New Kobo coming? Which?

[Pjama]

Originally Posted by Barty

Washed out colors are fine for this tech. To me it's not an acceptable trade-off to have worse b&w clarity and contrast, which this WILL. But I'm happy for other people to get a new toy

Yeah, now that I have calmed down about this, I think I will wait and see how bad the contrast is before I decide whether to try it out. I enjoy reading on my Libra 2 and Clara 2E, and find I have the brightness up quite high sometimes, even though the contrast is good.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I've never owned a white bezel eink device but I did have a pearly ivory PocketBook360 over 10 years ago. These were the days before built-in lighting. Much as I liked this 5" device at the time (especially the clamshell cover), I did think the unlit eink screen looked a little bit "grubby" against the ivory bezel. I've stuck with black bezels ever since.

Here's an ancient video if you want to get an idea.

Nice video. Thanks for sharing! I can see what you mean by “grubby”.

It’s funny to say this now, but I have a white bezeled Kobo Mini I picked up last year to replace the white Mini I sold ages ago. It was in a black pleather case with a window for the screen, so the white bezel was hidden.

I also have a white bezeled Kindle, so I’m going to take both of them out of their cases and play with them a bit to see how I feel about white bezels. I might even print out one of those product shots and stick the colored display over the screen of my readers to see what I think. Without backlighting, it won’t be the same, but it should give me a feel for it. At least with the Kindle, I also have a black bezeled one so I can compare between the two.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by Cootey

If I pick the Libra up, I think I’ll go with the white bezel since I’ve had black Kobos for centuries.

I have to admit, I think I'd do the same. I had white bezels on Nook, and then later Sony, and I rather miss them, but Kobo has not had an option for white bezels on their 8" devices.

However, I'm not necessarily in the market. I'd kind of like to try a color device, but I'll wait and see what the reviews look like. And even then, I might wait and see if a color Sage joins the mix at a later date.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cootey

What image hosting service do you use, David? What’s the most convenient one, and does it have a mobile app? Thanks.

I don't use an image hosting service. Since I have multiple terabytes of storage available (3TB local on my desktop and 27TB available on the NAS, I just use the Manage Attachments tool to upload the images from my local storage. From my limited testing, I can attach photos and files from an iDevice.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

So, if I understand correctly, the colorizing is gone now (on the kobo device), whether you upload them in color or not. Right?

No. The images are still stored on your Kobo in colour. Before the image was converted to grayscale between the frame buffer and the screen, now it is converted when being written to the frame buffer. I was assured that there are some good reasons for doing so in terms of the CPU and memory usage with 2 pixels per byte (4 bits per pixel) compared to 3 bytes per pixel (24 bits per pixel) being needed but I am fairly certain that I was not following most of the reasoning. I was reminded of the attached cartoon:

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I don't use an image hosting service. Since I have multiple terabytes of storage available (3TB local on my desktop and 27TB available on the NAS, I just use the Manage Attachments tool to upload the images from my local storage. From my limited testing, I can attach photos and files from an iDevice.

I’ve never used the Manage Attachments tool. That must mean you mostly use your desktop to interface with the site? Because as you can see from the attached image, the text is pretty tiny on the iPhone. I wonder if I should delete Tapatalk entirely and just use access mobileread using my iPad.

Do you resize the images before you upload them? Or does the site handle that?



At any rate, somebody tossed out an April 30 release date, so I was wondering how legitimate that date was.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cootey

I’ve never used the Manage Attachments tool. That must mean you mostly use your desktop to interface with the site? Because as you can see from the attached image, the text is pretty tiny on the iPhone. I wonder if I should delete Tapatalk entirely and just use access mobileread using my iPad.

Do you resize the images before you upload them? Or does the site handle that?

Attachment 207364

At any rate, somebody tossed out an April 30 release date, so I was wondering how legitimate that date was.

Here’s an example of posting from my iPhone which is not something I do that often. I don’t resize since you see a thumbnail which can be opened for the full size image. It’s

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cootey

At any rate, somebody tossed out an April 30 release date, so I was wondering how legitimate that date was.

I haven't heard any reliable release date information yet. That April 30th date may be real but, IMHO, it has no visible means of support.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I was assured that there are some good reasons for doing so in terms of the CPU and memory usage with 2 pixels per byte (4 bits per pixel) compared to 3 bytes per pixel (24 bits per pixel) being needed but I am fairly certain that I was not following most of the reasoning.

Using 6x less memory per cover is surely beneficial considering how little RAM most Kobos have. You have to dither down to 4 BPP greyscale eventually, so you might as well do it sooner, rather than later.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I haven't heard any reliable release date information yet. That April 30th date may be real but, IMHO, it has no visible means of support.

Apparently Kobo's instagram team was having fun (all those grey hearts changing colour, grayscale images, etc) and hinted they'd put clues in their images.

Someone on reddit noticed a sequence of images containing a 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 countdown, with the final image having "4:19" in the clock. Perhaps that means Friday 19th April.

Or perhaps some people have waaaaay too much time on their hands

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

Apparently Kobo's instagram team was having fun (all those grey hearts changing colour, grayscale images, etc) and hinted they'd put clues in their images.

Someone on reddit noticed a sequence of images containing a 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 countdown, with the final image having "4:19" in the clock. Perhaps that means Friday 19th April.

Or perhaps some people have waaaaay too much time on their hands

At this moment, four color hearts... and waiting

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cootey

The problem is that this site doesn’t have a mobile version. The text shows as 5pt or smaller on my iPhone. (I’d show a screen shot, but you wouldn’t be able to see it bc of this same issue.) So anybody wanting an easier reading experience jumps at Tapatalk, but, as old cartographers once wrote, “here be dragons”.

I recall it working better when Tapatalk was first released, but once they picked up steam they made changes that worked for their app, but not for this site. At one point it would post monstrous images that I had no idea were a problem because Tapatalk auto resized. Even their smallest size is too large for this older site. I haven’t posted images in a while bc of these headaches.

What image hosting service do you use, David? What’s the most convenient one, and does it have a mobile app? Thanks.

Take the screen cap and then attach the image. You should be able to put the URL in the attach dialog and it should upload. It's the [img] tags that tapatalk dislikes.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Cootey

...

Do you resize the images before you upload them? Or does the site handle that?

...

If you use the paperclip when posting on MR, you do not need to worry about image size. Your post will show a thumbnail, and when a user clicks on the thumbnail, they will get the full image.

I think.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

If you use the paperclip when posting on MR, you do not need to worry about image size. Your post will show a thumbnail, and when a user clicks on the thumbnail, they will get the full image.

I think.

Unless the image is larger then the screen and then you'll need to click again on the image to get it to display full size.

[TheSmitty]

Although I most likely will not buy the new color Kobo is is fun to watch the excitement and conjecture. For manga/comics I think it will be great if my experience with other device is anything to on.