Glo Couple of Q's about the Kobo Glo

[FGSFDS]

Anyway, what comes in the box, will there be a mini-USB cable included? I'm ordering online btw.

Can you send ebooks wirelessly to the Koboglo over a wifi network?

How often do updates come?

The product spec on the website says it holds a one month charge if you use it for 30 mins a day. I thought eInk technology refreshes and turns power off in between page turns like in the way the Koboglo shows the cover page of the book you're reading when you power it off, what is this conception i'm having?

Is there anything you Koboglo owners are not satisfied with with the Koboglo?

[echwel]

Originally Posted by FGSFDS

Anyway, what comes in the box, will there be a mini-USB cable included? I'm ordering online btw.

Kobo Glo (obviously, duh...)
Micro-usb-cable
Some paperwork...

Originally Posted by FGSFDS

Can you send ebooks wirelessly to the Koboglo over a wifi network?

You can't push them to the device (that is only possible on a USB-cable), on the other hand, with some software (calibre for example) you can download it to the device.

Originally Posted by FGSFDS

How often do updates come?

That's various. In the past, some updates came monthly, between the last official updates there was more than 3 months.

Originally Posted by FGSFDS

The product spec on the website says it holds a one month charge if you use it for 30 mins a day. I thought eInk technology refreshes and turns power off in between page turns like in the way the Koboglo shows the cover page of the book you're reading when you power it off, what is this conception i'm having?

The kobo is more than just an E-ink screen. You are right that keeping an image (or text) on the screen does not use power.

To have books in memory uses battery-power, to be able to use the touch-screen uses battery-power...

When you power off, you can't use the touch-screen, no book is being kept in memory (no battery-use, other than the normal drain for re-chargable batteries).

When the device is being put to sleep, you can't use the touch-screen, but the current book is being kept in memory (battery is being used).

Originally Posted by FGSFDS

Is there anything you Koboglo owners are not satisfied with with the Koboglo?

I don't own one, so I can't tell, but from what I've heard, most users are satisfied.

[FGSFDS]

Thank you echwel. I'd like to know more if the Kobo Glo has any negative points.

I've read this: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kobo_eReader#Kobo_FAQ

So aside from technicalities is there anything that is down-right annoying or unproductive?

[kobokobe]

The updates actually were quite frequent (granted, some of them were just bug-fix releases) during the first few months for the Touch, but since then they have been much less frequent. Around 3 months in between, as mentioned. I think at this point Kobo's touch software is quite mature (many of the bugs/feature requests have been addressed) and since the Glo uses essentially the same software as the Touch (minus features related to the light), I suspect we won't see all that many updates (although I thought we would have an update by now regarding the light feature). Unless Kobo feels that a complete overhaul is necessary which of course would be quite a drastic and costly step.

OP, the link you posted is not particularly relevant, depending on the device (kobo, kt, kg) or the firmware. For example, the page numbers on the margin for sideloaded ePubs can be removed in the options ever since one of the early firmware updates for the KT (EDIT: nevermind, that's not what the post was mentioning). Also the 100 free ebooks are only included in the original Kobo (as far as I'm aware those are all classics with expired copyrights, and available for free in the Kobo store if you wish to add them to your collection).

You should be aware that there are some issues with Kobo's quality control. Devices that work as they should are great, but there are quite a few lemons out there that ship despite hardware/software issues. This has been reported by forum users on a number of occasions (for a variety of issues) for both the KT and KG.

Other than those quality-control issues, some problems that exist on all KG devices:

- Some users complain that they must have a Kobo account to set up and use the device (I think I read someone post a workaround, but don't hold me to it)

- People have complained about "recommendations (read: shameless advertisement)". Used to be a bigger issues in some previous firmwares, but not so much anymore in my opinion.

- Kobo's scales in general are very jumpy. Ex. the font size scale, margins, line size. The only one I really wish I had more control over is the font size.

- A lot of people want the lowest light setting to be dimmer.

- You can make "shelves" (although painful to actually make) but cannot create series/collections (ex. no way to let Kobo know that the A Song of Ice and Fire books or the Millenium Trilogy books, etc belong in the same series, other than making their own shelves)

- There have been some concerns regarding privacy and how Kobo collects and uses reading statistics.

- I'm probably missing a few more, because I've been generally satisfied with my Kobo devices and don't really agree with some of the "issues" that others have brought up, although I did include all that I could think of off the top of my head.

[FGSFDS]

What is this "recommendations (read: shameless advertisement)", does the KG have adverts on it?

[kobokobe]

It "recommends" books they think you'd like to read, aka buy, theoretically based on your past purchases. Generally, it is as like as not to actually correspond to your interests. Kobo, like Amazon's Kindle segment, makes profit through ebook sales and not through their device sales, so this is to be expected. The recommendations are not very blatant as of the current firmware (although it still bugs some people), but they have, in the past, tried to make it very noticeable, something to keep in mind.

EDIT: Just to be clear, there are no acutal 3rd-party advertisements unless you buy the special offers edition, which I'm not sure even exists for the Glo.

[oj829]

Originally Posted by echwel

You can't push them to the device (that is only possible on a USB-cable), on the other hand, with some software (calibre for example) you can download it to the device.

Or you can run the dropbox client on the KoboGlo's browser. (Assuming no DRM complications.)

Literally ONE tap in dropbox directory performed a library load.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by kobokobe

- You can make "shelves" (although painful to actually make) but cannot create series/collections (ex. no way to let Kobo know that the A Song of Ice and Fire books or the Millenium Trilogy books, etc belong in the same series, other than making their own shelves)

This just isn't true. If you store your books in calibre it is very straightforward to automatically create Shelves and to display series name & number for each book in the Kobo Glo library. See this thread for details.

Attached is image of Series info being displayed in my library.

[Quexos]

There seems to be a few glitches here and there and those affect some people and not others for whatever reason. Personally I don't really have any major problems with my Glo and I'm hoping that the minor things will be rectified in future firmware updates.

[murg]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

This just isn't true. If you store your books in calibre it is very straightforward to automatically create Shelves and to display series name & number for each book in the Kobo Glo library. See this thread for details.

Attached is image of Series info being displayed in my library.

Actually, it is true. Natively, the Kobo's don't store series information. The series information isn't in the standard ePub metadata. The Kobo's only read the standard metadata.

Calibre stores its own metadata in the ePub, and I think, that in the case you showed, is changing the standard Author's Name metadata field to contain the Author's Name and the Series/Number.

As an alternative, it is probably also possible to have Calibre put the series information into the standard Book Title metadata field. This would cause the books of a series to sort together, if sorting by titles. I do this manually with my ebooks, and find it works well (for me, at least).

Caveat: I don't use Calibre. I did for a few weeks after I got my Touch, but didn't like how it worked or how it mangled the formatting of the ePubs.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by murg

Actually, it is true. Natively, the Kobo's don't store series information. The series information isn't in the standard ePub metadata. The Kobo's only read the standard metadata.

As of 2.2.0, that is only half true. The database on the device now has fields for the series and series number. Plus it is displayed in the book lists.

Some of the books from Kobo have series information. To see how it is handled, get a preview and look at the preview list. "A Game of Thrones" has it. Unfortunately, that still has the series info in the book title as well. I have seen some others, but I can't find them right now.

The device handles this fairly well. The info is displayed in the library lists as a separate line. Searching looks at the series name as well as the title. Sorting the list includes the series name as part of the title. The only thing missing is a separate series list. Plus a way to get the series info for sideloaded books.

Calibre stores its own metadata in the ePub, and I think, that in the case you showed, is changing the standard Author's Name metadata field to contain the Author's Name and the Series/Number.

As an alternative, it is probably also possible to have Calibre put the series information into the standard Book Title metadata field. This would cause the books of a series to sort together, if sorting by titles. I do this manually with my ebooks, and find it works well (for me, at least).

The advantage of getting calibre to do this is that it can modify the metadata as it sends the book to the device. The calibre library has the proper title and the series in a separate field. Sending it to the device adds the series info to the title.

Caveat: I don't use Calibre. I did for a few weeks after I got my Touch, but didn't like how it worked or how it mangled the formatting of the ePubs.

How? Calibre should only "mangle" the epubs if you do a conversion. To get from other formats to epub, it is the simplest way. There are some reasons to convert from epub to epub, but most of them can be done with a plugin instead.

[jackie_w]

The whole point of the calibre Metadata Plugboard feature is to manipulate whichever metadata fields you want into the database fields used by the device (usually Author and/or Title, to date) during send-to-device. Once it's setup you don't have to think about it again.

So far, on all my devices, I've preferred to append Series info to the end of Author rather than to the beginning of Title, as I prefer to have all lists/Shelves/Collections sorted by Author/Series/number.

If the next firmware release includes separate database fields for series info then I guess I may need to change the metadata plugboard.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

The whole point of the calibre Metadata Plugboard feature is to manipulate whichever metadata fields you want into the database fields used by the device (usually Author and/or Title, to date) during send-to-device. Once it's setup you don't have to think about it again.

So far, on all my devices, I've preferred to append Series info to the end of Author rather than to the beginning of Title, as I prefer to have all lists/Shelves/Collections sorted by Author/Series/number.

If the next firmware release includes separate database fields for series info then I guess I may need to change the metadata plugboard.

Me too. I had shelves working on the Kobo Mini with collections in about 5 minutes just using your plugboard for the Sony with the device changed.

Thanks again for that and thanks to Davidfor as well.

Helen

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

The whole point of the calibre Metadata Plugboard feature is to manipulate whichever metadata fields you want into the database fields used by the device (usually Author and/or Title, to date) during send-to-device. Once it's setup you don't have to think about it again.

So far, on all my devices, I've preferred to append Series info to the end of Author rather than to the beginning of Title, as I prefer to have all lists/Shelves/Collections sorted by Author/Series/number.

If the next firmware release includes separate database fields for series info then I guess I may need to change the metadata plugboard.

The plugboard I have been using is:

{series}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}

FW2.2.1, is doing roughly the same thing for sorting. The numbers seem to be handled properly but I haven't played enough with them to be completely sure. I also haven't tried a non-numeric in the series number field.

[EldRick]

...on the other hand, with some software (calibre for example) you can download it to the device.

You don't actually need calibre - you can just plug the Kobo into any computer and copy the book files to it.