Failed Kobo returned to Borders

[dixieknits]

My little Kobo has been freezing on me intermittantly after the upgrade between page turns and yesterday started failing to charge or only hold a partial charge. I'm not sure which, but as I only had 3 days of warranty left for a return, I sadly took it back to Borders this morning and decided not to exchange for another. It seems to take too much time for everything involved with it and I don't feel it will last for the longhaul. I've had troubles 4 times in less than 4 weeks, where my daughter's Kindle is over a year old and never failed once... That said, I bought a Nook this afternoon and will wait to see her new Kindle 3 when it arrives..

[clintbradford]

The actual number of "irritated" Kobo owners is very small, and I am sorry that you had that experience with ANY eReader!

Hopefully, your new Nook and Kindle3 will provide years of enjoyment for your family.

[luqmaninbmore]

Originally Posted by clintbradford

The actual number of "irritated" Kobo owners is very small, and I am sorry that you had that experience with ANY eReader!

Do you have any source for this? I ended up selling my Kobo today. It's not a bad reader, but it is slow and there is a lot of room for improvement (the bluetooth could be a killer feature if they would only make a few tweaks in the firmware!). Kobo has not lost me as a customer for ebooks, however, and I still appreciate their support for Linux. There definitely needs to be a goto page option; it gets tedious trying to find my place if I've read part of the book on another device or if I have an ebook that is improperly formated. I also experience intermittent lock-ups when the device would shut down form Suspend mode (or shortly after coming out of a suspend). I wouldn't say I was irritated at the end of it all, but I was certainly annoyed when the upgrade failed and I had to get an SD card shipped (the shipping was top notch, but they forgot to attach instructions on how to perform the update). There was also an annoying glitch with the desktop software that temporarily locked me out of my own books until I reinstalled the program. So it has been a very uneven experience. I still can't get over how slow the page turns are. I even timed it against my old PRS 500 (from 2006 and using a first gen e-ink display!) and the latter was faster!

Luqman

Luqman

[clintbradford]

>> Do you have any source for this?

Just the application of common sense. It was really easy for me to find this messagegroup when I had an operational question on my Kobo. Therefore, it should be easy for others to locate, too. And there's only a handful of true "problem cases" when compared to the numbers sold worldwide. Just my opinion ... but I am not wrong. (grin)

>> ... selling my Kobo ... it is slow ... Bluetooth ... Linux ... a goto page option ...
>> ... if I have an ebook that is improperly formated ...

Don't know how many eReaders at any price will "correct" your "improperly formatted" eBooks.

>> ... intermittent lock-ups when the device would shut down form Suspend mode ...

Sounds like a simple system reset, cleaning up of your "improperly formatted" books, and a restore might have worked. But you've already sold the unit ...

Your complaint of "slow page turns" coupled with admittedly weirdly formatted docs intrigues me. I am reading small- and large-filesize books - all from either Kobo/Borders, Smashword, and other "mainstream" sources. And the page-turning time for me is noticeable, but nor irritating. It feels to me that the further one gets from "traditionally published" ebooks, the more pronounced the page turning time may be. Might be a taxing of the processor in the Kobo. I don't know ...

Long live Kobo.

[luqmaninbmore]

By improperly formatted, I mean that chapter breaks are not there or not where they should be. This is a problem even in regards to some books on the Kobo website, but has come up with books I've purchased with other vendors. It was annoying, but not too bad with my Sony and my Cybook because there was a goto page feature. It is not a problem at all with my PB360 or with my wife's Kindle because of the search feature. As for a 'simple system reset,' I was not going to risk flashing the firmware again and ending up with another semi-brick. If you meant hitting the reset button, yeah that get's it out of the lock up but its annoying to have to that relatively frequently (I don't have to do it with the Kindle or the PB360 reading the same books, improperly formatted or not). As for the page turning problem, I think it's simply bad programming. The processor is 400 Mhz., same as my PB360 which ran laps around it in terms of speed, and it has an epson controller, if I recall correctly, which, in theory, should make it one of the faster e-readers (my PB302 had similar specs and was extremely fast). The Sony 500 has a 200 mhz. processor and a much older controller, yet still turns pages faster. I noticed a similar issue with the nook when it was first released. The speed was massively improved by a firmware update; I hope the same will be true of the kobo.

Originally Posted by clintbradford

>> Do you have any source for this?

Just the application of common sense. It was really easy for me to find this messagegroup when I had an operational question on my Kobo. Therefore, it should be easy for others to locate, too. And there's only a handful of true "problem cases" when compared to the numbers sold worldwide. Just my opinion ... but I am not wrong. (grin)

>> ... selling my Kobo ... it is slow ... Bluetooth ... Linux ... a goto page option ...
>> ... if I have an ebook that is improperly formated ...

Don't know how many eReaders at any price will "correct" your "improperly formatted" eBooks.

>> ... intermittent lock-ups when the device would shut down form Suspend mode ...

Sounds like a simple system reset, cleaning up of your "improperly formatted" books, and a restore might have worked. But you've already sold the unit ...

Your complaint of "slow page turns" coupled with admittedly weirdly formatted docs intrigues me. I am reading small- and large-filesize books - all from either Kobo/Borders, Smashword, and other "mainstream" sources. And the page-turning time for me is noticeable, but nor irritating. It feels to me that the further one gets from "traditionally published" ebooks, the more pronounced the page turning time may be. Might be a taxing of the processor in the Kobo. I don't know ...

Long live Kobo.

[digital_steve]

The page turn speed was quicker for me after the 1.4 firmware

What's so good about bluetooth? To be honest, i wish the device didn't have it.
It's such an easy, simple device to use. Even with a few annoying kinks, i'd still get another kobo.

[luqmaninbmore]

Bluetooth lets me transfer files directly from my cell without having to bother with firing up a computer. I find this to be quite useful in conjunction with my Feedbooks newspapers.