Sony T1 vs Kobo touch: firmware, formats, library organisation

Storm27 · 11-27-2011, 05:40 PM

Sorry this is so long! I've been promised a new a new ereader for Christmas and I'm trying to choose between the Kobo touch and the Sony T1, both of which are conveniently available on my local high street. I'd expected the Sony to win hands-down, but having seen and handled the Kobo, I like them both, so the choice really comes down to functionality, where I have three main issues and a fourth small one.

A. Stability of firmware.A first look at the Sony forum here suggested that there are problems with the device freezing, while the Kobo has been around a little longer and seems to have fairly frequent firmware updates. Is one reader more stable/less likely to give me problems than the other?

B. Formats.My current library is almost entirely DRM free mobipocket, and it's a big library -- around 2 GB. So it's tempting that the Kobo claims to read Mobi; I believe that it may read a larger range of other formats than the T1 too. Can anyone comment on how well the Kobo touch renders mobipocket files? Is it a real advantage, or am I likely to have to convert everything to epub anyway?

C. Library management.This is the big one. My 5 inch bebook is a bit dated now, but I'm used to being able to drag and drop all the books I own into a folder structure on my SD card and navigate direct to the folder location I want. It's not as aesthetically elegant as a "shelf" structure, but has almost unlimited versatility for dealing with a very large book collection -- I have different folders for different genres, with subfolders for sub genres and sometimes a further layer or two of folders for authors or another category. From what I've read so far, I'm not going to be able to divide my books up as successfully as this on a new reader, but it's really important to me to be able to browse my books and find something I want to read without needing to remember the exact title of every book I have on the reader or to page through several dozen authors (or worse hundreds of individual books) within a genre. Because I'm currently browsing purely by folder, I'm not familiar with what calibre can do in terms of library organisation; but I am aware that just because I might be able to set up calibre categories I like, it won't necessarily mean I can transfer that structure to a reader.

So far it looks to me as if the Sony T1 can handle categories, but I'm not clear whether that can be multiple or "nested" categories, or whether I will have to live with paging through one very long list of genres, with more books than I would choose grouped together in each genre. The Ereader matrix tells me that the Kobo touch has "folder navigation", but when I played with the demonstration model in store I couldn't find any way to view the folder structure, so I suspect that this means something different to the way the bebook mini works (or there's a simple mistake in the matrix).

In order, from my most to least preferred options, I'd like to be able to do at least one of the following (multiple options would be even better) --
1. Browse books in nested folders on my SD card
2. Browse some kind of nested genre structure (e.g. so I can navigate to science fiction and then choose space opera, dystopias, steampunk etc)
3. Browse one level of genre or author name only (so I would have to set up something like "SF - space opera", "SF - dystopias", "SF - Steampunk" and would end up having to page through 10 or 20 pages of genre tags in order to find the one I wanted.)
4. Only be able to sort by genre or author tag, not to filter my library. I think this option would be just barely workable -- with possibly 2000 books on my SD card, it wouldn't really matter how beautifully sorted by author name they were; I would still have to page through several dozen pages to find the one I wanted.

D. Transferring books from PC to reader.
This is less critical to me, but ideally I'd like to be able to slip my SD card into my laptop's card reader and drag and drop my books onto it, without losing any of the metadata I would need for them to be categorised properly on the reader. Is this possible, or will I have to use software and cables to transfer them properly?

robko · 11-28-2011, 06:38 PM

If folders/shelves are your key criteria you may want to go Sony. Kobo doesn't currently have but the developers have indicated (including a few days ago) that it's in development. No idea when it will happen. Newest firmware (1.9.14) seems to have made mobi a viable format on the Kobo, but I don't have any mobi files so I'm going on what other's have reported on the Kobo sub-forum. Drag and drop onto a SD card should work for you on a Kobo for sure (and I believe on the Sony, but can't confirm that). Kobo doesn't seem to like some SD card, but I'm not sure how widespread that challenge is.

Personally I love my Kobo Touch and I can highly recommend it in a general way, but if you want folders off the top (and it looks like that is important to you) you might be better of with Sony.

Storm27 · 11-29-2011, 03:53 PM

Thanks - it sounds as if that's wise; or maybe even asking to delay the present until January; I'd hate to take a decision now based on functionality that might change in a month or two. (And the Sony firmware may be updated by then too).

[Digression - It does seem odd to me that so many manufacturers will include a large memory or SD card expansion as a great selling point, but not focus on practical ways to organise as many books as that would imply]

11-27-2011, 05:40 PM	#1
Storm27 Connoisseur Posts: 74 Karma: 201290 Join Date: Aug 2009 Device: Sony PRS T3S, android phone	Sony T1 vs Kobo touch: firmware, formats, library organisation Sorry this is so long! I've been promised a new a new ereader for Christmas and I'm trying to choose between the Kobo touch and the Sony T1, both of which are conveniently available on my local high street. I'd expected the Sony to win hands-down, but having seen and handled the Kobo, I like them both, so the choice really comes down to functionality, where I have three main issues and a fourth small one. A. Stability of firmware.A first look at the Sony forum here suggested that there are problems with the device freezing, while the Kobo has been around a little longer and seems to have fairly frequent firmware updates. Is one reader more stable/less likely to give me problems than the other? B. Formats.My current library is almost entirely DRM free mobipocket, and it's a big library -- around 2 GB. So it's tempting that the Kobo claims to read Mobi; I believe that it may read a larger range of other formats than the T1 too. Can anyone comment on how well the Kobo touch renders mobipocket files? Is it a real advantage, or am I likely to have to convert everything to epub anyway? C. Library management.This is the big one. My 5 inch bebook is a bit dated now, but I'm used to being able to drag and drop all the books I own into a folder structure on my SD card and navigate direct to the folder location I want. It's not as aesthetically elegant as a "shelf" structure, but has almost unlimited versatility for dealing with a very large book collection -- I have different folders for different genres, with subfolders for sub genres and sometimes a further layer or two of folders for authors or another category. From what I've read so far, I'm not going to be able to divide my books up as successfully as this on a new reader, but it's really important to me to be able to browse my books and find something I want to read without needing to remember the exact title of every book I have on the reader or to page through several dozen authors (or worse hundreds of individual books) within a genre. Because I'm currently browsing purely by folder, I'm not familiar with what calibre can do in terms of library organisation; but I am aware that just because I might be able to set up calibre categories I like, it won't necessarily mean I can transfer that structure to a reader. So far it looks to me as if the Sony T1 can handle categories, but I'm not clear whether that can be multiple or "nested" categories, or whether I will have to live with paging through one very long list of genres, with more books than I would choose grouped together in each genre. The Ereader matrix tells me that the Kobo touch has "folder navigation", but when I played with the demonstration model in store I couldn't find any way to view the folder structure, so I suspect that this means something different to the way the bebook mini works (or there's a simple mistake in the matrix). In order, from my most to least preferred options, I'd like to be able to do at least one of the following (multiple options would be even better) -- 1. Browse books in nested folders on my SD card 2. Browse some kind of nested genre structure (e.g. so I can navigate to science fiction and then choose space opera, dystopias, steampunk etc) 3. Browse one level of genre or author name only (so I would have to set up something like "SF - space opera", "SF - dystopias", "SF - Steampunk" and would end up having to page through 10 or 20 pages of genre tags in order to find the one I wanted.) 4. Only be able to sort by genre or author tag, not to filter my library. I think this option would be just barely workable -- with possibly 2000 books on my SD card, it wouldn't really matter how beautifully sorted by author name they were; I would still have to page through several dozen pages to find the one I wanted. D. Transferring books from PC to reader. This is less critical to me, but ideally I'd like to be able to slip my SD card into my laptop's card reader and drag and drop my books onto it, without losing any of the metadata I would need for them to be categorised properly on the reader. Is this possible, or will I have to use software and cables to transfer them properly?

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11-28-2011, 06:38 PM	#2
robko Wizard Posts: 2,454 Karma: 5469320 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Kobo	If folders/shelves are your key criteria you may want to go Sony. Kobo doesn't currently have but the developers have indicated (including a few days ago) that it's in development. No idea when it will happen. Newest firmware (1.9.14) seems to have made mobi a viable format on the Kobo, but I don't have any mobi files so I'm going on what other's have reported on the Kobo sub-forum. Drag and drop onto a SD card should work for you on a Kobo for sure (and I believe on the Sony, but can't confirm that). Kobo doesn't seem to like some SD card, but I'm not sure how widespread that challenge is. Personally I love my Kobo Touch and I can highly recommend it in a general way, but if you want folders off the top (and it looks like that is important to you) you might be better of with Sony.

11-29-2011, 03:53 PM	#3
Storm27 Connoisseur Posts: 74 Karma: 201290 Join Date: Aug 2009 Device: Sony PRS T3S, android phone	Thanks - it sounds as if that's wise; or maybe even asking to delay the present until January; I'd hate to take a decision now based on functionality that might change in a month or two. (And the Sony firmware may be updated by then too). [Digression - It does seem odd to me that so many manufacturers will include a large memory or SD card expansion as a great selling point, but not focus on practical ways to organise as many books as that would imply]

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