[slantybard]

Update to my previous impressions:

Originally Posted by slantybard

I picked up an Aura today and have some preliminary thoughts. The device is much lighter and smaller compared to my KPW1. I could not find a sleep cover to try with the Aura, however, the covers I saw for the HD and Glo looked extremely poor compared to the sleek, tight fitted beauty of the KPW1 cover (it is an amazing cover). I will start researching covers.

I couldn't read the Aura with one hand since it is too small to hold in one hand and turn pages at same time. I picked up the official Kobo Aura Sleepcover. The Aura snaps into it nicely on both sides (not corners). Works well and I can now read with one hand again.

The lighting on the Aura looks very, very good compared to my KPW1.

I still like the lighting way better than my KPW1.

There are about 3 small light spots. They are only noticeable at brightness levels higher than about 75% on my Aura and even then, must be looked at closely to see them. I don't think I will notice them when I read. Overall, the light artifacts on the Aura are way less noticeable compared to the splotchy KPW1 lighted screen (which I have loved to read from this past year).

Again, on my device, the small light spots are not noticeable when I read and the even lighting outshines the KPW1 lighting.

The fonts look slightly darker on my KPW1.

The ability to modify formatting and fonts on the device is wonderful. The font contrast on the KPW is slightly better. I am now convinced that this is because of the lighting and my interpretation of the colour temperature - the KPW light is cooler (more blue) and I think that makes the screen background look "whiter" and thus the KPW fonts look slightly darker. However, the lack of splotchy patterns more than makes up for the less contrast. When viewed with the light off (Aura) and light minimal (KPW1), the screen contrast between the 2 devices look identical to me.

I am disappointed that the margins, even when minimized are still quite big. This too may be related to epub formatting and I will explore calibre formatted kepubs with minimal margins or search the forum for a hack to shrink the margins further.

I am also not a fan of the header/footer. I will need to research how to change/hack this. Kindle handles this much better as the header is not seen while reading (only when the controls are triggered) and the footer is also minimal, showing only location/time left to read/etc. I do like the Kindle footer info better than the Aura.

After experimentation, I have abandoned kepubs for the following reasons:
-I like to see how many pages are left in the book at the bottom (or percentage which is not available to use), not chapter
-I don't like the header and footer info showing the book title or chapter title

I have added a kobo_extra.css file and also removed margins and changed the epub output in calibre to maximize screen real estate comfortably and other than the minimum height of the footer pagination info, everything looks much better now.

I have not explored Calibre integration, but it can't be more complex than the Kindle's lockdown. I will play with this tomorrow after reading the shelves thread.

Calibre integration with the Aura is awesome compared to fiddling with the KPW collections plug-in and Collections Manager on the jailbroken KPW (this is the fault of Amazon, not the amazing developers of both hacks)

So why would I consider switching to the Aura from the KPW1 especially with the upcoming KPW2 Carta device? The biggest reason would be the difficulty in modifying the way books are displayed in Kindles including fonts, margins, justification, line spacing, and collections. The Kindles have required quite a lot of work to develop hacks for and repeatedly break those hacks with each update (java obfuscation anyone?). I expect that the KPW2 will be even harder to jailbreak and customize and may take over a year to develop a significant depth of modifications available for use.

I stand by my earlier thoughts. Out of the box, the Aura is much more user customizable and easier to manage an e-library. While I wish that the Kobo Patcher worked on the new Aura (here's to the future hopefully....), the base product is better than the KPW1. If Amazon was open to user modification (unlikely given their history), I would probably wait for the KPW2, however, the Aura is a wonderful device to use for those of us addicted to reading.