Quote:
Originally Posted by BookCat
jackie-w Had a long conversation with a friend who has agreed to let me use his wifi to register the device.
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OK if that's what you want to do, but honestly I've owned 8 different Kobo models over the last 5 years and I've never needed or wanted to enable wi-fi on any of them.
Our house also uses wired internet connection (via those fancy Powerline plugs that utilise your home's electric wiring). We only use wi-fi for our smartphones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BookCat
The Kobo Desktop App looks a bit like Kindle 4 PC. Do you know if it works in the same way?
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Yes, it's Kobo's equivalent of Kindle for PC. This is not to say they are absolutely identical.
You don't need to own a Kobo to try out Kobo Desktop, just install it and have a look. You'll need an email address to set up a free Kobo account but it doesn't have to be your main email address. If you do buy a Kobo this email address will be used to register the device during initial setup which can be done via Kobo Desktop without any need to involve Customer Support or anyone else. It's how I've registered all my devices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BookCat
Sorry for all the questions, but I'm moving from a gigantic eco-system (Amazon) which I've become used to. The ebooks on Amazon have an option to "Transfer via USB" when purchasing. Once they're on my computer I just plug the Paperwhite in, open the kindle's 'document' folder, then slide the book into it, keeping a copy in a My ebooks folder contained within the My Documents folder on the pc.
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No need to be sorry
You can continue to buy your books from Amazon if you prefer - Kobo wishes you wouldn't but I'm sure lot's of Kobo owners do this. After you've done your usual "Transfer via USB" you'll have a MOBI or KF8 (AZW3) file on your PC. As long as you've installed the Apprentice Alf plugin for calibre you need to drag-drop the file into calibre's main library screen (to remove DRM) then convert your liberated MOBI or KF8(AZW3) to EPUB. If you want to get the best from your Kobo you should also correct and/or add any missing metadata in the calibre library. Then you can connect the Kobo via USB and use calibre's send-to-device to sideload the EPUB.
Notes:
- although Kobos can read some MOBI files, you'll get a better reading experience with EPUB and/or KEPUB.
- calibre has an option to format-shift your EPUB to KEPUB during send-to-device if you want modern features (e.g. pop-up footnotes, book stats, image viewer) but this is probably a discussion for another day.
- you'd need someone who does use wi-fi to tell you what you might be missing out on. I have not found a single reason why having wi-fi enabled would be beneficial to me. Firmware upgrades can be done in a couple of minutes via USB connection to PC at a time of your choosing. There are a couple of different ways to do it, one using Kobo Desktop, the other by downloading the upgrade .zip to your PC and manually copying the unzipped contents to a specific Kobo folder.
- if you do buy books from Kobo you can use USB connection to Kobo Desktop to transfer them to your Kobo. Or you can use Apprentice Alf's lesser-known calibre plugin, OBOK, to pull books from Kobo Desktop's book directory on the PC into calibre, de-DRMing them on the way.