Are all ereaders as buggy as Kobo Touch/Glo?

[jusmee]

This is a serious question - I am not interested in having an argument about Kobo bugs, but I want to know if all the other brands are similar in their software quality, because I am increasingly becoming disenchanted with my Touch.

So, if you own other current ereaders, how do you find the quality of the software to compare in terms of bugs and how quick they fix them, and how many new bugs they introduce in new firmware versions?

My own experience is that I have owned older ereaders - a generation or two behind the modern ones, and they too, had buggy firmware - probably about the same as Kobo.

[AnemicOak]

I don't recall many bugs in anything I've owned (Sony 505, Kindle 2 thru Touch, Opus). My Sony used to have a problem with rebooting itself and losing my books if I went over 49 collections, I do remember that. Otherwise I don't recall any bugs. Although there were sometimes things that could be considered missing features (such as no bookmarks on the Opus).

[SteveEisenberg]

My Kindle froze on the train going home today. Takes a good two minutes to reboot.

[stewacide]

My Touch locked up all the time. I put an iPhone sim tool on my keychain I was having to hard-reset it so much. But my Glo has never locked up or reset, and is MUCH faster than my Touch. knockknock

[Suzanna]

One of my sisters has a Sony T1. I never thought I'd see the day that she'd move away from Sony (and I'm still not convinced she'll go through with it) but she's incredibly frustrated with it and talking about buying a Kobo.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Suzanna

One of my sisters has a Sony T1. I never thought I'd see the day that she'd move away from Sony (and I'm still not convinced she'll go through with it) but she's incredibly frustrated with it and talking about buying a Kobo.

What is the problem with her T1? My mother and my mother-in-law both have a T1 and both T1's work with no problem.

[bartveld]

I didn't like the difficulties I met when I tried to tweak a Kindle, but out of the box a Kindle works smoothly and has better battery. I must say I'm rather disappointed with the Glo and the support its given.

[jusmee]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I don't recall many bugs in anything I've owned (Sony 505, Kindle 2 thru Touch, Opus). My Sony used to have a problem with rebooting itself and losing my books if I went over 49 collections, I do remember that. Otherwise I don't recall any bugs. Although there were sometimes things that could be considered missing features (such as no bookmarks on the Opus).

That's a fairly bad bug on the Sony. Kindles all relatively bug-free then? Hmmm, interesting

[jusmee]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

My Kindle froze on the train going home today. Takes a good two minutes to reboot.

Is that a once-off thing, or does it do it often? Is this a new model Kindle or an older one?

[jusmee]

Originally Posted by stewacide

My Touch locked up all the time. I put an iPhone sim tool on my keychain I was having to hard-reset it so much. But my Glo has never locked up or reset, and is MUCH faster than my Touch. knockknock

Same firmware on the Touch as the Glo?

[jusmee]

Originally Posted by bartveld

I didn't like the difficulties I met when I tried to tweak a Kindle, but out of the box a Kindle works smoothly and has better battery. I must say I'm rather disappointed with the Glo and the support its given.

I am hoping Kindle isn't the stand-out in the pack in a way. It's lack of support for Adobe DRM and epubs generally (as I understand it) is a BIG drawback, and why I never bought a Kindle way back when e-ink screens first appeared.

[JSWolf]

Sony Reader generally work fine out of the box. I've had relatively trouble free usage from a 500, 505 and 650. My mother has had a 600 and has a T1. Both trouble free.

[jusmee]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sony Reader generally work fine out of the box. I've had relatively trouble free usage from a 500, 505 and 650. My mother has had a 600 and has a T1. Both trouble free.

Sounds promising. Do they upgrade their firmware often?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jusmee

Sounds promising. Do they upgrade their firmware often?

Sometimes. But not often. No need really as they just work.

But the most surprising thing Sony ever did was update the 500 to add ePub. You had to send in your 500, but they did it and it took about a week or two to get the 500 back from Sony and they paid for the shipping.

[stewacide]

Originally Posted by jusmee

Same firmware on the Touch as the Glo?

My Touch was unstable on every 2.x firmware including 2.3.x. Touch-screen would become unresponsive quite often, certain books or actions would consistently lock it up, the browser would lock up quite often when I'd tried to use it. Didn't worry about it too much since a hard reset would always bring things back to normal, but I've been really surprised that my Glo has had none of this, despite being set up identically (same books, same fonts).

My best guess is that the extremely slow internal SD that came with my Touch was causing race conditions exposing bugs that don't manifest themselves on the much faster Glo. It might also be that the Glo has more ram(?), so memory leaks that would kill the Touch don't affect the Glo.