I just bought a Kobo this evening.
I decided to buy the Kobo not because it's affordable, but because it's the new kid in town, and promised to be possibly the best ereader for me.
I just gave it a first test drive. I unpacked it, played around with the free books, then bought a book from the Kobo Store and transferred over to my Kobo reader. I've only owned a Kobo for an hour or two, but here are my impressions so far.
Things I like:
* The eReader design is slick. It looks and feels better than a Kindle, in my opinion. Very booklike experience. A Kindle -- with its keyboard and multiple keys -- feels like a gadget, with its screen taking up only about half of its area. The Kobo, with only a few simple buttons, feels more like an actual book.
* I like epub, having the option to download books from different stores.
* The 100 free books were a nice touch, and I intend to read a bunch of them.
* There was a certain learning curve to setting up the desktop application, buying books, and transferring them over, but once I figured it out, it shouldn't be too hard to buy more books.
Some things I like less:
* I wish there were a progress bar, to show you how far along the book you are.
* Books offer a table of contents, but there's no "go to location" feature I could find, similar to the Kindle.
* I found that directly under my lamp, there was a glare. Haven't tested this in sunlight yet.
* This might be because I'm used to reading in print... but the background "paper" seems too gray. Instead of black on white, I'm reading black on gray. I'm not sure if there's a way to change this, or if I just have to get used to this. Feels more like newspaper paper than a hardcover or paperback novel.
The store I bought my Kobo at (Indigo Books) wasn't selling any cases. I'll have to google around, and see if anyone is making nice cases for Kobo readers yet.
What do you fellow Kobo users think? Do you agree/disagree?