Kobo Australia - $199 @ Borders

[TTC]

http://www.borders.com.au/ereader

Can't believe that Australia is getting it before the US. Also it seems a fairly reasonable price.

Hopefully they get some of the bugs I've been reading about here ironed out quickly!

[thijsvk]

You basterds !!! :-)

[jimr]

Yeah, you gotta wonder why they would launch it into another market as big as Australia when they haven't worked out the bugs yet. It makes me think that an upgrade is imminent cuz why would they subject another group of customers to the same headaches we've had to experience. It's also interesting to note that in all the news items on the internet heralding the Australian launch (and the American one, for that matter), only a fraction mention that there are any problems with it at all. If more of the news reporters had stopped to look up this forum, Kobo could have been in for quite the negative publicity.

Having said that, it's still a nifty little device.

[TTC]

I would hazard a guess that the fact that the Australian market is actually quite small might be a reason for a launch prior to the US. Another chance for early adopters to bug-test and get major bugs fixed before the big launch in the US. Considering that the population of Australia is 22million vs USA's 310million, it's not a very big market.

As to the quality of news coverage, this is a great example of how much fact checking goes into the news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMQCcOSfaYw

[malliemcg]

Civic store (Canberra) has sold out of black ones, a guy at work grabbed the last one last night, plenty of whites left. Mentioned it casually to my team lead who'd been looking at getting an eReader - end result 4 have been bought by people in the team so far, I should get a commission .

Thus far people have been really happy - and thanks to this site - I've been able to assist with things like the text size issue etc.

[artificial]

Originally Posted by TTC

I would hazard a guess that the fact that the Australian market is actually quite small might be a reason for a launch prior to the US. Another chance for early adopters to bug-test and get major bugs fixed before the big launch in the US.

I'm happy to be a bug tester if it means I get my Kobo three weeks sooner (got mine yesterday)!

And yes, the same bugs are in the Australian Kobo Reader as the Canadian, such as the "can't resize fonts" bug and the "can't delete the 100 free ebooks" bug. Thankfully the nice mobileread members have already figured out workarounds for us

[mickeyjuice]

Bought mine yesterday - once I got the stupid font-size problem for self-loaded books worked around, it's been pretty good. (Also read somewhere that it should be sorted by the Kobo via a firmware update in a few days, which will be far better, than the workaround.)

I prefer it to hold when compared to my Kindle, but I do prefer the page-turn buttons on the Kindle. The Kindle also does page-turns MUCH more nicely - the Kobo does this weird black-screen-flash thing before giving you the new page, and although you get used to it, it means the Kindle is much smoother.

MUCH prefer the black case, although it's already got a (left) thumb-mark at the bottom. Also really like the lack of the keyboard.

Most importantly, the screen is much the same as the Kindle.

Quite stupidly, you can't delete books off it, which is moronic.

At this time, you cannot remove the 100 free classics from your eReader. We will be releasing a software update shortly that will allow deleting pre-loaded titles.

OK, I should have said that you can't delete the books off it without playing with SQL Lite, as per this excellent post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...44&postcount=9

So, all up, it's not bad. Probably about the same value-for-money-wise as the Kindle, given the things it lacks and its lower price.

Emailing Borders re the font-size and book deletion issues produces a big fat ignore. (Apart from the email that promises they'll contact you, which doesn't really count...)