Thinking of getting a Kobo Touch - Battery + Book Management questions

[rashkae]

For the sake of perspective, I have two Sony devices, (650 and T1), Kindle Touch, Kobo Wifi and Kobo Touch. I much prefer the Kindle for Reading well formatted books (that can be rendered as a Mobi file with little effort) due to the unmatched readability, font sharpness and perceivable contrast. The Kobo touch with the most recent update and Rockfort font comes as a reasonably close second, but still noticeably poorer when compared side by side.

To address your specific questions however:

The Kobo touch battery life is the worst of all my e-ink devices. That being said, it's an e-ink device. A few days of 1 hour per day or 3000 page turns won't even make it feel excercised. (2 to 3 all-nighters however, will drain it.)

The book management on all the e-ink devices is poor. Use Calibre to manage your entire library, and leave the reader for books you actually intend to read. Even without collections, however, I think the Kobo is the most helpful in this regard. The home page has the 5 most recent books, as well as a shortlist of 5 books you specify. Where the Kobo stands out, however, is the book title search: Just start typing either parts the title or author name, and your list of books will shrink on the fly until the one you're look for jumps out at you. (Usually within 3 or 4 letters)

[Blue2u]

As a person who just switched from Kobo Touch to Sony PRST1, I can tell you that for me, the Sony wins hands down. I am not a very 'technical' user. I use Calibre to handle my library and purchase my books on computer and transfer through that. The reason I started using Calibre was for library management, I just found the Kobo lacking. Out of the box at least the Sony has a 'collections' feature, which if you don't want to use a library management system like Calibre, would be your best bet.

For me, the Sony is faster, and I've never had any problems in updates, managing library, etc. With my Kobo, I had a ton of problems [which is what brought me here], and yes, I everntually got them all sorted out. But so far the Sony has been so much easier compared to my Kobo.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy e-reading!

And even though it's cheap, it seems to be relatively sturdy. I use a cloth bag to protect mine, and toss that into a backpack. No issues so far. I had a proper cover for a Kindle 2 and treated it better overall, yet managed to crack two screens in the same time span.