[Altivo]

Joining this thread late, I see. I've now read the entire thing through, all 22 pages of it, and have to admit I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of serious technical information. Surely someone must have the real details. Now that there is really no support available from the manufacturer or distributors of Literati and Lookbook, the user community is the only support available. Vague answers like "They told me it was caused by Windows 7" don't help anyone much, alas.

I recently admired a white Literati that is working correctly and has 2.0 firmware in it. I was so taken with the display that I went looking for one, and ended up buying a "new, in box" black model off EBay. Yes, I knew it was taking a risk. The first one was operational but was unable to upgrade itself from the supplied 1.6 version of firmware. On connection to wifi, it would announce that an upgrade was available, and proceed to download it, but after a few minutes it would declare "Update Cancelled." No explanation. I read that you could update from an SD card so I followed instructions for that: download the KoboRoot.tgz file, put it in the root directory of the SD card, power on while holding ALT-Q. It claimed again to be updating itself, but after several minutes announced "Update failed. Unable to write attribute file." After that, the device was no longer able to boot up. It would power on and show the startup logo, but never go beyond that even after several hours.

So I returned it and received another new, in the box unit. This one fails to update itself over wifi with the same behavior as the first. I'm not about to try the SD card and ALT-Q method again. I've seen another set of instructions that says to place the KoboRoot.tgz file into the .kobo directory on the Literati virtual drive, and restart. I'm suspicious of that, and expect it will trash the device the same way the SD chip method did.

Some have noted in the past that mysterious tech support people "had them reformat the Literati drive," which I assume means using a PC to format the drive while it is mounted as a USB mass storage device. I can see where this might correct issues with the original disk image, if for instance there weren't enough directory blocks or something was marked "read only" that has to be replaced in order to update.

However, reformatting would erase the entire file structure that is already on the drive, including the sqlite database that contains the "free book" data and the other existing configuration files. Does the Literati rebuild all that automatically when it restarts? Does anyone know for sure?

The Literati itself is running a Linux kernel of some sort, not Windows. However, I see that the virtual drive is in fact formatted as FAT32 to allow Windows-based PCs to read and write it. Is that how it should be reformatted? That might explain the Windows 7 issues, since a default format from Windows 7 surely would write NTFS rather than FAT32.

Most of the problems reported here can be fixed, I'm quite sure. But we need more detailed facts and less vague hand-waving in order to build up a list of procedures known to have worked.

(Note: I don't think we should be blaming Kobo, as some users have done. They apparently provided the base code, but were not directly involved in development or support until Sharper Image or Merch Source abandoned the product. I also have a Kobo WiFi reader, and it works just as the manual says it should. The problems here seem to be the fault of Merch Source or whomever they outsourced the product design and development to.)