preloaded fonts can be adjusted. That is new in this firmware, so not really Aura only.
- I continue to be delighted by the speed of the device. It's especially noticeable when processing new content.
- I really like the display. I know people complain about the bottom space, but I did a comparison of two pages set up exactly the same way on the Glo and the Aura. I found that the Aura displayed 4 more physical lines of text, but 8 additional lines worth of content (that is, 8 lines that were on the next page on the Glo appeared on the original page of the Aura).
- I think that some of the problems with spacing are kepub vs epub and that the font selected can make a huge difference. My solution was to install the calibre epub to kepub plugin and to use Georgia, for now. I have not seen any issues at all with this scheme. I also enjoy the information about progress, % read, in the kepub format.
- The higher density screen has resulted in a greater degree of satisfaction with reading with the light entirely off. With my glo I had the light on all of the time because the clarity of he text seemed better with the light on.
- From my perspective, the amount of text on the screen really does make the Aura look and read more like a paper book.
- I find the Aura very comfortable to hold. The shape of the back is part of that and after I got used to the feel of a nekkid reader, I found that it didn't actually feel slippery when using it, nor did it ever actually slip from my grip. I am not planning on getting a cover, at least not unless I find myself taking it out of my house more often than I am now. I read on a very big phone for the 15 minutes or so I have to read during the work day.
- I still think that Kobo traded some usability for elegance/wow factor in terms of the interface, particularly in terms of the number of items on the home page, but I can live with it.