Questions from a would be first time Kobo purchaser.

[trashHeap]

My relatively ancient sony eReader finally died and I have been thinking of updating to a genuinely modern eInk device with WiFi and all the bells and whistles. I have been looking at various Kobo devices and I have a few questions I cant find answered in any reviews.

Does the "Reading Life" feature have parity across all the devices, or is it more or less featureful depending on the device? My understanding is that Reading Life supports Twitter integration. Does it do so on all current devices?

I understand folks manage Kobo with Calibre. Is it a mass storage device or is it MTP?

Do third party epubs/pdfs you side load get thumbnails and sit beside regular purchased content in the UI or are they quarantined seperately?

Thanks

[eschwartz]

USB Mass Storage for e-ink. MTP for Android tablets.

I don't have a Kobo, but from what I've heard I believe Reading Life is only available for KEPUB.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by trashHeap

My relatively ancient sony eReader finally died and I have been thinking of updating to a genuinely modern eInk device with WiFi and all the bells and whistles. I have been looking at various Kobo devices and I have a few questions I cant find answered in any reviews.

Does the "Reading Life" feature have parity across all the devices, or is it more or less featureful depending on the device? My understanding is that Reading Life supports Twitter integration. Does it do so on all current devices?

I understand folks manage Kobo with Calibre. Is it a mass storage device or is it MTP?

Do third party epubs/pdfs you side load get thumbnails and sit beside regular purchased content in the UI or are they quarantined seperately?

Thanks

I don't own any of the Kobo Android tablets so can't speak to them. I do use the Kobo app on my Nexus 7 and iPad/iPhone but they are not my go to ereaders and I don't use any social networking features. Twitter integration is not (currently) part of the eInk reader implementation so their only social connection is Facebook.

The eInk ereaders show as a mass storage device when connected to your computer.

I have very few Kobo purchased ebooks and my sideloaded content get the same thumbnails, ability to search, etc. that Kobo content does. There are some differences in how they are displayed since sideloaded epubs and pdfs use the Adobe RMSDK reading engine while Kobo's content uses the Access NetFront reading engine (much like looking at a web page with two different browsers). Though you can rename an .epub file to .kepub.epub to use the ACCESS engine, you will not get the full statistics package since Kobo removed that capability due to some strange numbers being displayed for sideloaded .kepub.epubs.

And yes, Calibre is one of my favourite applications along with Sigil for editing epubs though Kovid Goyal is getting the editor in Calibre to the point where I may be dropping Sigil.

Regards,
David

[Mivo]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I don't have a Kobo, but from what I've heard I believe Reading Life is only available for KEPUB.

With Calibre and the Kobo Touch Extended plugin (it is for all Kobo readers), all books on the device will be in kepub. (This assumes that the user uses Calibre for the management of disinfected books.)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Mivo

With Calibre and the Kobo Touch Extended plugin (it is for all Kobo readers), all books on the device will be in kepub. (This assumes that the user uses Calibre for the management of disinfected books.)

A couple of issues that I see are that (1) support for statistics on sideloaded .kepub.epub ebooks had issues and has been dropped and (2)the author of the KoboTouchExtended plugin has dropped all support for it.

Regards,
David

[Mivo]

Oh, I wasn't aware of either event. Shame that he discontinued support of the plugin. Hopefully someone will pick it up. Thanks for the info!

[davidfor]

While the author is no longer supporting the KoboTouchExtended driver, there is no reason to not use it. There will be no problems with it until either Kobo change the firmware in some way that makes it not work, or calibre changes in some way that makes the driver not work. Neither are likely to happen in the foreseeable future. And if something does happen, someone will probably step in to fix things.

[hleo12]

I think I'm in the minority when I say I like kepubs more than epubs, so I really hope someone picks it up...

[Mivo]

I'm not sure that you're in the minority. Well, at least you're not alone. I, too, prefer kebubs, and they also import much, much faster than epubs (I didn't time it, but importing 600 books in epub format took at least five times longer than importing the same books in kepub format via the extended driver).

[booklover6]

I use 100% kepubs.

[dgparryuk]

kepubs here too - if only for the "pages left in this chapter"

[jandrew]

All kepubs on my device as well.

[moffattm]

Put me down for kepubs too!

[anesthezea]

How do you get all kebups instead of epubs? (I'm a Kobo newbie). Can you use Calibre to convert them?

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by anesthezea

How do you get all kebups instead of epubs? (I'm a Kobo newbie). Can you use Calibre to convert them?

Correct. There is a Kobo touch extended driver that will translate to kEpub as the ePub is sent.