Overdrive on Aura One - hit or miss?

[CatherineStewart]

So I'm still waiting to get my hands on the ONE locally (not in stock yet). I'm upgrading mostly because of the integrated Overdrive (and the new light too). Haven't seen anyone mention yet how well the integration is?

Is it easy to use? Cumbersome and slow? Do you still find side-loading your borrowed overdrive books easier/better or will you now use the integrated Overdrive to do it via wifi?

Just wondering if it's as awesome as I hope it is!

[Willa]

My library doesn't use Overdrive for it's ebooks so sadly that feature wouldn't be available to me.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by CatherineStewart

So I'm still waiting to get my hands on the ONE locally (not in stock yet). I'm upgrading mostly because of the integrated Overdrive (and the new light too). Haven't seen anyone mention yet how well the integration is?

Is it easy to use? Cumbersome and slow? Do you still find side-loading your borrowed overdrive books easier/better or will you now use the integrated Overdrive to do it via wifi?

Just wondering if it's as awesome as I hope it is!

I was frustrated with using OverDrive on the Aura One (see my post). But at the prompting of readers I also found that checking a book out on the OB/library website, and then letting it sync to the Aura One, was a lot less painful.

It's almost as good as the Kindle-OD integration.

[beespeckled]

From my understanding, the OD feature won't be enabled until today, when the One is officially available. There aren't enough of us with the device in our hands in a country where the OD feature will be activated to be able to verify. (Hoping mine will be delivered today and then it will be the "watched pot" as I wait for it to charge tonight ; ) )

I'm going to be horribly distracted at work today.

[CatherineStewart]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I was frustrated with using OverDrive on the Aura One (see my post). But at the prompting of readers I also found that checking a book out on the OB/library website, and then letting it sync to the Aura One, was a lot less painful.

It's almost as good as the Kindle-OD integration.

Thank you. I will check out your post

[robko]

Originally Posted by beespeckled

From my understanding, the OD feature won't be enabled until today, when the One is officially available.

That's not correct (at least in Canada). I downloaded an OD book on the weekend.

It's a bit of a good news/bad news story on the integration. The setup and once you sign the book out are very easy and work well. However FINDING the book you want to sign out is trickier (as mentioned by Nate). The interface is literally the Kobo store. So what it does is shows you under the book details whether a book you select is available to borrow from your library. I assume it does it that way since it then only has to check individual books against what your selected library carries rather than having to get a list of everything your library has. Finding the book gets a bit tricky if a book has multiple editions in the Kobo store since you have to go through the details page of each of them to find out which one your library carries.

The workaround is as Nate suggested to sign it out on your library/overdrive site and then sync it (haven't done it that way my self yet, but I believe that is supposed to work).

[beespeckled]

My One arrived today. First impressions on setting up Overdrive. Not as smooth as expected. They have their app setup so all you need is your library card and pin now, so was expecting that easy experience, but no.. gotta sign up for Overdrive with a username and password. Email I used was already in system, fine so got the reset code. Get that setup then realize it is my mom's name that is associated with OD. YIKES! guess I used my email to set her up. So sign out and re register with OD with another email..

I type in the name of a book that is actually on hold for me but haven't actually downloaded yet in anticipation of my wonderful One. Message is not available, do I want to put it on hold? Well, I already have it on hold, but whatever. So when I try to place the hold it tells me there was a problem and try again later.

Disappointing, yes, but not the end of the world. At this point all those holds I have and future holds will have to be side-loaded the old fashioned way. I'm sure it will be fine tuned. I can't imagine Kobo/Overdrive not making it as easy to download your requested holds as the competition. Some glitches to work out.

I didn't see anyway to sync unless putting the Kobo Desktop software on my computer will allow wireless syncing?

The 2 books that I was able to download direct worked quick and seamlessly. I bit the bullet and installed ADE on my Win 10 computer. I was able to select OD as the vendor so that the same I.D. would be for both ADE and Overdrive

[CatherineStewart]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

... I also found that checking a book out on the OB/library website, and then letting it sync to the Aura One, was a lot less painful.

If you check them out on the website, how do you sync it to the Kobo? Do you do that over wifi through the OD settings directly on the kobo itself?

[MGlitch]

How to get an ebook via OD on your Kobo

1) Search for the book, limiting the result to Overdrive (there's a dropdown menu on the left side, I believe it starts as 'Kobo'.

2) Find the book and tap on it.

3) Click the ellipsis (...) and select borrow (if it's available) or place on hold (if it's not)

If it's available it'll download right away. If it's not it'll give you a notification that it was placed on hold.

Tried this with two borrowable books, the first time I was asked to login to OD even though I had set the account up with my Aura One yesterday. But hey that's computers for you, sometimes they like us logging in a second time. I then purposefully waited a few minutes with wifi disabled before trying a second book. This time I was not prompted to login.

I tried this with an ebook I already have on hold, and was able to put it on hold, not sure what that's going to do with the availability but I can always just return one right away.

The only issue I found was there is no way to return borrowed books from the Kobo itself.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by CatherineStewart

If you check them out on the website, how do you sync it to the Kobo? Do you do that over wifi through the OD settings directly on the kobo itself?

I check it out on the website via my PC.

Then I pick up my Aura One and tell it to sync. The newly borrowed library ebook shows up as a new title.

[MGlitch]

Anyone found -where- it downloads the ebook to? It seems it's a hidden partition.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Anyone found -where- it downloads the ebook to? It seems it's a hidden partition.

I think it is stuck in the database file with the other Kobo ebooks.

I'll go fire up calibre and see if it can find the library ebooks on my Aura One.

Edit: CValibre doesn't see my Aura One.

[jiminrussell]

How to example that worked for me:
Once you have setup Overdrive with your account and library card info:
1) Search for author I like, Stephen King for example
2) Set Show: to Overdrive and you will only see Stephen King books available at your library.
3) Right hand column beside each book says either Place on Hold or Borrow

Not sure how it could be any easier than that.

[CatherineStewart]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I check it out on the website via my PC.

Then I pick up my Aura One and tell it to sync. The newly borrowed library ebook shows up as a new title.

That's pretty sweet!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Anyone found -where- it downloads the ebook to? It seems it's a hidden partition.

The most likely download location is in the kepub folder ( .kobo\kepub ) where it will have what looks very much like a GUID for a file name with no extension. For instance, if I look in the kepub folder, I find a file named 6aa7631c-cf6f-4a08-887b-7e2de803e31e which when I open it in DL Reader turns out to be Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff which I just used the Overdrive integration to download from the local public library listing.

If the files are not DRMed (Kobo's DRM not Adobe ADEPT DRM), you can open them easily. If they are DRMed, that topic is beyond this discussion.