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Old 09-30-2010, 11:47 PM   #1
montealan
Enthusiast
montealan began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 27
Karma: 40
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: El Dorado Hills, California
Device: Kobo Glo, Kobo Aura One, Likebook T80D
Sharper Image Literati

Since I just bought and returned the Literati I thought I should write a very brief review of it.

As some background info, I own an Ectaco Jetbook and Jetbook Lite, a Sony PRS 500(the first one sold by Sony) and a Sony PRS 300. I am very familiar with all the different types of ebook files (.lrf, .eub, .mobi, .pdf, .lit, .rtf, .fb2 etc, etc.) I have purchased ebooks from Sony, Border's, Amazon, and most recently, Kobo. So I consider myself pretty ebook-literate.

With that said I decided to buy the new Literati. Out of the box it looked very nice. It came with a nice case, power charger, and USB cable. It has wireless access to Kobo's online ebook store. But you cannot use it to browse the internet as there is no built in browser.

After setting it up with the time, date, and some other info. it goes to the main page which is tabbed for Books, Bookstore, and I think another tab was for open books (currently reading).

All worked fine. I logged on to Kobo's site and it automatically downloaded the books which I had previously purchased (after pressing "sync" icon). By the way, although it is a color screen, it is not a touch screen.

The first problem I noted was when I inserted my 1 gb sd card into the reader. Although it recognized that a card was inserted, it would not read the card. I tried it three times ensuring that the books on it were not inside any folders. No luck.

When I connected the reader to my computer running Win 7 the computer said that an unknown device was connected but it did not have the proper driver. The Web site did not have any info or downloads to help rectify this situation.

Also the box said the reader can go into night reading mode, where the screen goes black and the print white. There was no way I found to do this, and the instructions did not mention anyway to do this.

Finally you cannot read a book in landscape, only portrait, which seems a waste as the the screen is very long and narrow. Since I could not get a pdf on it I have no idea whether it has reflow.

So I packed it back into its nice box and returned it to the store.

Too bad, because I wanted to like it. Unfortunately it just does not hack it as an ereader.

Back to my Jetbooks which can read anything I throw on them. They are probably the best readers available for the price and for their versatility.
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