[Acteon]

The Kobo I purchased isn't for myself, it's for my dad who loves to read books but is no longer able to because of ALS (Lou Ghering's Disease). He is no longer able to turn pages because he no longer has any dexterity in his hands and fingers.

My sister told me about the Kindle and although it is not sold in local stores in my area, I happened on an article about it in my hometown and the Geuthe Institude happened to have one. They were kind enough to let me try it.

I found that the Kindle's tiny joystick would be unuseable for my dad's needs. The device had a tiny keyboard but I couldn't see him using it. One nice feature was the big buttons to turn the pages forward and back. I like the E-Ink screen which cut down on glare. The possibility to subscribe to newspapers was nice.

I checked the iPad, I was at first worried about having to slide the fingers on the screen to turn the pages, but it can be configured to turn the pages forward and back by pressing on the corners of the screen. The iPad was heavier than the Kindle though and the screen didn't have the E-Ink look, when I was reading a book in the apple store, I could see the glare in the screen from the lights over me. I also inquired to see if there was a way to turn pages via vocal commands but it isn't possible at this time. The iPad would probably make a nice replacement for my dad's aging computer but as an e-Reader, it's weight and the glare of its screen disqualified it.

My brother told me about the Kobo, I went to see it, I liked the big button on the front as it would make it the easiest one for my dad to use (except for the iPad). It also has a functionnality to subscribe to newspapers and download them wirelessly which is nice. The absence of the Keyboard makes it smaller so less heavy to hold. It has the E-Ink screen so there is no glare problem.

I opened the Kobo and installed a number of books that are now in the public domain from the Gutenberg project. There are some bugs in the Kobo, as sometimes doubles appear on it for some reason. The desktop software the Kobo comes with only seems able to manage books purchased from its website and completly ignores the books I put there myself so I ended up using a software called Calibre to manage the books. The Kobo does freeze at times for long periods of time when I disconnect it from the computer (even if I eject the device properly).

When I want to delete a double of a book using the Kobo buttons and I'm somewhere in the "G" in my titles, after deletion the Kobo puts me back in the "A" instead of leaving me where I was before. Which means that I have to navigate back to the "G"'s to continue the cleanup. That is a lot of cliking if you have 500+ books on the device.

According to the Kobo website, there is a software update available for download (apparently since July of 2010) for the Kobo, but when I click on it, I get a message that the link is gone. Where do I get this update ? I've googled for it without success.

Although the Kobo was the device I ended up choosing, there is still some improvements to be made.

The epub format has an area where tag words describe the subject of the book. It would be a nice feature to be able to select a tag word from the list of tag words from the epub books and see the books that have those tag words. For example, if I want to see books about Rome, I would select the word Rome from the list of Tag words. This would take me to a list of books on Rome. This would make for a lot less sequential clicking.

Another nice option would be the ability to browse books by author.


Anyhow, I hope my Dad will able to use his Kobo so he can start reading again.