DNSB- you have a very special Aura
I already wrote how long it took to load books and then sync- about 1600- took Calibre 40 minutes to process, then 30 minutes to upload and then after disconnecting from computer another 50 min for Aura to process.
I was learning how to do shelves and so I had to remove all the books and put them back more than once, just removing them takes 30 minutes, and the times were all similar, when I tried to load 1.6g of books, about 3.5K all the time with processing took...2.5 hours.
Now if you want me to compare with Nook- the time it takes to put books on it is similar to Aura and depends on the speed of usb connection, but after that there is no wait time at all, compared with Aura. In fact compared with all of the big names on ereader market, Aura takes longest time to start reading after sideloading books. Yes, Nook does not leave you a lot of space on for your own books, but it supports sd cards. I can stick my library in and be reading in a minute or two, with Aurora, it is impossible, it needs to "process" the books for a good hour.
And in lieu of supporting keyboards for let's say chinese or russian or hindu- good luck using search for those. You counting 20 seconds against Nook search time, and forgetting that it is impossible to find any foreign book on Aurora at all, when on Nook you can do it with more taps, but with well organized library definitely not 36
I will put my card containing 800 books in Nook- I can read in a minute, I put same card in Aurora- I have to wait 40 minutes to even start and then, since I did not use Calibre- I would not be having shelves and would not be able to find a book in 100+pages, to leaf through them will take way more than 36 taps.
I will do testing tonight to see if processing speed improved any, but I think you doing Kobo disservice when you choose to ignore their shortcomings, and praising their extremely inadequate software.
Yes, I can and so can many others to work around the issues, but unless we say about the problems, it is us who'd be wasting time working around them for much longer, that is if we even stay.