Buying Kobo mini

[ereaders]

Hello:

I am planning to buy a Kobo mini.
There is one thing that stopped me to buy it now.
Will the Kobo mini able to read from USB drive if I have the conversion cable to connect the Kob mini to a USB drive?

Thank you.

[robko]

No the reader won't be able to directly connect to a USB drive. I don't think any of the current e-readers from any manufacturers can do this.

[GeoffR]

As robko said, no.

But if your reason for wanting to connect to a USB drive is to extend the Mini's 2GB (~1.3GB free) storage capacity, then note that it is possible to upgrade from 2GB to 32GB storage by replacing the Mini's internal micro SD card.

[ereaders]

internal. which means that I have to open the mini.it is going to void the warranty. Right?

[DomesticExtremis]

Yes, it voids the warranty.
Bear in mind that the average epub is less
than 1MB, so you will be able to get many books into 2GB.

Comics and pdfs are larger but event then, you should still
get a few hundred onto a standard mini.

[ereaders]

actually. I have a lot of pdf files from lectures. They ar large in size. May be I should go for Kobo touch. I found a display model for $80.

[PeterT]

Just be aware many people are not that happy with most readers and PDFs.

Also another option for extra storage is one of the commercial WiFi enabled drives; I think Seagate sell some for instance.

With this approach you would use the web browser of the Kobo to download the material from the drive.

[paola]

Originally Posted by ereaders

actually. I have a lot of pdf files from lectures. They ar large in size. May be I should go for Kobo touch. I found a display model for $80.

If you are going to read a lot of pdf, I would be weary of the mini. I am perfectly happy with it for my other purposes, but for pdf it does fall short of other readers, and you may be happier with a 6" screen. For a 5", the pdf reader must be near perfect for the ereader to do its job, and I think this is sadly not the case for the mini (just zooming then centering the page is a pain, you end up wasting more time trying to adjust the screen than do any reading!).

[HowGozit]

Originally Posted by ereaders

actually. I have a lot of pdf files from lectures. They ar large in size. May be I should go for Kobo touch. I found a display model for $80.

As has been mentioned below, I'd definitely do a try before buy in terms of PDF's. I haven't been that thrilled about PDF's on any 6" reader - let alone a 5" one. I had some (not much) success with the (now discontinued) Kindle DX. But my PDF reader of choice is a 10" android tablet.

PDF's will read OK on a 6" reader, if they are explicitly formatted for a 6" reader (some ebooks are like this).

Ross

[PeterT]

Try putting some PDFs on a Micro SD card and take it to a retailer who has units on display. Put the card in and allow it to process them, and then try reading to see what you think.

Make sure to take a range of PDFs that are valid samples of what you hope to be reading.

[danskmacabre]

IMO ereaders in general don't handle PDFs that well. I would go with a tablet rather than an eareader for PDFs, especially large PDFs with lots of images etc..

The absolute positioning of PDFs is a pain too, you have to move the "window" about to read the pdf for starters..

[Uschiekid]

some people say sony ereaders handle pdfs the best (of e-ink ereaders), i think...?

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

some people say sony ereaders handle pdfs the best (of e-ink ereaders), i think...?

Actually they all seem to handle them pretty much the same. And they all suck at it. PDFs are just not easily handled the format is pretty much locked up, where epubs tend to be more formatable. PDFs are created more to lock things into a particular style and prevent editing for the most part.

Regards

Jack

[paola]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

some people say sony ereaders handle pdfs the best (of e-ink ereaders), i think...?

Don't know about the Sony, but I do find the Pocketbooks pretty good - obviously the Pro 903, which has a 9,2" screen, has no problems whatever, but i could read maths books on my 5" Pocketbook 360 with no problems (and djvu, too, which sadly the Kobo does not handle) in landscape mode. Of course, as others have advised, you should really try first to see if it suits your needs.

[robko]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

some people say sony ereaders handle pdfs the best (of e-ink ereaders), i think...?

I think that is primarily due to the pdf reflow option (it takes the text and ignores the current line breaks and displays it similar to an epub - i.e. full pdf lines split over several lines in the display rather than full pdf line going off the right side of the screen requiring scrolling). I haven't used it but whether it would work for your lecture pdf's will depend on whether they have multiple columns of text (bad) or a single column (good) or many pictures/graphics (bad) in them.