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Originally Posted by Gazella
The Kindle Paperwhite 1st gen. is my first and only ereader. I’m looking into getting myself a Kobo ereader. I have the 6” Aura in mind and so I’d like to hear from someone who owns both the Paperwhite and Aura; which do you use more? Is there any particular reason why you prefer one over the other?
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For me, the main reason was that the Kobo ereaders used epub which is a standard. In past, I've had too many unpleasant experiences with proprietary formats.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazella
For Kobo users, I have a couple of general questions. Do side-loaded ebooks purchased from Amazon and other online ebook stores show up/look fine on the Kobo (layout, page numbers, book covers, etc.)? Will TypeGenius work with non Kobo ebooks? I’m aware of Alf’s tools so DRM won’t be an issue.
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I've never purchased an ebook from Amazon -- not even sure if they sell epub format ebooks -- and Kobo's mobi support is quite limited since it supports a subset of the original .mobi/.prc format in my limited testing. I could purchase from Amazon, break the DRM if needed and then use Calibre/Sigil to generate the epub but much easier to purchase an epub elsewhere.
I have purchased quite a few epub books from other sites, downloaded public domain from Gutenberg and so on. Since epub is a standard, the books work well. The page numbering used by Kobo for .epubs is the standard Adobe page number generation algorithm. Covers and so on work though you can get some nasty looking covers -- one ebook that used a 120x160 image which even on a 600x800 eInk screen looked pathetic.
TypeGenius is font dependent so it depends on using a Kobo modified font and not on the format of the ebook. You might want to look at Metazoa's patcher which included the ability to apply TypeGenius to any font including sideloaded ones. However, without the hinting in the font file, the results can be rather spotty.
If you are not purchasing .kepub.epub (Kobo's modification of .epub) books from Kobo's site, they do not automatically synchronize. Kobo also does not synchronize bookmarks, annotations, etc. for non-kepub.epub books. Under Canadian law, if they did collect information on your sideloaded ebooks, they would end up with having to let you access the information and an obligation to ensure privacy of that information. So easier for them not to open that can of worms.
The other item of interest is that the Kobo ereaders have two renderers. For .epub, Kobo uses the Adobe Reader Mobile so you have compatibility with library and other books that use the Adobe's ADEPT DRM. For .kepub.epub, Kobo uses ACCESS's NetFront renderer. This is an epub3 (more or less) compliant ereader which makes handling languages such as Japanese much easier. For that format, Kobo has created their own DRM scheme which has been broken.
It would appear that Adobe/Datalogic's Reader Mobile is going to using the Readium code base and adding their DRM management in the future so Kobo would be able to revert to using a single renderer.
I also tend to use Sigil to edit most of the non-DRMed epubs I purchase. For me, the average of 15 minutes to make the book conform to my ideas of what an ebook should look like is time well spent.
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Originally Posted by Gazella
Kobo is not available in my region. However, I have a US address and I can use that, but will I be able to actually use the Kobo Aura even though it’s not available here? Any features that won’t work (Reading Life)?
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You would be able to use the Kobo Aura even if it is not sold in your area. The only possible issue would be with geolocation being used to prevent some books from being purchased outside certain areas. But that's what proxy servers were invented for.
There have been complaints about Kobo's shipping to US addresses being on the slow side but, as a Canadian, I have the same complaints about Amazon, for example, delivering from the US to Canada. Something about crossing the Canada/USA border seems to require parcels to be stored for a week or two.
Good luck!
David