Before receiving Kobo.....

[TuxGirl]

What do you wish you knew/did before receiving your first kobo? My ka1 will be arriving on Monday, and I'm antsy....

I have Calibre installed, with a few books loaded. I made a column to use for shelves. I installed the Kobo touch extended driver. I've been reading this forum, and I have a vague idea of what patches I intend to put on. I've downloaded some custom dictionaries. I have found some fonts I want to add, and named them (hopefully) correctly.

Is there anything else I can do to avoid watching the painfully slow shipping??? (It shipped yesterday, and has already made a cycle... And it's almost a full week until I get it... The case I ordered after ordering the device arrived today!!!)

[petercreasey]

T, use your new KA1 without ANY modifications/add-ons/extensions for a while, say, a few weeks. This will allow you to test the device and become familiar with it plus have no difficulty with Kobo's return policy in the unlikely event you receive a defective unit.

[patrik]

Play around with Calibre and learn as much as possible.

[jackie_w]

Also have a look at the calibre plugin 'Kobo Utilities'. It has a lot of handy features.

Once you get your new toy, load at least one book in each of the 2 main formats (kepub and standard epub) so that you can make an informed decision on the pros and cons of each.

ETA: I see you're currently a Kindle owner. Some Kindle owners who buy a Kobo seem to get annoyed when their new Kobo doesn't turn out to be 'just like a Kindle but with a big screen'. Embrace the fact that they are quite different and enjoy the journey

[TuxGirl]

Jackie,
Thanks for the warning about coming from Kindle. I do understand that, thankfully. From what I've read, I think most of the differences are things that I will appreciate. The main reasons I hadn't moved to Kobo sooner were a bit of amazon fangirlism and the fact that I had built a big library on the Kindle and didn't get have a good reason to move. But, recently I've been unhappy with some of Amazon's choices of how to do things, and Kobo seems to consistently get those same things right (IMHO).

That is a good suggestion to load a kepub and a straight epub to see how they behave differently. I do know that I want the reading life features, though, and iirc, those are only available with kepub, right? I will try things out, though, and see how I like each of them.

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

T, use your new KA1 without ANY modifications/add-ons/extensions for a while, say, a few weeks. This will allow you to test the device and become familiar with it plus have no difficulty with Kobo's return policy in the unlikely event you receive a defective unit.

Petercreasey,
That's an interesting point I hadn't thought about. I will have to try it without modifications for a bit. Thanks!

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by patrik

Play around with Calibre and learn as much as possible.

Patrik,
I do definitely need to play with Calibre more. While I was on the Kindle, I tried to set it up numerous times, and each time I found myself getting frustrated because I was adding too many things at once, and didn't want to take the time to organize it. This time, I'm just adding things slowly, starting with just a few items I have already, and not adding the world at once. Hoping that with that, I won't get too frustrated and overloaded.

Are there any good resources you recommend for setting up the Calibre library? I definitely need to read through their documentation, and I'm sure the Calibre forum here will have some good ideas, but if you have any favorite docs elsewhere, I'd love it if you could share.

Thanks!

[wroane]

Tux Girl,
i was in your shoes, i just received my KA1 yesterday after ordering last week. Same as you i spent a lot of time going through Calibre to clean up old tags and make sure that everything was in series. i used the shelf management guide to set up collection transfers as well. Make sure that if you have series, that you give them all the same names,i.e. "The Passage", not "Passage Series" on some. That caused split series that I had to go back and fix. Also, I transferred 400 books the first time, and kept pacing back and forth until they finished, lol. Lucky for me i was already familiar with Calibre from having an H2O before this. I had the original Kindles, 1 &2, and a couple of Nooks. I like the screen on the Aura better and the size is perfect. Enjoy!

[petercreasey]

Personally, I recommend loading a few books at a time; thus, if there is a problem book, it is easier to recover. With a long list of books, it can become a BIG chore figuring out which problem and/or which book is causing the snag.

[robko]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

T, use your new KA1 without ANY modifications/add-ons/extensions for a while, say, a few weeks. This will allow you to test the device and become familiar with it plus have no difficulty with Kobo's return policy in the unlikely event you receive a defective unit.

It's not a bad idea to use the stock device for a bit to see how it works for you, but I wouldn't worry about adding things. I can't think of any common modifications that you could do with a Kobo that would cause you can issue with a return.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by TuxGirl

While I was on the Kindle, I tried to set it up numerous times, and each time I found myself getting frustrated because I was adding too many things at once, and didn't want to take the time to organize it. This time, I'm just adding things slowly, starting with just a few items I have already, and not adding the world at once. Hoping that with that, I won't get too frustrated and overloaded.

Import your books to Calibre. Get them set up to your satisfaction. Convert them to ePub to make sure you don't have issues with DRM. Setting up your library could eat up most of your week of waiting, depending on how granular you want to get.