Run KT without an account? Rooted Kobo?

[GvilleBridge]

I thought maybe I could resolve some 2.0 KT problems by signing out of my account and, hopefully, running it as some kind of generic ePub ereader. But signing out took me back to the whole "Welcome to Kobo!" setup, connection to desktop app, and apparently required creation of a new account. It took a lot of clicking in the login blanks to get back to my own account.

So: no running KT without being signed in to a Kobo account?

Any significant progress in rooting the Kobo?

[PeterT]

If you search the forums you will find people who have manually populated the User table of the Sqlite database and allowed them to read without having performed setup.

[david8866]

Set Wifi at airplane mode, uninstall Kobo Desktop software. That should prevent any update. You can only sideload books.
I returned two Kobo readers today. Although I was excited for future Japanese books, the forced update was... not pretty. Hopefully Kobo will get their act together.

[taming]

It's a difficult situation. The launch of 2.0 was anything but smooth and i bet there is much gnashing of teeth over it. When everything is sorted out, the bugs will be taken care of, Kobo may make some adjustments based on feedback here and elsewhere, and people will decide whether they can live with the new clock or whatever feature that remains that they don't care for.

In what might be categorized as an aside, it seems to me that Kobo had three possible choices. This version has a different database structure and operates with a different "backend". Kobo could have released a new device that has those things going on (and probably some minor hardware change) or they could have pushed everyone to the version that has those changes using the same hardware/device. The 3rd choice, I suppose, would be that they could ask if a person wants the update or to skip it, but they would have to answer that question every time they did a sync or used the desktop. Only Kobo staff could say why they ruled it out (though I suppose from a support perspective having everyone on the same version makes things much easier).

People who want to avoid the update can do it, but they can't then use the WiFi or desktop.

[GvilleBridge]

Taming, that (post #4) sounds like a plausible analysis. Other software folks have and still are confronting the same problem in getting the user base to update at the same time. Witness the reluctance of many (eg, corporations with thousands of workers at PCs) to leave Windows XP (or even 98) when they heard how bad Vista was.

At some point the Microsofts decide simply to stop supporting some past version(s). It's gruesome treatment of users but necessary for general sanity, including that of poky users.

BUT this wouldn't excuse Kobo as there haven't been that many hardware devices (is it 4 including the Vox?) or general firmware upgrades.

The failure of 2.0 to launch to general applause is no doubt disappointing not just to the Kobo folk in Toronto but the new owners in Rakuten Tower in Tokyo. Rakuten is totally into mass merchandising on a global basis (see http://global.rakuten.com/en/), and with the launch of the KT (with ePub3) in Japan, was no doubt hoping to give the 2.0 KT a global launch.

Hopefully, Rakuten has put a lot of development resources at Kobo's disposal. Hopefully, that will result in a bulletproof 2.01, and soon.

Despite my disappointment, voiced in different ways in many threads in this forum, my humble opinion is that the KT is a good piece of hardware, just poorly served with software.

I think it would be good if Kobo and Rakuten marketing would stay out of our faces and off the homescreen for a while until things are working right!

[taming]

I have no special insight or knowledge, but if I were a betting kinda gal, I'd bet that the Japanese launch in two days will be fine and we might quickly see the benefits of what they are doing to make that so.

EDIT: It's no news to anyone that Kobo was working with deadlines. They were between a rock and a hard place. If they had released 2.0 first in Japan (thus giving them more development time) everyone NOT in Japan would have raised holy he!!. They ran out of time for the release that they did do. Now, I am not saying that another week would have made everything perfect, but I am betting that with more time, we would have seen fewer issues.

I am not convinced that we would have had a good installation process, as that was something that they did not have a beta program in place for at the time.

EDIT2: And if you feel like our release was a public beta for 2.0 prior to the release in Japan, well, shut my mouth. I have nothing to say one way or the other. I do know that the developers tried to give us a great release.

[murg]

Originally Posted by GvilleBridge

Witness the reluctance of many (eg, corporations with thousands of workers at PCs) to leave Windows XP (or even 98) when they heard how bad Vista was.

At some point the Microsofts decide simply to stop supporting some past version(s). It's gruesome treatment of users but necessary for general sanity, including that of poky users.

The reason that so many companies stayed with XP was the cost to move to Vista. Not just the cost of the licenses, but the cost of testing existing applications under Vista, the cost of modifying existing applications, and the cost of training.

Unlike the release of XP, Vista had no overwhelming advantage over the previous version (XP).

Microsoft is still supporting XP, some 11 years later. Which is far longer than the usual 3-5 years. In fact, Microsoft will have ended up supporting XP for 13 years when they finally cut off XP support in April 2014.

All in all, this is excellent support for a product that hasn't made any money for the company in years.