Touch No mans land

filmo · 08-28-2013, 01:17 AM

My touch with 2.6.1 became unresponsive today. Probably more books loaded onto SD card than that firmware version could handle. Factory reset and over write format of SD card got it working again. It could handle less than 1,200 books loaded onto SD card but with more than 2,000 books it was really slow. Also 6 Andy Adams public domain books downloaded from Feedbooks could not be read. Message: They had DRM that adobe digital editions said did not match my password. This firmware version must have stability problems that shows over time and with excess books stressing database. Kobo forces update to this unstable firmware and will not update to the next firmware version. It is stuck in no mans land. Could the next firmware be worse? This is the entertaining Kobo serial mystery.

My Sony T1 can easily handle many more books than Kobo Touch.

I mainly use Kobo Mini with just a few books. Kobo Touch is ok with fewer books.

jackastor · 08-29-2013, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by filmo

My touch with 2.6.1 became unresponsive today. Probably more books loaded onto SD card than that firmware version could handle. Factory reset and over write format of SD card got it working again. It could handle less than 1,200 books loaded onto SD card but with more than 2,000 books it was really slow. Also 6 Andy Adams public domain books downloaded from Feedbooks could not be read. Message: They had DRM that adobe digital editions said did not match my password. This firmware version must have stability problems that shows over time and with excess books stressing database. Kobo forces update to this unstable firmware and will not update to the next firmware version. It is stuck in no mans land. Could the next firmware be worse? This is the entertaining Kobo serial mystery.

My Sony T1 can easily handle many more books than Kobo Touch.

I mainly use Kobo Mini with just a few books. Kobo Touch is ok with fewer books.

I have over 4800 ebooks on my reader no problems here. a 32 gig card gives kobo ereaders the ability to handle 30,000 ebooks as per their specs.

regards

Jack

taming · 08-30-2013, 04:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackastor

I have over 4800 ebooks on my reader no problems here. a 32 gig card gives kobo ereaders the ability to handle 30,000 ebooks as per their specs.

Size matters, Jack. They estimate the number of books based on 1 MB files. I have a bunch that are in the .4 range, but I have a number of books that are >2 as well. It's not hard to imagine that some folks have books that are pretty darn large--lots of illustrations would do that.

TechniSol · 08-30-2013, 10:43 PM

Setting: A Secret Engineering Meeting at Kobo Headquarters

Same guy that told Bill Gates, "24bits are more than enough. They'll never need more than 16MB of RAM", says "Relax, they'll never put more than a thousand books on one of these things..." "Anyhow, by the time they get that far we'll have redesigned the firmware so the database processing is faster!"

dragon77 · 08-31-2013, 01:51 AM

I was thinking about this the other day. Who actually needs thousands of books? Even if a person reads 2 whole books per week it would take nearly 20 years to read 2000 books. It's not likely that anyone can actually read the estimated 32000 books that fit on one SD card considering that in 80 years there's less than 30000 days.

GeoffR · 08-31-2013, 02:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon77

I was thinking about this the other day. Who actually needs thousands of books? Even if a person reads 2 whole books per week it would take nearly 20 years to read 2000 books. It's not likely that anyone can actually read the estimated 32000 books that fit on one SD card considering that in 80 years there's less than 30000 days.

There are lots of threads discussing this, but the basic reason is that although we may only be able to read two books while away on holiday etc., we want to be able to choose those two from any of the books in our library.

(BTW I have found no performance problems relatd to the number of books, although I only have about 500 books my Glo is just as fast as it was with 5 books).

dragon77 · 08-31-2013, 02:38 AM

I totally get wanting to have your whole library on hand at all times, I was just pointing out that when you get into the thousands you're talking about more books than you will probably read in the rest of your life anyway.

filmo · 08-31-2013, 06:38 AM

With Calibre it is easy to quickly find a particular book to read from large ebook collection on a desktop or laptop computer. We want this same easy experience when using our Kobo readers. Currently these large book collections we are trying to use on our kobo readers is more hoarding than organized and usable with current firmware.

filmo · 08-31-2013, 07:07 AM

Just saw Good E Reader review of 6" Aura. I hope this solves data base problems with faster processor and software improvements.

Uschiekid · 08-31-2013, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon77

I was thinking about this the other day. Who actually needs thousands of books? Even if a person reads 2 whole books per week it would take nearly 20 years to read 2000 books. It's not likely that anyone can actually read the estimated 32000 books that fit on one SD card considering that in 80 years there's less than 30000 days.

some people on this board read a lot more than that. i remember someone mentioning 10-15 books a week. x52 and more on vacay. So some people are probably closing in on 1000.

Not to mention newspapers from calibre, scientific/academic papers, manuals, etc etc whatever other uses people have besides actual books.

I'm older than 20, but I bet I've read more than 1000 books a decade, and I'm not a fast reader...I just read a lot.

Anyway the point is...some people might read that many books. or at least dream of it

dragon77 · 09-01-2013, 03:09 AM

I understand that there are some voracious readers out there, but I have a hard time believing that there are very many people who can average 10-15 books a week without them being fairly short books, which will therefore average less than the assumed 1MB per book. In fact, most of the novels on my Kobo, which probably average around say 300-400 pages in print, average around just 500-600kB in digital form, so the 1000 books per 1GB of storage seems to be a rather conservative estimate. It could actually be twice as many.

In any case, yes, exceptional people might read several thousand books in their lifetime. I was just pointing out that for all but the most exceptional, a single SD card can probably hold more than one can expect to read in their life.

DNSB · 09-01-2013, 04:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon77

In any case, yes, exceptional people might read several thousand books in their lifetime. I was just pointing out that for all but the most exceptional, a single SD card can probably hold more than one can expect to read in their life.

Currently, I have ~1500 hardcover and ~2500 paperback books in my basement library. Not to mention decades of SF and computer magazines. I don't regard myself as that exceptional -- several of my friends have larger collections. One of the first programs I wrote using my old S-100 bus computer was one to manage my book collection which turned out to be a great lesson in why you should comment your code. When I wanted to modify it a year later, I ended up spending most of the time trying to comprehend just what I had done with few comments and with the expletive deleted subroutine names being little help -- corned_beef for a hashing subroutine might have made sense at the time I created it but I had to wonder about naming a subroutine ivory -- it turned out to be a subroutine that cleaned up deleted entries in an array (ivory = a brand of soap).

Also, most of the larger ebooks I have are not large due to text but rather to the number of illustrations in them.

Regards,
David

DNSB · 09-01-2013, 04:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by filmo

With Calibre it is easy to quickly find a particular book to read from large ebook collection on a desktop or laptop computer. We want this same easy experience when using our Kobo readers. Currently these large book collections we are trying to use on our kobo readers is more hoarding than organized and usable with current firmware.

When I am looking for a book in Calibre, I use it's search function. When I am looking for a book on my ereader, I use it's search function. Both work well. Some people seem to be wedded to a belief that using a file browser on a fixed directory structure is the only way to manage an ebook library.

Regards,
David

buffaloseven · 09-01-2013, 04:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

When I am looking for a book in Calibre, I use it's search function. When I am looking for a book on my ereader, I use it's search function. Both work well. Some people seem to be wedded to a belief that using a file browser on a fixed directory structure is the only way to manage an ebook library.

Regards,
David

Yeah; between Search & Shelves (I have Calibre automatically make shelves based on book series), it rarely takes more than 5-10 seconds to find a book on my Glo.

TechniSol · 09-01-2013, 05:55 AM

I tend to usually side with practicality, but I can understand the need for a lot of material on one device if it's reference material. You may not need it every day, but when you do, you do. The simple fact of the matter is that a properly implemented system should be able to function with a great number of books, at least as many as might be expected to fit on the maximum storage the device claims to be able to access. If they cleaned up the database/code it should be quite possible on any Kobo device. I don't keep a lot of books on my Kobo devices, just a few hundred, but it should be possible for Kobo to process contents and maintain a database without huge delays.

They could restrict new books being copied to just one folder and force deletions to be done only through the database to remove the need to scan for new books and deletions in order to update the database en masse on startups. That alone should remove much of the bottleneck and delay complained of by people with large collections. Background processing might help a lot too, or at least offer the option of processing certain folders first and let the user select a title to read from them and continue processing in the background. Long delays kill any device in the eyes of the user.

08-28-2013, 01:17 AM	#1
filmo Wizard Posts: 1,326 Karma: 1077205 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Kobo Touch, Sony T1, Kobo Mini	No mans land My touch with 2.6.1 became unresponsive today. Probably more books loaded onto SD card than that firmware version could handle. Factory reset and over write format of SD card got it working again. It could handle less than 1,200 books loaded onto SD card but with more than 2,000 books it was really slow. Also 6 Andy Adams public domain books downloaded from Feedbooks could not be read. Message: They had DRM that adobe digital editions said did not match my password. This firmware version must have stability problems that shows over time and with excess books stressing database. Kobo forces update to this unstable firmware and will not update to the next firmware version. It is stuck in no mans land. Could the next firmware be worse? This is the entertaining Kobo serial mystery. My Sony T1 can easily handle many more books than Kobo Touch. I mainly use Kobo Mini with just a few books. Kobo Touch is ok with fewer books. Last edited by filmo; 08-28-2013 at 01:21 AM.

08-31-2013, 02:38 AM	#7
dragon77 Member Posts: 19 Karma: 4654 Join Date: Feb 2012 Device: Kobo Touch	I totally get wanting to have your whole library on hand at all times, I was just pointing out that when you get into the thousands you're talking about more books than you will probably read in the rest of your life anyway. Last edited by dragon77; 08-31-2013 at 02:42 AM.

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08-30-2013, 10:43 PM	#4
TechniSol GranPohbah-Fezzes r cool! Posts: 1,056 Karma: 3151024 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Nook STRs, Kobo Touch, Kobo Glo	Setting: A Secret Engineering Meeting at Kobo Headquarters Same guy that told Bill Gates, "24bits are more than enough. They'll never need more than 16MB of RAM", says "Relax, they'll never put more than a thousand books on one of these things..." "Anyhow, by the time they get that far we'll have redesigned the firmware so the database processing is faster!"

08-31-2013, 01:51 AM	#5
dragon77 Member Posts: 19 Karma: 4654 Join Date: Feb 2012 Device: Kobo Touch	I was thinking about this the other day. Who actually needs thousands of books? Even if a person reads 2 whole books per week it would take nearly 20 years to read 2000 books. It's not likely that anyone can actually read the estimated 32000 books that fit on one SD card considering that in 80 years there's less than 30000 days.

08-31-2013, 06:38 AM	#8
filmo Wizard Posts: 1,326 Karma: 1077205 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Kobo Touch, Sony T1, Kobo Mini	With Calibre it is easy to quickly find a particular book to read from large ebook collection on a desktop or laptop computer. We want this same easy experience when using our Kobo readers. Currently these large book collections we are trying to use on our kobo readers is more hoarding than organized and usable with current firmware.

08-31-2013, 07:07 AM	#9
filmo Wizard Posts: 1,326 Karma: 1077205 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Kobo Touch, Sony T1, Kobo Mini	Just saw Good E Reader review of 6" Aura. I hope this solves data base problems with faster processor and software improvements.

09-01-2013, 03:09 AM	#11
dragon77 Member Posts: 19 Karma: 4654 Join Date: Feb 2012 Device: Kobo Touch	I understand that there are some voracious readers out there, but I have a hard time believing that there are very many people who can average 10-15 books a week without them being fairly short books, which will therefore average less than the assumed 1MB per book. In fact, most of the novels on my Kobo, which probably average around say 300-400 pages in print, average around just 500-600kB in digital form, so the 1000 books per 1GB of storage seems to be a rather conservative estimate. It could actually be twice as many. In any case, yes, exceptional people might read several thousand books in their lifetime. I was just pointing out that for all but the most exceptional, a single SD card can probably hold more than one can expect to read in their life.

09-01-2013, 05:55 AM	#15
TechniSol GranPohbah-Fezzes r cool! Posts: 1,056 Karma: 3151024 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Nook STRs, Kobo Touch, Kobo Glo	I tend to usually side with practicality, but I can understand the need for a lot of material on one device if it's reference material. You may not need it every day, but when you do, you do. The simple fact of the matter is that a properly implemented system should be able to function with a great number of books, at least as many as might be expected to fit on the maximum storage the device claims to be able to access. If they cleaned up the database/code it should be quite possible on any Kobo device. I don't keep a lot of books on my Kobo devices, just a few hundred, but it should be possible for Kobo to process contents and maintain a database without huge delays. They could restrict new books being copied to just one folder and force deletions to be done only through the database to remove the need to scan for new books and deletions in order to update the database en masse on startups. That alone should remove much of the bottleneck and delay complained of by people with large collections. Background processing might help a lot too, or at least offer the option of processing certain folders first and let the user select a title to read from them and continue processing in the background. Long delays kill any device in the eyes of the user.