If your friend is buying kobo from the store he can check it right away to see if there are obvious defects. The books you have are probably non DRM if you can read them on both tablet and netbook so you can probably just do copy paste via usb to kobo or you can copy them to sd card and pop it inside reader. There is no reason why you can't register on both amazon and kobo to check where it's cheaper.(or any other store for that matter). It probably wouldn't be amiss to find a case/cover for ereader.
If you don't mind telling which kobo are you getting
