Kobo/WH Smith UK tie up now live!

[lecoeur]

AS the UK Asda supermarket chain will now be selling Kobo wi-fi from this Friday @£67.99 WHS have dropped the price to £69.99 for the wi-fi.
Asda will not be selling the Vox (todays WHS price £189.99).
WHS have also dropped the price of the Touch to £99.99 - a ten pound reduction since last month.
There has been some speculation in the 'Bookseller' that Asda will in fact only be selling the wi-fi this Fri. Guess we'll see on Friday but a whole £2.00 saving ain't a big deal especially if you've got to spend £5 in petrol to get to one of Asda's out of town stores.

[lecoeur]

Well Friday is here and Asda have put the Kobo wi-fi and Kobo touch up online.
Unfortunately, All models are out of stock!

http://direct.asda.com/on/demandware...ch-Show?q=kobo

[lecoeur]

WHSmith have now posted a VERY English demo vid, which is actually quite good and being British it's not 'in yer face' like some others...

[robko]

The firmware/interface look old/different in that video. Specifically selecting the fonts and font size.

[Suzanna]

Originally Posted by robko

The firmware/interface look old/different in that video. Specifically selecting the fonts and font size.

That's the original video that was made when the Touch was launched in North America earlier this year with a new voice over. There have been a few firmware updates since then, but I guess they decided it wasn't worth the expense of reshooting the footage to show the current method of choosing fonts.

[missimpossible]

I was just wondering if my fellow UK Kobo uses could tell me - what comes in the box with the Kobo? Thought this seemed a decent place to ask.

[taming]

In the Canadian version we get a stuffed beaver and a snow shovel.

[mav]

Originally Posted by missimpossible

I was just wondering if my fellow UK Kobo uses could tell me - what comes in the box with the Kobo? Thought this seemed a decent place to ask.

Just opened my kobo touch and i recieved

Kobo touch
USB cable
some stickers
instruction manual

Hope that helps

[missimpossible]

Originally Posted by taming

In the Canadian version we get a stuffed beaver and a snow shovel.

ahh, so they tailor it region by region. i await my stuffed haggis with anticipation!

Originally Posted by mav

Just opened my kobo touch and i recieved

Kobo touch
USB cable
some stickers
instruction manual

Hope that helps

STICKERS! I love stickers.

Seriously, cheers, was just checking I didn't need to buy anything else. I'm always surprised by how often they don't include cables and so on.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by taming

In the Canadian version we get a stuffed beaver and a snow shovel.

DRAT

I was shortchanged!

[Ryvyan]

I was in UK earlier in the month and went into a WH Smith in Liverpool One, where there was a store assistant walking around holding a Kobo e-reader asking if I needed help when I was playing around with the Kobo Touch.

Admittedly, they chose a lousy place to put the (fully-charged) display sets, sort of nowhere in particular, but I almost walked into an entire shelf of empty boxes near the entrance (and nowhere near the display set).

As a satisfied owner of the Nook Touch, I was surprised at how well I actually like the Kobo Touch. The page-turns are not as quick as on the Nook, but the shelving system and customising of fonts are great (especially the latter). I vaguely remember it to be slightly heavier, but nothing that I can't handle. ***

To be honest, I was slightly tempted to buy one back.


*** Google tells me I'm wrong and that the Kobo is lighter. But I felt it was the other way round? Centre of gravity? Lol I have no idea. Just to correct what I said.

[lioslaith]

I'm in the UK and this morning I got an email sent late last night from WHSmith with a what they called improved eBook service allowing me to transfer my purchases at WHSmith eBook store to my Kobo account/library.

Out of the 64 books I bought from WHSmith over the last couple of years 49 imported straight into my Kobo Account, the only exceptions being either Kobo doesn't have the permission to sell a particular book (be it geographical restrictions) or if it's a PDF rather than epub.

But Kobo also gave me direct links on how to import these PDF based books from ADE if I wished to do so. I figure in my case all non-transferred books were PDF books if I remember correctly.

At least I can still re-download these titles from Kobo at anything in the future if I want rather than depend solely on my copies in my ADE folder.

This was mainly handy to me as I have bought a Kobo touch for my Mum for Xmas and the bulk of my WHSmith eBook purchases were on her behalf for her now defunct Elonex Reader. So I'll download them directly onto her touch prior to giving it to her. That way she'll have a decent sized library to start off with.

[PeterT]

Great to hear it went so well!

[SameerH]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Great to hear it went so well!

The server team did an amazing job on that functionality.

[lecoeur]

Dec 27th. Asda have now dropped a couple of quid off the touch. As at this am its £97.00, WHS still have it @£99.00.
I'm wondering if this is a spratt to catch a mackerel as when I enquired as to availability of the 'touch' in our local ginormous Asda on Dec 23rd, they told me they'd sold out and only had a coupla of wi-fi's left.