Touch Kobo Touch Firmware 1.9.8

[the.Mtn.Man]

Mine connects to Calibre just fine.

[Sher0808]

Originally Posted by SF&F Reader

I just installed the new FW. No problems so far, except that it won't connect to Calibre anymore. Not a big surprise, just thought I'd mention it.

I have only had my Kobo for a couple of weeks and never have been able to hook up with Calibre.

[SF&F Reader]

I think a plugin may have been the problem. I remembered that I'd put one on a couple of days ago, so I removed it and now my KT connects. So, either that or it just needed to be disconnected and reconnected a couple of times.

[Toastedpine]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

Odd. I notice no difference in terms of speed and performance between a short novel like The Man Who Knew Too Much (139 pages) and a monster like War and Peace (1700+ pages). Each loads from the home page in about two-seconds, and page turn speed is identical near as I can tell. This is using freely available DRM free epubs.

I bought a Kepub called Unix Power Tools from the store. I get the spinning wheel all the time to signify loading whenever I turn the pages. Taking what you said into account, maybe it really is a ebook file issue. Is War and Peace divided into a lot of tiny sections in the file itself? Ie. you only get the number of pages for the sections and not the whole book when you flip through.

Originally Posted by Toastedpine

I bought a Kepub called Unix Power Tools from the store. I get the spinning wheel all the time to signify loading whenever I turn the pages. Taking what you said into account, maybe it really is a ebook file issue. Is War and Peace divided into a lot of tiny sections in the file itself? Ie. you only get the number of pages for the sections and not the whole book when you flip through.

It is up to the book's creator and/or software they use to create the book. It is not uncommon to see separate files for each chapter. And large chapters might be divided into multiple files. If you notice that paging ahead is going normal speed inside a chapter then it slows way down as you page to the first page of the next chapter, that is a good indication that a new HTML file had to be loaded.

What many here call footnotes are actually endnotes in most cases, as footnotes are not really feasible with reflowable material without some sort of rendering mechanism and that is currently not available. So the notes are generally placed in another HTML file or at the end of the HTML file if only one exists. If they are in another file, then accessing them from the reference link is going to take time as the notes HTML file has to be loaded.

[rrrevin]

Originally Posted by rwhe

I spoke too soon. After I connected with USB, old books started showing up on my Home page again. Then, when I wasn't looking, my KT did a spontaneous factory reset! Fortunately, I was prepared for this -- all my books are on SD. (Today was the first time I tried using Kobo Desktop for Linux -- could that have made a difference?)

This is pretty painful. Say what you will about paper books; at least they don't do spontaneous factory resets.

Kobo devs: any ideas what happened here?

(edit)

It didn't do a factory reset by itself, but it was in a state where it couldn't read or even see any books, only demo features of the device. Nevertheless, KD4L said it was running 1.9.8, and when I unplugged it, it asked me to do a factory reset, which I did, as it wasn't much good otherwise.

Same thing here. After installing 1.9.8 it went through the Factory Reset questions.. but big bonus is that my books were still loaded. Strange.

[Joe563]

Originally Posted by rrrevin

Same thing here. After installing 1.9.8 it went through the Factory Reset questions.. but big bonus is that my books were still loaded. Strange.

Are your books on a SD card? A factory reset does not delete the books on a SD card.

[the.Mtn.Man]

Originally Posted by Toastedpine

Is War and Peace divided into a lot of tiny sections in the file itself? Ie. you only get the number of pages for the sections and not the whole book when you flip through.

I have no idea. I downloaded it from here, so you can check it out for yourself:

http://www.epubbooks.com/book/117/war-and-peace

[cutterjohn42]

May have spoken too soon about the non-responsiveness to page turn taps... Later in the day after going 1.9.7 -> 1.9.8(must've been Wed) I was having frequent problems in turning pages, having to double tap, AND in the settings getting it to respond to the back arrow... but yesterday it was behaving just fine as it did on the few days that I had 1.9.7 on it...

[jimr]

I agree that overall screen responsiveness is good. There still appears to be a horizontal dead band along the bottom of my screen however. Other's have mentioned this elswhere in the forum. I find it annoying while holding the bottom of the device in one hand, and using my thumb to turn the page. I find I have to reach a little to get past the dead band to ensure a successful page turn. I keep hoping that this will be fixed with each update...so far, not so good. Does anybody else still have this problem?

[Joe563]

Originally Posted by jimr

I agree that overall screen responsiveness is good. There still appears to be a horizontal dead band along the bottom of my screen however. Other's have mentioned this elswhere in the forum. I find it annoying while holding the bottom of the device in one hand, and using my thumb to turn the page. I find I have to reach a little to get past the dead band to ensure a successful page turn. I keep hoping that this will be fixed with each update...so far, not so good. Does anybody else still have this problem?

Yes, this problem still exists. If anyone wants to test how bad this can get, go to the Store and search for George RR Martin. The right arrow icon at the bottom of the page, used to navigate forward through the 1,458 pages, is almost totally unresponsive on my Touch.

ETA: The most annoying aspect of this issue is the variability of the responsiveness. Sometimes it is nearly normal but at other times it is almost totally non-responsive using a finger. I have discovered that when my Touch is unresponsive to a finger tap it will almost always respond to a tap using a stylus.

[rwhe]

Under 1.9.8, even after three factory resets and the deletion of calibre database files from both my Kobo Touch internal memory and my SD card, my Home screen is still "stuck" on certain books and does not update properly with the latest books I'm reading.

My wife and I bought our KTs at the same store on the same day, and they're both running 1.9.8, but hers does not have this problem.

[Joe563]

Originally Posted by rwhe

Under 1.9.8, even after three factory resets and the deletion of calibre database files from both my Kobo Touch internal memory and my SD card, my Home screen is still "stuck" on certain books and does not update properly with the latest books I'm reading.

My wife and I bought our KTs at the same store on the same day, and they're both running 1.9.8, but hers does not have this problem.

This is a known problem where a SD card is used. You may have noticed that when you power-on your reader the correct Home screen is briefly shown and then is quickly replaced with a Home screen showing books from your SD card. I hear that this problem is expected to be fixed in the firmware release.

[vaeditor]

Okay, so I heard about the new 1.9.8 update and want to get it, but when I launch my Kobo desktop app, it doesn't tell me that there's an update, and there's no way to download it. I know I can do this directly with my KT via the wireless connection, but it would be nice to have a "Check for Touch updates" option on the desktop software for those times when, for some reason, I don't have access to a wireless connection.

[ldrover]

Originally Posted by vaeditor

Okay, so I heard about the new 1.9.8 update and want to get it, but when I launch my Kobo desktop app, it doesn't tell me that there's an update, and there's no way to download it. I know I can do this directly with my KT via the wireless connection, but it would be nice to have a "Check for Touch updates" option on the desktop software for those times when, for some reason, I don't have access to a wireless connection.

Actually, if you sync your Kobo wirelessly, it should find the update, download it and do the install. The firmware is now up to 1.9.9.

Good luck.