How Come Amazon Is More Popular Than Kobo?

[ps67]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

...
Also, the dictionaries on Kindle are SO MUCH BETTER. It is crazy to see how a company like Kobo that stresses reading experience so much has such terrible offerings in the dictionary department. At the least, they should offer well-redacted dictionaries on their store, like Amazon does for language combinations that aren’t included for free.

This is true, kobo dictionary is useless, if You can find a word is because you already know its meaning, if You don't know a word You can't find it on the dictionary.
Problem solved with patch, I installed old dictionary, that was better and the patch "Change dicthtml strings to micthtml" to avoid synchronization of dictionary but we can't require that everybody do it.

[the.Mtn.Man]

Originally Posted by Kiwisaurus

Kindles are designed to read, while Kobos are for mostly tinkering / hacking.

How do you figure? Over the past several years, I have logged hundreds of hours and finished dozens of books on my Kobo Aura. I custom patch my firmware, but that's only a few minutes of "hacking/tinkering" once or twice a year, if that. I actually use a firmware that's several years old because I prefer it to the latest versions.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Kiwisaurus

Yeah.

Kindles are designed to read, while Kobos are for mostly tinkering / hacking.

6 friends, all of them with Kobo, only of of them (me) tinkers with the reader, the others don't connect the ereader to Wifi (some of them, to calibre either).

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

and Kobo, unlike the Kindle and Nook offerings, didn't reserve a large portion of internal storage for purchased books while leaving only a tiny sliver for sideloading.

This is true for the Nook but definitely not for any Kindle at least since the Kindle 3 (don’t know about 1 and 2, never owned those).
You can fill the Kindle up to the brim with sideloaded content, and technically at least, cloud storage is unlimited if you’re into that.

[John F]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

He's not saying you can't sideload on both. He's saying that if you sideload Moby Dick on to a Kindle and read to chapter 5, you can then grab a tablet with the Kindle app and it will see the sideloaded book and open it to chapter 5.

Kobo only does that with books purchased from the Kobo store. Not sideloaded books.

I don't think he is saying that? I think the book needs to be in the Amazon cloud. Although sideloading may work if you edit the book first?

[stumped]

If you sideloaded the book using send to Kindle. So it goes into Amazon cloud and shows up as a personal document , then the reading position will sync across apps and devices. But you have to have downgraded the book format to mobi for that to work. And to live with your Kindle saying it is not a book, it is a document.
There may be other workarounds but you can't just sideloaded a azw via usb and expect that to sync
Still better than anything you can do with kobo devices though

[John F]

Originally Posted by stumped

If you sideloaded the book using send to Kindle. So it goes into Amazon cloud and shows up as a personal document , then the reading position will sync across apps and devices. But you have to have downgraded the book format to mobi for that to work. And to live with your Kindle saying it is not a book, it is a document.
There may be other workarounds but you can't just sideloaded a azw via usb and expect that to sync
Still better than anything you can do with kobo devices though

I thought you could also email the book to a Kindle account. I wasn't aware of the send to Kindle option. And I thought strictly speaking, "sideloading" meant using a USB connection, although I would relax the definition to using an SD card on Kobo's.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by John F

I thought you could also email the book to a Kindle account. I wasn't aware of the send to Kindle option. And I thought strictly speaking, "sideloading" meant using a USB connection, although I would relax the definition to using an SD card on Kobo's.

Sorry if my terminology confused. what I meant by "send to Kindle" is what you wrote above, that You email it to the email address associated with your device.by sending it in an email from a whitelisted email address,, as an attachment
But thinking about it there is a browser extension with the same name. Send to Kindle, that sends browser pages in a similar manner

[stumped]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

The Amazon Cloud isn't the reason that most people use Amazon rather than Kobo. Actually their Cloud (and ANYONE's Cloud or Sync) should be avoided.

WHY

If I want to sync my reading position, what's wrong with doing that.?

Will your next post tell us to avoid using the internet also ?

I like my Amazon cloud drive. And my Google drive.

Where else can I store a lifetime of photos in secure unlimited free storage, accessible from multiple devices anywhere. Any time.

[John F]

Originally Posted by stumped

Sorry if my terminology confused. what I meant by "send to Kindle" is what you wrote above, that You email it to the email address associated with your device.by sending it in an email from a whitelisted email address,, as an attachment
But thinking about it there is a browser extension with the same name. Send to Kindle, that sends browser pages in a similar manner

I believe the key is that it is in Amazon cloud, which allows the synchronization.

[Shad Plante]

Originally Posted by stumped

If you sideloaded the book using send to Kindle. So it goes into Amazon cloud and shows up as a personal document , then the reading position will sync across apps and devices. But you have to have downgraded the book format to mobi for that to work. And to live with your Kindle saying it is not a book, it is a document.
There may be other workarounds but you can't just sideloaded a azw via usb and expect that to sync
Still better than anything you can do with kobo devices though

If you send a "dual" or "new" format mobi to Kindle, the file that downloads to AZW capable readers is basically an AZW. I've done it with files and can adjust the boldness and use custom fonts that you cannot do with an "old" format mobi.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

...I've had my Kobo Aura for 4-years now, and if it ever dies, I'm buying another Kobo even if I have to order from an overseas retailer.

You and me both. I don't care for Walmart, but if my Aura goes the way of the dodo, I'm planning on ordering a Clara HD from them. I hope their partnership lasts.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

He's not saying you can't sideload on both. He's saying that if you sideload Moby Dick on to a Kindle and read to chapter 5, you can then grab a tablet with the Kindle app and it will see the sideloaded book and open it to chapter 5.



Kobo only does that with books purchased from the Kobo store. Not sideloaded books.

Oh, I thought he was saying highlighting and taking notes wasn't possible on anything but books bought from Kobo... but I see now I took the information in between brackets to be the point instead of the information outside the brackets. Thanks for clarifying! 👍🏼

[Silverty]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

You and me both. I don't care for Walmart, but if my Aura goes the way of the dodo, I'm planning on ordering a Clara HD from them. I hope their partnership lasts.

My exact same plan if anything happens to my H2o2, especially since Walmart has such an easy return policy if I were to have a problem with mine.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Same here. Ever since Kobo got their software sorted, I‘ve started eyeing their offerings. But I really like to read between my Kindle and iPad (e.g. for taking notes, copying quotes etc.) and that is something that is simply not supported on Kobo for books other than those that you get from their store.

Personally, I think you put far to much emphasis on this. For the people I know who are using ereaders, none of them are reading on multiple devices. And, I have had to demonstrate the annotations function as they didn't know about it. There reactions tended to be somewhere between "cute" and "why?".

Also, the dictionaries on Kindle are SO MUCH BETTER. It is crazy to see how a company like Kobo that stresses reading experience so much has such terrible offerings in the dictionary department. At the least, they should offer well-redacted dictionaries on their store, like Amazon does for language combinations that aren’t included for free.

Again, I think a lot more emphasis is put on this here than really exists. Again, I've had to teach people about the dictionary in their ereaders. And most thought "handy" but didn't expect to use it. And I have reminded some of these people about it at other times.

But, I do agree that Kobo should have a better dictionary available. The last time I looked, they appeared to be using the free Merriam-Webster electronic dictionary. So, the choice was probably about keeping the cost down. An option to buy a better one for those who need it would be good.