Thoughts on moving from Kindle Tocuh to Kobo Auro 2013

[gavinjb]

I am currently looking at replacing my eBook Reader and am considering either the Amazon Paperwhite 2013 or Kobo Aura 2013, I am leaning towards the Kobo, but have a few concerns and am after other users experiences etc..

Below are my pluses/minuses for both eReaders

Kindle PW 2013
+Good Store
+Nice sleek design
+Reliable
+3g
+Good battery Life
+CLoud Storage for Books
+ Extremly good C/S
-Store has proprietary Format
-Only 2GB of Storage

Kobo Aura 2013
+Flat Design
+Good Battery Life
+Pocket Integration
+Supports ePub Format
+Better Customisable
+4GB Storage with Expansion to 64GB
-Reportedly C/s not too good
-Not all Authors I read are available on Kobo Store
-Kindle Keyboard looks much nicer (a minor issue)

My main concerns are that from reading various Forums etc, I have seen that C/S has not been too good and tend to blame the user if the device fails (while Amazon are very good). Mind you I have only ever had one problem with a Kindle where the 3g died, so hoping not to have any issues!

My other concern is that several of the Authors I read are only available from Kindle & B&N Stores (from what I can see) and I know that Amazon books cannot be accessed on Kobo (without running the books through s/w to remove DRM) and I have heard that you can't access B&N books on the Kobo.

Any thoughts on the Kobo would be appreciated (how well the store works, how it handles, performance battery life...), in particular from anyone who has moved from Kindle also any comments on how well you get on with the store etc..

Also does the Kobo have anything like the Amazon Cloud where once you have purchased a book, you can easily re-download it from the cloud on the device.

Thanks,


Gavin,

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by gavinjb

My other concern is that several of the Authors I read are only available from Kindle & B&N Stores (from what I can see) and I know that Amazon books cannot be accessed on Kobo (without running the books through s/w to remove DRM) and I have heard that you can't access B&N books on the Kobo.

Any thoughts on the Kobo would be appreciated (how well the store works, how it handles, performance battery life...), in particular from anyone who has moved from Kindle also any comments on how well you get on with the store etc..

Also does the Kobo have anything like the Amazon Cloud where once you have purchased a book, you can easily re-download it from the cloud on the device.

I've gone through several ereaders over the years including one Kindle. The Kobo ereaders have become my ereader of choice. Partly since tools like Sigil make editing epubs almost enjoyable and partly because Kobo is/was a Canadian company (think David taking on multiple Goliaths).

Since the Kobo uses epub format books, you can purchase your books from many sources. You are not limited to using the Kobobooks website. I've purchased books from quite a few sites plus the public domain downloads from Gutenberg and others.

I can't speak to the battery life of the Aura but I've found the Kobos I own/have owned have, what I consider to be, excellent battery life.

The Kobo store is a bit of a pain since they keep changing the format but so far, my account with the few books (~18 at this time) that I have purchased from them has not had any issues. Once you purchase an ebook, it will show up in your account and you can redownload from there or by simply syncing your Kobo over WiFi. It's not as convenient as the Amazon cloud but works quite well for me. One caveat is that I current have over 1800 books in my personal library so only 1% were purchased from Kobo.

In this area, the public library system ebooks are in either epub or pdf format. You need to use a computer to download them and ADE on your computer to transfer them to your Kobo. At this time, they do not support Amazon's ebook formats or DRM.

Kobo ereaders will work with epubs that are not DRMed, use Adobe's ADEPT DRM or Kobo's own DRM used on their .kepub.epub format ebooks. An ebook from B&N that is not DRMed will work but B&N did their own DRM and ebooks protected by it will not work on a Kobo. The one time I was looking at the B&N store, there was no indication that an ebook was DRMed. The other ebook stores I've purchased from are either not using DRM (Baen for example) or use the standard Adobe DRM (Sony, etc.).

I have purchased several ebooks from outside North America when the ebook was not available in epub format from a North American site. Some stores will happily take your money while others will use geolocation to say the book is not available for your area.

Time to stop babbling...

Regards,
David

[paola]

I've started to rely more and more on the Kobobooks site not because of ease of use (subpar for many reasons) but because of the frequent discount coupons (check the sticky in the "Deals... "forum), which allowed me to make quite a few remarkable catches.

Besides, any store selling epub books will do for you - I don't know where you are based, but I think Google books is available in most English speaking countries. In the UK major supermarkets, too, sell books in epub format, and you can generally also buy direct from the publisher.

[gavinjb]

Thanks for the replies, I live in the UK, but would be interested in any sites you can recommend that you find good for books.

After creating a list of the Authors of all the eBooks I currently own I have found that just over 50% are not available on the Kobo Store, but off those a lot are Authors I am unlikely to buy books from again, but there are about 10 Authors which I buy books form regularly that are not on Kobo.

My worse case is to buy from Amazon and de-DRM the books, but I would rather avoid that.

When buying from Other Stores do you have to use your computer and connect your Kobo to the computer to download the books to it or is it possible to email books (or send to device over Wifi in some way)

and one final thing, what Metadata can you access from the Kobo Reader, e.g. if you have a book with the description of the book can you access this from the Kobo Reader?

Thanks,


Gavin,

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by gavinjb

...
My worse case is to buy from Amazon and de-DRM the books, but I would rather avoid that.
...
Gavin,

It's a VERY simple thing to do that will take a minute at most. Google "Apprentice Alf" (about all we're allowed to say about it on the forums). You may want to be able to load your previously purchased books from Amazon onto your Kobo, so it will come in handy to know how to do it. And removing DRM allows you to buy your book from any store to get best pricing and then load it onto your Kobo.

[paola]

Originally Posted by gavinjb

Thanks for the replies, I live in the UK, but would be interested in any sites you can recommend that you find good for books.

Besides google books you can use various other stores, like Foyle's, Waterstones, Sainsbury's, ebooks. Also directly from at least some publishers (I know e.g. of Penguin's)

Originally Posted by gavinjb

When buying from Other Stores do you have to use your computer and connect your Kobo to the computer to download the books to it or is it possible to email books (or send to device over Wifi in some way)

as far as I am aware no, you download your book on your laptop. If the book is DRM encumbered, you must have an Adobe account: when you buy a book you will get a link that will open in the Adobe programme, and download it on your computer, from which you can then transfer to your reader either by drag and drop or with Calibre (which is more convenient if you like to e.g. create shelves and organise your books). There is an excellent guide as a sticky post in this forum.
In addition, there is a driver for Calibre that allows you to send your epub books to the device in kepub.epub format: this means that the book will be read with a different "reader" on the device (there is one for epub and one for kepub, or "kobo epub" files, Kobo's proprietary format).
In the other directions, if you don't like the kobo reader app, you can download most kobo books as epub on your computer, instead of syncing, and transfer them as you would for a book bought elsewhere.

Originally Posted by gavinjb

and one final thing, what Metadata can you access from the Kobo Reader, e.g. if you have a book with the description of the book can you access this from the Kobo Reader?

I think you get whatever information came with the book - so for instance for some non Kobo books I have a synopsis, as well as cover, title, publisher and file type/size; for others I only have the cover and the file info. Books bought from Kobo also tell you other similar books (guess to sell you more :-) ).

Originally Posted by gavinjb

Thanks for the replies, I live in the UK, but would be interested in any sites you can recommend that you find good for books.

[PeterT]

One reason many choose to remove DRM is to protect themselves from the reseller going out of business, or the book being removed from that reseller, or to ensure that if they decided to move to a different ereader platform that did not support either the format, or the DRM variant used.

[paola]

Originally Posted by PeterT

One reason many choose to remove DRM is to protect themselves from the reseller going out of business, or the book being removed from that reseller, or to ensure that if they decided to move to a different ereader platform that did not support either the format, or the DRM variant used.

not to mention the ability to make the css as you like it :-)

[neil74]

I went from the last kindle pw to the aura.

Assuming you get a good one, I prefer the interface (home screen especially) and size/ergonomics of the aura.

The one thing I really miss from Kindle is the ability to email books to your reader and no cloud storage for non-purchased books. Getting books onto a kobo is just more hassle vs kindle unless you have bought them through kobo/amazon.

[booklover6]

I think the Glo has the same home screen, and I just love it.

[Lyn2012]

Originally Posted by neil74

I went from the last kindle pw to the aura.

Assuming you get a good one, I prefer the interface (home screen especially) and size/ergonomics of the Aura.

I totally agree with Neil74 on this. I also went from a PW1 to the Aura and the only thing I miss is the time remaining in chapter info. For me, ease of purchasing is identical as I've always bought my books from different places on my computer and loaded via Calibre. I'm also really enjoying the easy and faultless collection syncing from Calibre as well as great font choice and customisation options.

I find it is much more sensible than the PW as when I go to collections, I just get a list without covers, even if my settings are normally set to list with covers - on the PW, having it set to cover view meant that collections appeared as some sort of generic cover images. I couldn't make it understand that although I wanted to see the covers when I look at books, I just want to see a list when looking at collections - it seems such an obvious thing to me as collections don't come with cover art.

Pocket is also useful. I downloaded my first article yesterday and was very impressed to find that if I touch an image that is too small to see properly, it opens into a window where I can zoom in and pan around enabling me to see it in full.

[AnemicOak]

I went from a Kindle Touch to the Aura HD (same firmware as the Aura basically) and also had a Paperwhite 1 for about a week. I find there are things I like and dislike about the Kobo, but overall I'm mostly happy with it.

Like vs Kindle...
May seem minor, but I like the cover being the sleep screen (& also the fact you can turn that off).

I like that the light can be turned on/off as opposed to the PW where it's always on (eve if you can turn it way down).

I like the ease of using your own font(s), the various font adjustment features and other customization options.


Dislike vs Kindle...
The way shelves/collections work. I don't that dislike is the correct way to characterize this as much as that I had a system I liked on my Kindle and it can't be used on the Kobo.

That the sync feature automatically assumes I want any books purchased since my last sync downloaded to my device.

The home screen of the Kobo. I'd much prefer just seeing my library as a home screen.

The little bugs/glitches that I seem to encounter every time I read.

Sometimes miss the cloud features Amazon offers.


As far as customer service I haven't had to use either very much over the years, but I'd definitely rate Amazon's as better. How much better is really the question. My more recent contacts with Kobo CS have been pretty satisfactory, although most of the time they seem to need to 'upgrade' things to another level making things take longer and require multiple contacts. I do however have one Kobo CS experience that took many, many months to resolve and that's always left a bit of a sour taste so to speak.


While I find Amazon's store superior in many ways for me it's pretty much a non-factor. While I think the Kobo website is very poor in some aspects it has never been so poor as to keep me from getting the book I wanted if I went shopping there.



Ultimately both work fine and some of it is just what you get used to. I will say that after reading over 100 books on my Kobo I still sometimes find myself wanting my Kindle or being distracted by some aspects of the Kobo. I really just want to be able to read without any screwing around and am toying with getting a PW2 since I can get a deal right now. Being in the UK you will likely be able to try both devices out at least a little bit in a shop before hand, assuming you can that should make things a bit easier. Both systems are 'good enough' IMO and you can likely be happy with either.

[paola]

Originally Posted by Lyn2012

I also went from a PW1 to the Aura and the only thing I miss is the time remaining in chapter info.

Unless I misunderstand you, this info is there: if you tap the screen in the centre, at the bottom left corner you will see the percentage of book read; touch that number, and a menu will pop up with time remaining in the chapter, time of next chapter, and a graph of the various chapters in the book.

[paola]

Originally Posted by gavinjb

Thanks for the replies, I live in the UK, but would be interested in any sites you can recommend that you find good for books.

Gvin, one more thought: Lovereading will give you prices for the same books at various places (a bit like goodreads, but seems more UK centric), and they have a Kobo club where sometimes further discounts are available. You do have to register, though (free of course).

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by paola

Unless I misunderstand you, this info is there: if you tap the screen in the centre, at the bottom left corner you will see the percentage of book read; touch that number, and a menu will pop up with time remaining in the chapter, time of next chapter, and a graph of the various chapters in the book.

As of firmware 2.9.0, the in book stats are only there for purchased kepubs. No sideloaded book has them.