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Originally Posted by 9littlebees
s I would agree that a review should take into account it's compatibility with stated devices and software, rather than third-party, unsupported ones (even if the unsupported one is wildly popular on the site the review is being posted on!!).
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One more thing you may want to consider is that some of the issues people sometimes have are not with what some folks might think of as "legally obtained" books, but instead are with books in a collection of perhaps thousands that are downloaded from places other than book stores. I am not intending to open the argument about whether this is good, bad, or indifferent--it is just the way some e-readers are used.
I think for the purposes of a review, you may want to try to make a clear distinction between these two types of digital files. This would include books that might have had alterations to their coding or stylesheets that could interfere with how the reader works. To my noodle-filled mind, it is worth noting the pretty well known fact that Kobo readers--at least those we have had so far--really, really doesn't play well with books with wonky coding. It does this in predictable ways, well, at least for Kobo devices.
Let me give you an example. I routinely strip the drm from ePUBs I purchase before loading them onto my Kobo. Nothing is changed other then that. I can choose to use calibre or copy and paste the books--neither method of getting the book onto my device seems to matter in terms of how well the device works with the book. I have not yet had a problem with any book from which I have stripped the drm and then loaded onto my device without making other changes.
The same can not be said for books that have been sent to me by family and friends. In those instances, they may have altered the stylesheet (sometimes using calibre, sometimes not) or the html in a way that effects how the book works with the Kobo device. It may be a book they have created themselves. Things that are most often altered seem to be how book covers display and the ability to adjust things like margins and line spacing.
Because it's not my first rodeo, I know how to get these things to work the way I want them to. Heck it's not even my 500th rodeo
. People using an ereader for the first time will not necessarily know how to do that. For that reason I believe it is important to make a distinction between poor functionality of the device in general and how the device handles files that may have been modified in these ways.