Aura HD Kobo Aura HD

[Breid]

Originally Posted by Fourl29

Yes I think you are mistaken. You can't dictate what others here post.

EVERY thread on mobile read presenting/discussing an eink reader has had posts comparing said reader with the competition. Every single one of them.

I am not "promoting" the kindle paperwhite, I have no affiliation with amazon, nor am I hijacking the thread, all the more so since I am replying to a poster who felt extremely frustrated with kobo's software and was thinking about switching over to kindle. So I shared my experiences with them, as I shared some of the concerns (walled garden) they have before I made my purchase.

I don't know what your problem is, on the other thread about how the kobo "rocks" some people started talking about epub formatting, the impetus clearly being some of kobo's inadequacies with reading epubs (as opposed to kepubs) and you brought them to task about not talking about how kobo "rocks". Here someone else mentioned their frustrations and their thinking of opting for an another brand of ereader and I responded to them with my experiences, and you had a problem with that too.

I suggest, in good will, that you take her easy. It's just the interwebs, nothing's really at stake here, we are all just killing a bit of time chit chatting about our hobby.

It's very late at night where I am and you are right it is just the interwebs and us all just chit chatting. I did not mean to cause offence, but I do think it would be a good idea to have a 'Kobo Aura vs KPW' thread to compare and contrast the features of both. Yes I did post in the 'Kobo Rocks' thread because they were getting very techincal about CSS changes etc, which to be honest I don't really understand (I have a lot to explore) and I got a response that clarified things for me and that I was v happy with and which I acknowledged.

[Fourl29]

No offense taken. Everything's cool.

No need for a comparison thread, it's dead simple to me: KPW, great light, contrast, screen, software, cloud service, send to kindle browser and computer add ons, store, prices, customer service. AURA, great light, constrast, even better screen, much welcome increase in screen real estate (better for everything except portability - kpw still easily fits in a jacket), very poor software, customer service and average store, choice for epub and extra storage with sd card (both inconsequential imho since epub converts to mobi easily, and book files are extremely small) .

While to me (and I think most reviewers on thew web) there was no contest comparing the glo to the kpw, with the latter being easily much better in so many fronts, it's not so when comparing the aura and kpw. The aura brings to the table ppi and screen real estate that's unmatched by the kindle. Regardless of how good everything else might be about the kindle, it's clearly outperformed in screen real state and ppi. Until amazon comes up with a similar eink screen, the aura is a frontrunner there.

Would I exchange my overall kindle experience for a larger screen? No way. Would I buy an aura as well to enjoy the great new screen, and then maybe sell it off at ebay. Absolutely.

[Tzar]

Originally Posted by Fourl29

After trying out a few eink devices, when I switched to a kpw, it was like when I 'd switched from windows to os x. I started actually using the device and enjoying it, instead of being constantly frustrated and debugging it. The difference is night and day. Plus with calibre it's easy to keep your library in mobi too (files are too small anyway) and makes the closed garden thing of the kindle really a non issue.

I like that I can buy from amazon, have them back everything up, access my annotations (which work like a charm) from everywhere, and get all the amazon perks in general and also be able to put in there whatever epub I want, via calibre's piece of cake epub to mobi.

And it feels great to have stable, bug free software to use. Even the browse is really neat, article mode works great. I wish they'd add a copy past thing system wide, a proper rss reader and a notepad, but at least for the last two there are work arounds.

I simply love my kpw, and it's not just that the screen is gorgeous, it's because the software has given me a very enjoyable bug free experience, where I could focus only on what I want to do, that is read and annotate.

Thanks for your feedback. The Aura really seems like a nice piece of hardware but since the software is basically the same... I'll wait to see what will be Amazon's reply before deciding if I upgrade my Glo to Aura or "go to the dark side"

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Fourl29

Would I exchange my overall kindle experience for a larger screen? No way.

I for one would really appreciate that Amazon would add more (official) font options, and even go as far to add the weight and sharpness settings the Kobo as.

That is the one thing I find the Paperwhite lacking in. Even the Cybook Gen3 from 2007 offered custom fonts. Officially. The Kindle can do it using a trick, but Amazon could take that out at any moment. Most of the fonts that are on the Kindle have one or more problems:

- The lines are spaced too wide. For example, Palatino has a line height that it twice that of my custom "DejaVu Serif Fat" font.
- Some fonts are too thin, mainly Palatino and Baskerville.
- Some fonts have a decent line height and are heavy enough, but they're just plain ugly, such as Caecilia. And it's too wide too.
- Futura and Helvetica are, IMHO, just hard to read.

I always have the feeling that Amazon designed the Paperwhite, and at the end came to the conclusion that they needed to provide fonts too, for... you know... reading.

The font settings and capabilities of the Aura are one of the main reasons why I consider this reader, but not if it wastes copious amounts of space by constantly showing me the title of the book I'm reading, the page I'm on (and not down in a corner, but prominently taking up 2cm or so of the bottom of the screen), and using a ridiculous line height. If the Kobo fits only 10% more text than the Kindle because of that, then its larger screen is wasted, IMHO.

As long as the Kindles USE_ALT_FONTS trick keeps working, that is. Then I can put my own font onto the reader, after tweaking it on the computer.

[Fourl29]

All good points all around.

I intensely dislike caecilia too, and find futura and helvetica not great either.

One of the reasons I opted for the kindle was exactly all that wasted space on the kobo, that ridiculous wasted 2 cm space.

I've not yet bothered to use the font tweak for the kindle, although I thought it was one of the first things I thought I 'd install. Although I am fully aware that it's urgently required, and that amazon has done very averagely when it comes to available fonts, and margins, even worse than average maybe. I 'll get around to it I guess soon. But it did sway me toward the kpw, as I knew that were the kobo had an edge, one could get that easily with a tweak in the kpw.

At the end of the day I ended up really liking the overall reading and software experience. (as an aside, I also really like how I have the store built in and I can check out some of the reviews when I am reading a book. And I have been very positively impressed by the experimental browser.)

[wizzard]

Going out to pick up my Aura from Fedex since I missed the delivery.

[bookwurm70]

Originally Posted by Tzar

Thanks for your feedback. The Aura really seems like a nice piece of hardware but since the software is basically the same... I'll wait to see what will be Amazon's reply before deciding if I upgrade my Glo to Aura or "go to the dark side"

Haha, for me Kindle IS the "dark side", part of the Amazon Evil Empire.

[Mikeyboards]

Originally Posted by wizzard

Going out to pick up my Aura from Fedex since I missed the delivery.

Dogspeed!

Originally Posted by Breid

Perhaps I am mistaken, and I stand open to correction, but I thought that this was a thread to discuss the Aura Hd and not a thread to promote the KPW. As a KPW owner, I am well aware of its capabilities and I am happy to air them in the relevant thread. I am not sure it there is a KPW Vs Kobo Aura HD thread, but if not, I suggest that you start one to compare the relative merits of both ereaders rather than hijacking every single Kobo Aura HD thread to promote the benefits of the KPW.

It isn't even a debate in Canada. If you want to borrow library books, you need a device that supports ePub since (as far as I know) Kindle hasn't extended library lending outside of the US. Kobo may not be the only option on this front, but it is certainly the big one.

Even if they did address library lending, there are geographic restrictions on sales that lead consumers to choose Kobo over the Kindle.

Neither of those issues involve the merits of the devices or the vendors, yet still results in people buying one over the other.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by chrisparker

And the covers appear to be very low resolution when used as a screensaver. I seem to remember reading something about that in another thread.

Originally Posted by taming

Check your screensaver setting choices, Chris. The covers seem to be stretched to fill the full screen. If you uncheck Full Screen, the image is smaller,but much nicer. You will get a light background on sleep and a black background when it is off.

Originally Posted by chrisparker

No, it's not that. I can imagine some covers are relatively low-res, but I'll check again tomorrow when I've used Calibre to recopy all the books across to the micro-SD card.

I think maybe it's the Aura creating the covers when it needs to use the covers in the epubs...

Your both right.

With FW2.5.0, Kobo started to generate and save cover images for books on the SD card onto the SD card. But, they are generating them at a MUCH lower quality than for books in the main memory. I have no idea why they would even consider doing this.

The next calibre will handle this and allow you to send the covers over at the same time as the book. These will be much better quality.

Originally Posted by louden

Can someone who already has an Aura provide more comments about reading technical PDFs?

Good, but not great.

The good news is that the resolution and slightly larger screen size make PDFs with small fonts and fine lines much easier to read. You won't be suffering through fine details being lost due to antialiasing artefacts. This means that the subscripts are visible on equations with small fonts, while lines are sharp on things like graphs and circuit diagrams. That's true even when the page is zoomed out to fit the screen: it is very readable, albeit it is very small.

The bad news is that the PDF viewer is bare bones. It will scale the pages and allow you to scroll around those pages. The scrolling is fast, but only because they don't bother clearing the screen between refreshes. Turning pages while zoomed in is awkward since you have to scroll to the edge of the page first, then tap. It doesn't reflow text, nor detect columns, nor do anything else that would make reading technical documents pleasurable -- but it does get the job done. Compared to my prior experiences with PDFs on eink based readers (Kindle 2i and Kobo Touch), it is a significant leap forward.

[Gadget_girl]

It isn't even a debate in Canada. If you want to borrow library books, you need a device that supports ePub since (as far as I know) Kindle hasn't extended library lending outside of the US. Kobo may not be the only option on this front, but it is certainly the big one.

Even if they did address library lending, there are geographic restrictions on sales that lead consumers to choose Kobo over the Kindle.

Neither of those issues involve the merits of the devices or the vendors, yet still results in people buying one over the other.

I received my Aura HD the other day. I've had a couple people locally ask me which e-reader I prefer, given the ads they've seen on TV & online, since they have seen me reading. And I usually ask them if they prefer to buy books or use the library. For library users, the Kobo devices, or Sony, are nearly the only choices. Kindle just isn't supported well for us locally. But if you buy your books, then it's a matter of the better bookstore etc. Makes it easier to choose. I love the Aura, the light is great, the fonts & sizes are good. I have no complaints, it does what it is supposed to do and delivers my stories without the big heavy bookbag to tote around.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Fourl29

It doesn't matter what you think, it's an objective fact about contrast and bezel colour in einik readers. I dislike the general tackiness of black plastic too, and I prefer a white bezel in general, but the perceived contrast is inferior in a device with a white bezel, I wasn't aware of that, but I figured as much by reading other people here who knew a few more things than I did, and explained why. I can't replicate their posts I am afraid, but someone might want to pick this up and do so, better than I did.

Perceived is not objective. Perceived is opinion. Having followed several discussions over bezel colour having an effect, it would appear that some people think it has an effect, other people think it doesn't have an effect and a third group decorate their devices with various colourful skins and don't seem to notice any effect.

The only objective fact I found was that an ereader with a bezel that reflected more light than the "white" portion of the eInk display caused the eInk background to be perceived as light gray. That is pretty easy to demonstrate -- put a chunk of standard printer paper (around 92% reflectance) on an eInk display and it does make the 70% (minimum) reflectance of the eInk display look grey.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Breid

It's very late at night where I am and you are right it is just the interwebs and us all just chit chatting. I did not mean to cause offence, but I do think it would be a good idea to have a 'Kobo Aura vs KPW' thread to compare and contrast the features of both. Yes I did post in the 'Kobo Rocks' thread because they were getting very techincal about CSS changes etc, which to be honest I don't really understand (I have a lot to explore) and I got a response that clarified things for me and that I was v happy with and which I acknowledged.

Oddly, fourl29 jumped into the Kobo forums when the Aura was announced. Most of his posts seem to be devoted to stating the Kindle Paperwhite is by far the superior ereader, the others to the theory that anyone who could possibly prefer a Kobo ereader to a Kindle ereader is a paid shill. As they say, it takes one to know one.

He has moderated his posting style but still spends his time in the Kobo forums promoting Amazon products. He has yet to post in the Kindle forum reserving 28 of his 36 posts to Kobo forum with the majority of the rest in an news thread about Apple's fall and gravity. For some strange reason, quite a few of his posts seem to have vanished into the aether.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Fourl29

One of the reasons I opted for the kindle was exactly all that wasted space on the kobo, that ridiculous wasted 2 cm space.

Perhaps you could explain your methodology for measuring 2cm of wasted space on the Kobo display? Near as I can tell, you are complaining about the menu bar at the bottom of the screen which seems to be 1cm not 2cm.

You are using metric in Europe?

Disdain,
David