Aura Is there any reason NOT to buy a Kobo Aura One?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

Also I would not buy ANY more Kobo products till they change their abusive Firmware update system

For my curiosity, can you tell me what their " abusive Firmware update system" is?

The new home screen too makes my Kobo much less useful and the text exhortations to use Kobo store at the bottom is invasive and abusive as I bought a device with no such feature. I paid extra on Kindle devices to avoid adverts.

Sorry, but EVERY single version of the Kobo firmware I have used has had a link to the shop prominently displayed on the home page of the device. Mostly at the bottom and I would say they have all occupied roughly the same amount of space. So yes, you did buy a device with such a feature.

And what on earth is a "Kobo Aura HD H2O"?

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Just a comment on this. As far as I can tell, there is no problem with the rendering of PDF by the Kobo devices. The page matches what I see when I open the PDF on my PC (minus the colour). The performance is a problem. There is no problem with simple text pages, but complicated pages can be slow. But, the real issue to me is navigation. If you need to zoom into the page, then turning the page is clumsy. And moving to another part of the page is also clumsy. But, I have a couple of books, including a train timetable, that are designed with a page size roughly the same as my Glo HD, and they work very well.

A useful clarification re the PDF experience on Kobo. I also have a few PDFs that were intended to be read at that or a similar size, and, yes, Kobo handles them quite well.

But, as you clarified, the real issue is with navigation on PDFs which one needs to pinch and zoom to read. Unfortunately, that accounts for the vast majority of my PDFs. And the experience can be quite frustrating. However, Koreader tends to make the PDF experience much less painful and it is fortunately very easy to install.

[Braid]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

But, as you clarified, the real issue is with navigation on PDFs which one needs to pinch and zoom to read. Unfortunately, that accounts for the vast majority of my PDFs. And the experience can be quite frustrating. However, Koreader tends to make the PDF experience much less painful and it is fortunately very easy to install.

I agree with you that reading PDFs using Nickel is frustrating. And that Koreader is much better. From my experience, it is about the same as reading PDFs on a Kindle, only with the added inconvenience of having to browse through your PDFs separately to your other books (if you want to keep using Nickel), and without features such as having your most recently opened PDFs coming to the top of lists as they would in Nickel.

Installing Koreader is fairly easy... if it works. (For example, I installed it on my H2O, and it worked first time. I found it a bit confusing and scary but didn't take longer than half an hour.) I have made several attempts to install it on my One and it simply hasn't worked, despite my following the instructions. So if it works, it is easy. Perhaps it works for most people... but for some people (me and at least one other person), it just doesn't work.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by Braid

Installing Koreader is fairly easy... if it works. (For example, I installed it on my H2O, and it worked first time. I found it a bit confusing and scary but didn't take longer than half an hour.) I have made several attempts to install it on my One and it simply hasn't worked, despite my following the instructions. So if it works, it is easy. Perhaps it works for most people... but for some people (me and at least one other person), it just doesn't work.

Fair enough. I simply assumed that, if I could install it, anybody could. I am not all that technologically inclined.

After initially installing KSM 08 on your KA1, did you then install the necessary patch as indicated in the instructions?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&highlight=ksm

After doing that, I then followed the Koreader installation information found on this page:

https://github.com/koreader/koreader...n-Kobo-devices

I chose one of the more recent nightly builds to install. It was, at first, a little confusing how to do that.

First, click on the link for recent nightly builds:

http://build.koreader.rocks/download/nightly/

Then, LEFT click on the nightly build you are interested in.

Following that, RIGHT click on the second link with kobo in the title, and choose "Save link as..." It should save as a zipped folder. (If you click on the first link with kobo in the title, it will save as a TARGZ file and I haven't a clue as to how to use that.)

Then just follow the instructions for installing it on your KA1 by extracting the koreader folder from the zipped folder and dropping it in the .adds directory on your Kobo.

Hope it works for you because it really does make for a more pleasant PDF experience, especially when reading in landscape mode. I also really like how you can manually crop a PDF in Koreader.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

No SD card slot. The only reason I would buy it (unless my eyes go bad) would be for PDF scans of very old technical material, datasheets, books, manuals etc from 1920s to 1960s. This takes a huge amount of storage. The eReader is pointless unless it can store the whole library.
This is why I switched from my Kindle DXG to Kobo Aura HD H2O (earlier version, i added a 32G micro SD card), but it's no good for old magazines and marginal for some books.

Also I would not buy ANY more Kobo products till they change their abusive Firmware update system and improve their abysmal customer support. The new home screen too makes my Kobo much less useful and the text exhortations to use Kobo store at the bottom is invasive and abusive as I bought a device with no such feature. I paid extra on Kindle devices to avoid adverts.

HW features and Firmare seems to be going backwards.

welcome to my world.

best wishes koboy

[koboy]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

Fair enough. I simply assumed that, if I could install it, anybody could. I am not all that technologically inclined.

After initially installing KSM 08 on your KA1, did you then install the necessary patch as indicated in the instructions?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&highlight=ksm

After doing that, I then followed the Koreader installation information found on this page:

https://github.com/koreader/koreader...n-Kobo-devices

I chose one of the more recent nightly builds to install. It was, at first, a little confusing how to do that.

First, click on the link for recent nightly builds:

http://build.koreader.rocks/download/nightly/

Then, LEFT click on the nightly build you are interested in.

Following that, RIGHT click on the second link with kobo in the title, and choose "Save link as..." It should save as a zipped folder. (If you click on the first link with kobo in the title, it will save as a TARGZ file and I haven't a clue as to how to use that.)

Then just follow the instructions for installing it on your KA1 by extracting the koreader folder from the zipped folder and dropping it in the .adds directory on your Kobo.

Hope it works for you because it really does make for a more pleasant PDF experience, especially when reading in landscape mode. I also really like how you can manually crop a PDF in Koreader.

i know this might seem like a crazy idea, but why don't Kobo make their devices/E-readers do the aforementioned above straight out of the box?

please forgive me if this makes sense.

best wishes koboy

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by koboy

i know this might seem like a crazy idea, but why don't Kobo make their devices/E-readers do the aforementioned above straight out of the box?

please forgive me if this makes sense.

best wishes koboy

The demand for these features isn't high enough to Kobo to warrant the cost. Keep in mind they sell an ePub variant and ePub is typically what libraries provide. It follows that the majority of Kobo's user base doesn't concern themselves with PDF

[PeterT]

Also remember that koreader does not support DRM encumbered PDFs

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[koboy]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

The demand for these features isn't high enough to Kobo to warrant the cost. Keep in mind they sell an ePub variant and ePub is typically what libraries provide. It follows that the majority of Kobo's user base doesn't concern themselves with PDF

if that's the case then it begs the question why bother with the PDF format, if Kobo can't or won't do it well then why do it at all.

although that being said i wouldn't read a PDF on any e-reader regardless of brand, each to their own.

edit, also they don't handle mobi that well either.

best wishes koboy

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by koboy

if that's the case then it begs the question why bother with the PDF format, if Kobo can't or won't do it well then why do it at all.

although that being said i wouldn't read a PDF on any e-reader regardless of brand, each to their own.

The PDF renderer is part of the Adobe RMSDK. That gives them support for the format with relatively little extra outlay. Basically they had to enable it and add some handling in their interface. And if they didn't support PDF, all the reviewers would be marking them down for the lack. For me personally, having some PDF support is good. I don't use it much, but it has been handy.

And your statement about PDF of ereaders is exactly what most people here say. If you have a look in the "What to buy" forum, if someone says the major format they use is PDF, then the recommendation is always for a tablet.

[anacreon]

It is still good for some pdfs, and allows me to read books not available otherwise on the One. My experience is that if the scan is good and the type and character size decent, and after cropping (I have Acrobat), pdfs are readable.
I can even read some otherwise good scans where the book is scanned two pages at once.

[Fursty Ferret]

At this time I'd avoid buying Kobo simply because of the appalling experience you'll have to go through if it goes wrong. Incredible hardware, simply terrible customer support.

My Aura One bricked itself randomly two weeks ago and I've had no success getting it repaired.

First of all the web form which randomly generates email / chat / call options, then you end up speaking to people who only know basic English and have a lack of any management or supervisory authority in the call centre. Interestingly it turns out that when (if) it's collected, it goes to the Netherlands via the slowest possible route and then gets directed onto Rakuten in Canada by a third party. Estimated repair time? Unknown.

Spent two days waiting in after being assured that a TNT collection was booked. Turns out it wasn't, and then you end up going back to the call centre where no one has any idea how things are meant to be handled.

Right now I'm really regretting not buying it on a credit card, as at this point I'd have requested a refund under section 75.

Buy a Kindle. Or buy your Aura One using a credit card.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

I had no problem with mine until I started using a weird, faster charging cable. It stripped The (gold?) lining of my charging circuit and stopped all charging. That said, I sent it to kobo and they send me back a refurbished one and I've found no one else with my complaint. Overall, highly recommend.
P. S.
Get public domain epubs from places like project Gutenberg, I have a collection of 4000+ old-ish a-list sci-fi from trawling The internet.