Aura H2O One on the Way

[Pulpwood]

Hi All:

Was recommended by another member to post in this category, after posting this in the Introduce yourself place.

After reading umpteen reviews of umpteen products, it sounded like an eReader would be a good thing to have. So, off to the Kobo store to purchase a water-proof model, as I enjoy reading in the bath. Ordered a week ago and awaiting its arrival.

Come here from a google link and am glad to have found your forum, well maybe. After wading through this thread and that one, my head is spinning.

Do these things (eReaders) take a great deal of maintenance and tweaking, or can they be purchased, plugged in and work worry free as any paper book would? Header this, grayed out that, upgrade forced or freely accepted, etc.......... Yikes!

[PeterT]

In my opinion; little if any maintenance or tweaking needed.

Yes; upgrades do get forced (if you sync via WiFi, or sync via USB to Kobo Desktop).

Strongly recommend that you install calibre and get familiar with it as a tool to manage your eBooks, and for the Kobo, the shelves / collections etc.

[Pulpwood]

@PeterT Thank you for such a quick response.

I have installed both 'Calibre' and 'Kobo Desktop' on the desktop PC. Are you recommending that Calibre to be installed on the eReader?

[PeterT]

Nooo... calibre is strictly on the PC. There are some handy add-ons for calibre to aid the Kobo integration; the most important one (IMHO) is [GUI Plugin] Kobo Utilities.

Also get "comfie" with Metadata plugboards (see Techniques to use plugboards, custom columns and templates), and how they can link in with Kobo_Shelves_and_Collections.

Now I know some will come along and say install patches to Kobo, and/or use alternate reading software on the device (KoReader or CoolReader) but my advice would be to start slowly; use the supplied s/w on the device as is until you gain some familiarity and/or see items that really bug you and can be worked around.

[Phogg]

I will say that Alf is your friend.
And that the free public domain ebooks hosted in the Patricia Clark Memorial Library here are among the best formatted and proofread you can find.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by Phogg

I will say that Alf is your friend.

I don't think you need to be quite so cryptic any more. If you google for "Apprentice Alf" you will find a blog with tools that let you remove the DRM restrictions from books that you buy. The tools work best with Calibre, which is another reason to use Calibre on your PC/Mac.

DRM restrictions typically mean that a book you buy won't always be readable if you decide to use a different ereader in the future. Obviously that is considered a problem by lots of people, hence Apprentice Alf's tools.

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by Pulpwood

So, off to the Kobo store to purchase a water-proof model, as I enjoy reading in the bath. Ordered a week ago and awaiting its arrival.

The H2O may be advertised as water proof, but it's really just a bit of glue. And then there's the USB hatch, it's hard to tell whether it's closed properly. It should be fine for some droplets or slight dampness. I would never actually do a submerge test with it though. Not in normal water; especially not in soapy hot water.

So - enjoy reading in the bath, just don't be careless with it

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Pulpwood

Do these things (eReaders) take a great deal of maintenance and tweaking, or can they be purchased, plugged in and work worry free as any paper book would? Header this, grayed out that, upgrade forced or freely accepted, etc.......... Yikes!

You can tweak, patch and add alternate reader software if you want and feel comfortable doing so. I choose to do so and find it adds to my reading experience though I have paid a price in factory resets. My wife prefers her Aura with no tweaks and purchases mostly Kobo's modified epub (kepub) ebooks with some library loans using ADE to synchronize them. The only time her Aura was factory reset was when I did so prior to giving it to her.

My suggestion would be to use your H2O and Calibre with the stock firmware until you are comfortable with both and then decide if you even want to try patching, etc.

One issue is when you sideload a large number of books, the time to process them is surprisingly long. A second issue is Kobo's error handling, which is not the greatest so a non-compliant epub can hang the processing stage. I'd suggest Sigil (see the Sigil forum here) with it's Flightcrew error checker and/or epubcheck (Google that one) to check your library for errors before sideloading them.

[Pulpwood]

Thank you all for your good advice.

Being a newb with not even a dozen ebooks downloaded, I will be going slow and easy for sure. Never would have expected a forum for eReader users, nor the multitude of mods for such a simple thing.

One thing I noticed in Calibre is that pdf files scroll rather than page turn, which is great while using a mouse. Can eReaders be tweked to accomplish this?

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by Pulpwood

Thank you all for your good advice.

Being a newb with not even a dozen ebooks downloaded, I will be going slow and easy for sure. Never would have expected a forum for eReader users, nor the multitude of mods for such a simple thing.

One thing I noticed in Calibre is that pdf files scroll rather than page turn, which is great while using a mouse. Can eReaders be tweked to accomplish this?

Even if it could, I wouldn't recommend it on an ereader. An LED screen refreshes several times a second, an eink screen refreshes with each page turn. If you scroll, it's going to have to refresh with every new line, which will not be an enjoyable reading experience.

[Chi Cygni]

Originally Posted by Pulpwood

After wading through this thread and that one, my head is spinning.

Do these things (eReaders) take a great deal of maintenance and tweaking, or can they be purchased, plugged in and work worry free as any paper book would? Header this, grayed out that, upgrade forced or freely accepted, etc.......... Yikes!

Hi and welcome to MR. No, generally you can use them out of the box as they are. I would suggest when your H2O comes just put a few books on it and have fun. Whatever tweaks are here they are for super enthusiasts who like to tweak to improve things. I used to tweak and tweak but now I dislike it. I prefer to do other stuff. I sometimes tweak inside a book (css code) but for the rest I gave up, I find it boring and tedious nowadays, I have no interest or patience. I don't even want to upgrade H2O to 3.12 firmware for the time being which is as simple as turning wifi on. But I'm fine with 3.11 so it stays.

Nowadays I cannot even stomach opening calibre to add plugins and create tags, whatever can be done, I'm no longer interested. I just added a line in kobo config file and also got rid of the seller logo.

So, my H2O works very well with only a tiny tweak and - when I have to I tweak a book to my taste (grumpily, usually takes me a week to decide and sit down to do it) But as Han Solo said "hey, it's me!"

Ah, before I forget, I did take it to hot bath. With lots of foam. Didn't dip it but it was nice to read worry free.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Phogg

I will say that Alf is your friend.

Originally Posted by chrisridd

I don't think you need to be quite so cryptic any more. If you google for "Apprentice Alf" you will find a blog with tools that let you remove the DRM restrictions from books that you buy. The tools work best with Calibre, which is another reason to use Calibre on your PC/Mac.

DRM restrictions typically mean that a book you buy won't always be readable if you decide to use a different ereader in the future. Obviously that is considered a problem by lots of people, hence Apprentice Alf's tools.

It is worth noting that a revision to the forum guidelines means we can straight out say:

To remove the DRM from your books in order that you can use your own property however you darn well want see this blog: http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com

As long as no walkthroughs and stuff are posted here, it is fine to merely link to outside locations where such guides may be found.



(This doesn't appear to be very well-known yet, I even once had to correct a moderator who erroneously removed the link from my post. He hadn't heard the news yet, and apologized. )

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by Pulpwood

Hi All:

Was recommended by another member to post in this category, after posting this in the Introduce yourself place.

After reading umpteen reviews of umpteen products, it sounded like an eReader would be a good thing to have. So, off to the Kobo store to purchase a water-proof model, as I enjoy reading in the bath. Ordered a week ago and awaiting its arrival.

Come here from a google link and am glad to have found your forum, well maybe. After wading through this thread and that one, my head is spinning.

Do these things (eReaders) take a great deal of maintenance and tweaking, or can they be purchased, plugged in and work worry free as any paper book would? Header this, grayed out that, upgrade forced or freely accepted, etc.......... Yikes!

Pulpwood you may also want to take a look at the Deals and Freebies sub forum:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=26

And you may also be interested in audio books, and poking into that sub-forum.

You may also not be aware that your using your Kobo H2O you can borrow ebooks from your local library.

There's a lot to get across now that you're an ebook owner .... a whole world is opening up for you .....

Keep asking questions as you want to know stuff, or get confused by stuff. Take it all as slowly as you like, there's no race.

[meeera]

I have to agree with the above - Kobo attracts the tweakers and hackers, but none of the tweaks are mandatory if all you want to do is read and you're not fussy about shelves and layout and organising heaps of books.

Some tweaks can be very useful, like setting up Calibre from the start to manage Shelves: check the sticky post for detailed instructions. They may look confusing at first if you're not techy, but follow step by step without leaving things out, and you should be fine. Most everything else can wait till you're settled.

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

It is worth noting that a revision to the forum guidelines means we can straight out say:

"To remove the DRM from your books in order that you can use your own property however you darn well want see this blog: http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com"

As long as no walkthroughs and stuff are posted here, it is fine to merely link to outside locations where such guides may be found.

(This doesn't appear to be very well-known yet, I even once had to correct a moderator who erroneously removed the link from my post. He hadn't heard the news yet, and apologized. )

Nice one, thanks for highlighting it.

Oh and welcome to mobileread Pulpwood, I'm sure you'll love your H2O and if you are happy just putting some books on it and reading, you'll love just the same as those who tweak away to their hearts content.