What's the best if in Europe?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by alucarda

Off topic, but can kindle show these signs (čćđšž - serbo/croatian/bosnian/ languages use it). These are some special Latin alphabet letters.
As for Cyrillic alphabet (А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ж ж З з И и Ј ј К к Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш ).

I can read this but can kindle? Really interested.

Yes, it reads it fine. See the attached screenshot from my Kindle's PW's web browser.

[Geralt]

Wow that's pretty cool. Thanks Harry.
For OP, then there is no reason not to go for amazon kindle.

[Elomboko]

Right, my reason for distaste of Amazon is that my past dealings with them haven't been exactly stellar (they screwed up an order and never answered my inquiries, so I was out of some cash). Probably just bad luck, but I refuse to buy via them from then on.

About the Kobo screens, this is mostly after a friend getting a Kobo that had a misbeheaving screen (not responsive, jumped over pages, such stuff) and after getting a replacement, the other one was also broken. After searching I saw a few such threads, although that was 4-5 months ago.

The ePub thing is not much about public libraries but the stores. Additionally, I don't want to bother with converting it one way or the other.

Any accentuated characters are unlikely to be a problem, as it's only the extended latin alphabet (essentially spanning the slavic an germanic languages for me).

I don't particularily want to go to Sony because of their ridiculous prices.

Essentially, I'd like something that won't break too soon (cause I would have no way of replacing it) and will support the nicer, more open formats. How reliable is the nook? What about the others? Which one basically breaks the least and offers the widest support. If the answer is kindle pw, I'll live through that.

[HarryT]

Amazon has the best customer service in the industry, by a wide margin. I'm sorry to hear about your previous bad experience with them - it's certainly not typical.

No reader should break if you treat it with care. I've been using these things since they first appeared, and have never had a problem. But if you should be unfortunate enough to have a problem, you're better off with Amazon than anyone else.

[Billi]

The main European alternatives are Pocketbook Touch (139 Euro), Onyx i62 (155 or with light 199 Euro) and Cybook Odyssee (99 or with light 129 Euro).

[Billi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, it reads it fine. See the attached screenshot from my Kindle's PW's web browser.

In which way are the font abilities of the browser connected with the font abilities of the reading software?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Billi

In which way are the font abilities of the browser connected with the font abilities of the reading software?

They both use the same font files installed on the device. ie, it's a way to test whether or not those symbols are present in the reader's fonts. I don't know of any device for which this is not true! I imagine that most modern readers have pretty good support for accented letters, Cyrillic, Greek, etc.

[Billi]

I was not doubting the good support for Cyrillic, Greek and so on.

When I remember it right, on the Pocketbook you can read books in Korean but not open websites in Korean. That's why I was wondering.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Billi

I was not doubting the good support for Cyrillic, Greek and so on.

When I remember it right, on the Pocketbook you can read books in Korean but not open websites in Korean. That's why I was wondering.

That's interesting - I wonder if perhaps the Pocketbook has different sets of fonts for the reading app and the web browser? I'm pretty sure they are shared on the Kindle.

[Billi]

No, I think you are right that at all devices reader and browser share the same font set. I guess it is more a problem of the browser here. I'm afraid this is drifting too much off-topic!

[JSWolf]

Not being in the US, I would suggest the Onyx Boox i62HD Firefly. It is similar hardware to the Kindle PW but much better software as it handles ePub.

[xendula]

This question cannot really be answered unless you tell us which country you live in, or at least what language(s) you read in.

If you live in Germany, for instance, and have no interest in library books, I would suggest a Kindle. The Kindle readers are actually CHEAPER in comparison to others, so not sure where your idea of higher prices comes from.

If you are going to read in more than one language, that also depends. If you read in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or German, I would still suggest the kindle. If you read in the other European languages, you will need an ePub reader.

Sure, ePub has been on the European market much longer, but the stores were badly implemented and now, Amazon always scores best in terms of content available in German, so I assume it may be the same, in Spain, Italy, etc... France may be an exception, because Kobo is so very prevalent there.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by alucarda

Off topic, but can kindle show these signs (čćđšž - serbo/croatian/bosnian/ languages use it). These are some special Latin alphabet letters.
As for Cyrillic alphabet (А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ж ж З з И и Ј ј К к Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш ).

I can read this but can kindle? Really interested.
As for OP question, I think epub reader is better if it cant read special letters of your language.

Kindles display all Romanian characters (see below) fine, so I assume those used in Slavonic languages shouldn't be a problem either.

Ă, ă
Â, â
Î, î
Ș, ș
Ț, ț

ETA: On this blog I found the below image.

Kindle 3 finally got a font with broader range of Unicode characters. These include Cyrillic, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese. I’ve done some quick tests and to me it looks like characters are there. However I didn’t do a full scale test of all possible characters from these planes. Some people on forums and in comments complained about poor support of Chinese and Korean but so far there has been little specifics.

There were some claims that non-Latin characters display the same in all typefaces. I’ve verified it and it does seem to be true for Asian characters and definitely not true for Cyrillic. Here are some screenshots showing different typefaces in Russian text.

[JSWolf]

Even if you occasionally want to buy from Amazon, you can convert KF8 to ePub fairly easily using the KindleUnpack plugin. And the i62HD does support DRM free Mobipocket.

I think it's a win-win vs a much more limited Kindle.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even if you occasionally want to buy from Amazon, you can convert KF8 to ePub fairly easily using the KindleUnpack plugin. And the i62HD does support DRM free Mobipocket.

I think it's a win-win vs a much more limited Kindle.

And the same is valid the other way around (convert kindle format to epub), just that you would not want to buy from anywhere else because the selection is smaller, if the German ebook market is any indication.