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Old 06-16-2011, 03:39 PM   #1
EldRick
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Why I'm returning my Touch

Got it this morning. Played with it for a few hours. I like the Nook Touch lots better:

- The touchscreen is very sluggish, and rarely picks up my first tap. Paging becomes an exercise in annoyance.

- The horrible default (and system) serif font, Georgia, is nearly unreadable on this small screen. It is a shaded font, with varying stroke widths, and the low-res rendering on an e-ink screen gives blotchy-looking text, where the letters and serifs are very poorly rendered.

I don't even consider reading books in san-serif fonts; note that almost no books are ever published in a san-serif font - there's a good reason for that - readability suffers.

I've read over a hundred books on Kindle, and a half-dozen on the Nook Touch, and I've never failed to find a comfortable combination of font, line spacing, and margins, but the Kobo Touch defeated me - I can't stand to read on it.

- The default margin is flush against the screen edges. Since I remove publishers' margins with calibre and depend on the ereader to set a narrow margin, this is annoying, since the text near the edges is shadowed by the bezel.

- It is VERY slow in some cases. In resetting to factory defaults (to return it), it took me five tries to get it to actually respond to tapping the Reset button. This is probably an artifact of a remarkably insensitive touch screen.

- The hardware buttons on the Nook are very useful for reading single-handed.

I found the combination of sluggish performance, annoying touchscreen, and badly-chosen font makes the Touch irritating in a way the Nook Touch and the Kindle 3 never are. As I said, it's on its way back to Borders...

UPDATE: Based on their rapid improvements in the type support and other fixes, I've ordered a second KT. I have great hopes for the new type support.

Last edited by EldRick; 06-29-2011 at 03:47 PM.
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Old 06-23-2011, 03:08 PM   #2
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Whereas I very much like mine. Cold dead hands and all that. I'm not seeing any of the same issues that you have other than sometimes I do have to touch twice to turn the page or close a window.

Did you do the firmware update? That might've fixed some of the touch issues.
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Old 06-23-2011, 04:17 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EldRick View Post
Got it this morning. Played with it for a few hours. I like the Nook Touch lots better:

- The touchscreen is very sluggish, and rarely picks up my first tap. Paging becomes an exercise in annoyance.

- The horrible default (and system) serif font, Georgia, is nearly unreadable on this small screen. It is a shaded font, with varying stroke widths, and the low-res rendering on an e-ink screen gives blotchy-looking text, where the letters and serifs are very poorly rendered. I don't even consider reading books in san-serif fonts.
I've read over a hundred books on Kindle, and a half-dozen on the Nook Touch, and I've never failed to find a comfortable combination of font, line spacing, and margins, but the Kobo Touch defeated me - I can't stand to read on it.

- The default margin is flush against the screen edges. Since I remove publishers' margins with calibre and depend on the ereader to set a narrow margin, this is annoying, since the text near the edges is shadowed by the bezel.

- It is VERY slow in some cases. In resetting to factory defaults (to return it), it took me five tries to get it to actually respond to tapping the Reset button.

- The hardware buttons on the Nook are very useful for reading single-handed.

I found the combination of sluggish performance, annoying touchscreen, and badly-chosen font makes the Touch irritating in a way the Nook Touch and the Kindle 3 never are. As I said, it's on its way back to Borders...
you are aware that the nook and kobo screens are the same?
And if you did not do the update then bad on you becuase none of what you mention has been my experiance.. that said it is possible to get a bad one i guess.
Also the nook is not available here for me..

regardless you and I are entitled to our opinions no matter how wrong yours maybe.


regards

Jack
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Old 06-23-2011, 04:30 PM   #4
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Georgia font is 'nearly unreadable' this post sounds a bit dramatic to me. I have had virtulally no input lag problems with the screen at all as for the fonts i tried adding nearly 10 fonts with the trick found elsware in this forum and I ended up deleting all of them in favor of the very readable 'Georgia' font.

And how in the world did EldRick read 6 books on the nook touch when it had only been out for a week or so by the date of his post? sounds fishy to me!
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Old 06-23-2011, 04:39 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by baronrus View Post
Georgia font is 'nearly unreadable' this post sounds a bit dramatic to me. I have had virtulally no input lag problems with the screen at all as for the fonts i tried adding nearly 10 fonts with the trick found elsware in this forum and I ended up deleting all of them in favor of the very readable 'Georgia' font.

And how in the world did EldRick read 6 books on the nook touch when it had only been out for a week or so by the date of his post? sounds fishy to me!
well im sure fishing is not one of the books he read. But i do read fast btw... and i read alot. I couldnt tell how how many books i read in the short week i have my had my kobo but i generally read two to 3 books off and on every day ...so i guess i may finish maybe 1 or two novels a week give or take... its probably take..

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Old 06-23-2011, 04:47 PM   #6
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I get that most of us on here are fast and prolific readers so it's not impossible that he read alot on his nook but... the whole post seems a bit overstated from the 'unreadable font' to the prolific reading.. Just saying..
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Old 06-23-2011, 05:06 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by baronrus View Post
Georgia font is 'nearly unreadable' this post sounds a bit dramatic to me. I have had virtulally no input lag problems with the screen at all as for the fonts i tried adding nearly 10 fonts with the trick found elsware in this forum and I ended up deleting all of them in favor of the very readable 'Georgia' font.

And how in the world did EldRick read 6 books on the nook touch when it had only been out for a week or so by the date of his post? sounds fishy to me!
Actually, I just finished 6 books in a couple of days myself; The Lost Tribe of the Sith series are mini 4 chapter, roughly 60 or so pages each, so it's not totally inconceivable
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Old 06-23-2011, 05:10 PM   #8
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Actually, I just finished 6 books in a couple of days myself; The Lost Tribe of the Sith series are mini 4 chapter, roughly 60 or so pages each, so it's not totally inconceivable
I agree and most people would say size doesnt matter... but small novellas are akin to the thimble of coffee you get when you order a small at Tim Hortons...

regardless You make a valuable point and not once did Eldrick mention size...
But what he did say was the fonts were unreadable.. well i think the stock fonts are ok. no issues there


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Old 06-23-2011, 05:34 PM   #9
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I applied the update first thing out of the box. My comments are with the first update installed.

Hey - I wanted to like the Kobo - 1/2" narrower, more file formats supported, etc.; that's why I ordered it. However, mine worked poorly, side-by-side compared to the K3 and Nook Touch, and that with the bad choice of fonts, and missing line spacing and margin options caused me to send it back to Borders.

I also sold off the K3, in favor of the Nook...
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Old 06-23-2011, 05:47 PM   #10
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I hope you enjoy your reader.

The 1.9.4 update has fixed any screen input issues it is now very responsive, as for the line spacing that is reportedly coming in the next firmware.

I wonder if you had a defective unit because I find the font very readable and more to my liking than other fonts I have tried. If yours was barely readable then perhaps your unit was not up to snuff?
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Old 06-23-2011, 06:57 PM   #11
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I have a Touch as well as a K3 and a Nook. I think it holds up pretty well next to the other 2. Actually, it's the first Kobo that can stand up next to them, IMO.

Nothing wrong with not caring for it, though.
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Old 06-24-2011, 11:55 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EldRick View Post
I applied the update first thing out of the box. My comments are with the first update installed.

Hey - I wanted to like the Kobo - 1/2" narrower, more file formats supported, etc.; that's why I ordered it. However, mine worked poorly, side-by-side compared to the K3 and Nook Touch, and that with the bad choice of fonts, and missing line spacing and margin options caused me to send it back to Borders.

I also sold off the K3, in favor of the Nook...
Fair enough. I have never had a problem from the get go. Regardless some people still like fords and some like dodges, in the end isnt it really what you like that counts?

regards

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Old 06-24-2011, 01:22 PM   #13
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Not everyone is going to like the Kobo Touch. The OP was "dramatic", as one poster noted.

And some users will be reading books purchased elsewhere or converted from other formats; the Kobo is optimized for kepubs and works well with those and is intended to integrate with a large eco-system based on kepubs, not side-loaded content.

What I like about Kobo is the focus on simplicity and layering on features without getting in the way of "simple". Plus Kobo has an aggressive patch fix / enhancement / upgrade program so that the Kobo you own today is more capable than when you bought it six months ago. Try to get that out of other consumer electronics ... or most competing ereaders.
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Old 06-24-2011, 01:32 PM   #14
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Quote:
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Not everyone is going to like the Kobo Touch. The OP was "dramatic", as one poster noted.

And some users will be reading books purchased elsewhere or converted from other formats; the Kobo is optimized for kepubs and works well with those and is intended to integrate with a large eco-system based on kepubs, not side-loaded content.

What I like about Kobo is the focus on simplicity and layering on features without getting in the way of "simple". Plus Kobo has an aggressive patch fix / enhancement / upgrade program so that the Kobo you own today is more capable than when you bought it six months ago. Try to get that out of other consumer electronics ... or most competing ereaders.
Wow that was strong.. but accurate. Regardless you are 100 percent correct.. There are features that could be enhanced if KOBO would integrate the work horse into the KDS. That said the driving force of kobo is the reader and their books.. They are here to make money if nothing else.

regards

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Old 06-27-2011, 06:26 PM   #15
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I've volunteered for the Kobo typography beta, and if I get into it as a tester, I'll order another Kobo to evaluate it on. I'm hoping that it will also include increased granularity of the font sizes, instead of the large jump from one size to another.

Readability is very important to me, and COULD also be a good way for Kobo to differentiate between the otherwise similar offerings from various vendors IF they took typography seriously. It would be a cheap thing to improve for really good payback on the software investment...
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