Touch highlight/dictionary on kobo touch only for kobo books

[remcdonald]

Gitju, I don't like being called a flunkie thanks, like you I am a grad student and I happen to work in a Chapters to help pay the bills and make ends meet so that I can go to school. Most everyone working there is in fact university educated at the least or finishing high school to go to undergrad so don't assume that those people are idiots or flunkies they might be smarter than you.

As for the device it's brand new and staff only have the information they have been given about it including that it does highlighting, many haven't had mentioned to them that they can only highlight kobo books currently and so they genuinely think that they are giving the right answer.

Kobo has said they will probably make the dictionary and highlighting work on everything they can in a future patch. For most people it isn't an issue because they are using it for reading in one direction such as novels not for research or academic reading. As for scanned pdfs, texts, etc. I feel I should mention that although some of that is legal (i.e. journal articles from pdf to epub) grabbing whole text books or large portions of them instead of buying them is illegal. I know most people don't care but I am a stickler for that kind of thing.

[PeterT]

Remember that many of the PDF features would be based on the PDF being scanned in a manner that used OCR to recognize individual characters as opposed to graphical images.

[gitju]

Sorry I didn't mean to offend. I myself worked in retail for over 17 years--and I know a 'flunkie' who doesn't care about his/her job when I see one (by the way, I suspect I'm using a very American colloquialism...flunkie doesn't mean a dumb person. It means a worker or drone who is just going through the motions. Entirely applicable.) I had several 'helpers' who gave me information which I later learned was false and they didn't bother to say "You know, I'm not sure about that, let me ask my manager" or "I honestly have no idea". Hence my flippant dismissal of the general retail population, of which I have been a part of for over a decade.

That being said....I put some files on a mini-flashdrive and took it to a Indigo chapters where a very nice and very helpful man did indeed work with me and was very eager to answer those questions himself. I had a PDF, a text-sensitive PDF (scanned with character recognition), and a pdf which I had converted to ePub with some software. None of them worked. So now we have an answer.

He told me that like most companies, Kobo will have a new/upgraded product on the market this fall before the holidays, and that he anticipated a change in this since it is a common complaint. So I will wait and see, or just splurge and buy a Nook.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by taming

I'm expecting that we will see a change, at some point. I am basing that only on a couple of things Sameer has written and on the features they have developed for their iOS app.

That being said, if students are creating documents using some sort of word processing program, then the spell checking/highlighting would be done during the creation, right? I can see wanting the Kobo to handle highlighting and annotation for other PDFs, but not so much for documents the students create themselves.

You mean they dont know how to spell at all? Its frightening when parents come in to buy a spell checker for their grade school child. Who needs to know how to spell when a computer will do it for you eh?

[Nina182B]

Dictionary is a deal breaker for me. I bought the Nook touch and Kobo Touch. Finally decided I was going to keep the Kobo, but then realized I didn't test the dictionary. I have many personal documents converted into ePub and was shocked that I couldn't use the dictionary on those.

I really don't want to keep the Nook now that I've played around with the Kobo (can't stand the 6 page refresh on the Nook)... but I may just return both now and stick with my Cybook Opus *so frustrated*

[baronrus]

Dictionary fir epubs is reportedly being tested now so hang in there with the kobo

[Nina182B]

Originally Posted by baronrus

Dictionary fir epubs is reportedly being tested now so hang in there with the kobo

Thanks for letting me know - I'm returning the nook touch this weekend. But I'm going to hold off until near the end of the 30 day return policy from Borders to see if this happens for the kobo.

[ailecornum]

This probably isn't a deal breaker but the new features: tracking reading percents etc only work with kobo books. Anything else you load is ignored.

[taming]

The new features are available to sideloaded ePUBs in the version we are beta testing. There are a few niggling issues, which probably explains the reason that 1.9.6 has not yet been released. The beta group identifies problems and Kobo staff work in the background on it all.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by taming

The new features are available to sideloaded ePUBs in the version we are beta testing. There are a few niggling issues, which probably explains the reason that 1.9.6 has not yet been released. The beta group identifies problems and Kobo staff work in the background on it all.

Any other features we might be looking forward to?

regards

jack

Originally Posted by ailecornum

This probably isn't a deal breaker but the new features: tracking reading percents etc only work with kobo books. Anything else you load is ignored.

Personally, I prefer that the Kobo Touch would put much less emphasis on things like tracking reading stats & awards and social media, and place much more emphasis on a usable library sytem where I can quickly and easily find my books.

Originally Posted by Nina182B

I'm returning the nook touch this weekend. But I'm going to hold off until near the end of the 30 day return policy from Borders to see if this happens for the kobo.

I'm leaning toward retuning my Kobo Touch before the 30 day return policy and taking a wait and see attitude over the next few months. I'll probably wait until the release of 1.9.6 before deciding whether to return though. I think the KT can eventually be a great ereader, but it has a long ways to go to get there. The main issue for me is the segregation of features and rendering between kePubs and ePubs. It is arrogant and unnecessary in my opinion. They should treat and render all epubs equally. That is, do away with the dual reader-engine philosophy. The good news is that they seem to be making improvements. The bad news is that they are far from having an elegant and intuitive UI like Kindles do. And with the very recent (but unconfirmed) announcement in the Wall Street Journal of a touchscreen Kindle to be released in the third quarter, and we are in the third quarter BTW, I think it best to step back and let the dust settle before deciding on whether to own a KT.

EDIT: Here is the link to the WSJ article. It mostly talks about the upcoming Amazon tablet, but far down it mentions a rumored touchscreen Kindle coming soon. As far as I'm concerned it is still just a rumor at this point, but Amazon did announce the Kindle 3 about this time last year, so who knows.

[EldRick]

Jack, I am in total agreement with you. I am also thinking of returning my KT(again) if 1.9.6 doesn't clean up some of the performance issues, bugs, and lack of support for non-Kobo-bought books.
After 10 days using the KT, I switched back to my Nook Touch yesterday, and re-discovered what a nicely polished piece of HW/SW it is by comparison. Even though the typographic issues on the NT remain, it is, overall, a less annoying reading device, IMHO, and it doesn't feel like I'm testing a piece of beta software.

Originally Posted by EldRick

Jack, I am in total agreement with you. I am also thinking of returning my KT(again) if 1.9.6 doesn't clean up some of the performance issues, bugs, and lack of support for non-Kobo-bought books.
After 10 days using the KT, I switched back to my Nook Touch yesterday, and re-discovered what a nicely polished piece of HW/SW it is by comparison. Even though the typographic issues on the NT remain, it is, overall, a less annoying reading device, IMHO, and it doesn't feel like I'm testing a piece of beta software.

This morning I convinced myself to hold on to my KT until after the release of 1.9.6 as I still had 20 days left on the Borders Books return policy. I needed to exchange it though as my unit had Wifi and battery issues I think might have been hardware related. But then this afternoon I heard news that Borders is probably headed toward liquidation as a buyout deal fell through. Some analysts are even saying this might be the last wekend for Borders stores to be open. I was concerned that if they closed I would have a difficult time exchanging or returning my KT, so I played it safe and returned it. I can easily get another one in a few months from a more stable retail provider. But for now I want to see how this plays out. I'm not too sure how Kobo and Borders are connected, but I want to see what impact this has before making the decision to purchase a replacement.

[taming]

I guess if I originally bought mine from Borders, was having problems that might be hardware related, and Borders stores were closing right and left, I would feel the way you do, Jack. I know that when my Kobo-WiFi inexplicable died after five months or so, it was important to me to be able to go to my local Chapters store and walk out with a new one.

[EldRick]

Mine is on the way back. Why?
- It randomly decides to ignore page-turns. After a while, it often starts to ignore swipes and taps. The only temporary workaround is to use the button to go back to the Home screen.
- Dictionary support is among the missing.
- Margins don't work correctly without manually editing the epub.
- Ghosting/blotchy text issues.
- Poor performance - with the Refresh set to one page, page turns are quite slow (compared to NT) when they work at all. Opening a book is sometimes very slow.
- If I wait a week, Borders might deny a refund...

Bottom line is that the KT with 1.9.5 still feels like a Beta version, and I get really annoyed when it gets balky. For this generation of readers, I'll go with the Nook Touch.

OK - now is the part where jackastor chimes in to tell me...