Sorry I didn't mean to offend. I myself worked in retail for over 17 years--and I know a 'flunkie' who doesn't care about his/her job when I see one
(by the way, I suspect I'm using a very American colloquialism...flunkie doesn't mean a dumb person. It means a worker or drone who is just going through the motions. Entirely applicable.) I had several 'helpers' who gave me information which I later learned was false and they didn't bother to say "You know, I'm not sure about that, let me ask my manager" or "I honestly have no idea". Hence my flippant dismissal of the general retail population, of which I have been a part of for over a decade.
That being said....I put some files on a mini-flashdrive and took it to a Indigo chapters where a very nice and very helpful man did indeed work with me and was very eager to answer those questions himself. I had a PDF, a text-sensitive PDF (scanned with character recognition), and a pdf which I had converted to ePub with some software. None of them worked. So now we have an answer.
He told me that like most companies, Kobo will have a new/upgraded product on the market this fall before the holidays, and that he anticipated a change in this since it is a common complaint. So I will wait and see, or just splurge and buy a Nook.