[embryo]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hmmm... using Metazoas/GeoffR's patcher, the amount of wasted space on epubs is pretty minimal while keeping the page number at the bottom -- ~2mm at the top of the screen and ~5mm at the bottom. Side margins are pretty much having text touch the edge so I set a margin to keep text ~1mm from the edges. If I really want, I can enable full page reading and get rid of the page number at the bottom. Note that Kobo's ereaders do respect the ebook's CSS so if the epub says 3em side margins, you'll need to edit the epub to fix this.

Well, AFAIK koreader reads the ebook's CSS also (to a certain degree), but has an 'option' to turn this off.
And the patcher that you use is not part of the reader but a great effort of people that liked the 'option' to use all of their screen for reading.
Option that the reader does not gives you.

I currently have ~2800 epubs on my Aura H20. Searching pops up results rapidly -- faster than koreader. As for viewing the raw library? Even with my number of books, it wouldn't take hours to page through the entire library if I was ever foolish enough to do that instead of using search and you do have the options of sorting your library by Recent, Title, Author, File Type and File Size (the last I've never used).

Hmm... quick check on searching for a specific book (We Few by John Ringo and David Weber filed as part of the Prince Roger series). Tap on search bar on the home screen and type letter p -- page full of results before my finger reaches for the next letter. Type 'r' and the Prince Roger series is on the page. Tap the series name and there are the four books in the series. Tap on "We Few" and the book opens Total elapsed time <3 seconds to find the book and 2 seconds to have it opened and ready to read.

The only wait for hours is when you first copy a large number of epubs over and then let them process -- something that koreader does not need to do so a point in it's favour. OTOH, that processing only happens when I've needed to do a factory reset and do not have a recent copy of the database to restore -- all my non-Kobo ebooks live on an external uSD card so they don't get wiped during the factory reset.

But you see, this is the problem with the nickel approach.
You live with a ticking bomb.
If the reader needs a factory reset, the nickel re-index (for hours) the library.
If the reader connects to the PC, eventually the database will be corrupted and it will re-index (for hours) the library.
Your only hope is the backup of the database, something you have to do with every library update, is not the easiest thing to do, and its not an option of the nickel.
I don't want to know what will happen if a corruption occurs on a trip away from your PC.

I do have koreader on my Aura H2O but I find less and less use for it -- my iPad is a better device for PDF files simpler due to the larger screen and I don't have many fb2, pdb, etc. ebooks and most of those I do have were converted to epub and edited quite a while back.

As for expensive screen area? I may be looking at it differently from you but what I have paid Baen alone for ebooks makes the cost of my Aura H2O a minimal part of my reading costs.

Maybe for you the price of the reader is "nickels and dimes" (pun intended), but to pay for a 6" reader and use a 4.5" one, is not a good deal in my book.