My first week with a Kobo (Clara BW) - some thoughts

[Graham44]

Well tomorrow will be a week of owning my first Kobo, the Clara BW, after owning Kindles for many, many years, the last being the Kindle Paperwhite Signature edition, so I thought I would posts some thoughts - these are just my personal thoughts/ opinions (not facts!) -

To start, the feel of the e-readers -

Obviously the Clara BW is a much smaller ereader with the whole machine taking up just the paperwhite screen area (well just a bit more), exact measurements being; Kobo - 10.9cm x 15.7cm, Kindle 12.3cm x 17.2cm (screen size of Kindle is 10.5cm x 14cm so not much smaller than the Kobo overall size, Kobo screen 9cm x 12.2cm). I've found the Kobo feels much nicer in the hand for two reasons 1) Being smaller as I hold it one handed its much easier to reach the screen with your finger to turn the page 2) The bottom corners are much more rounded than the Paperwhite making it far more comfortable to hold one handed for long periods,the Paperwhites corners tended to dig into my palm after a while, the Kobo's doesn't. The kobo also feels lighter to hold, it may not be lighter, I haven't checked, but it feels it. I have to say the Kobo doesn't feel as 'premium' as the Paperwhite, it feels more 'plasticy', but that could be because the front of the kobo has a plastic edge around the screen whereas the Paperwhite is completely flat and everything appears to be behind a glass (or plastic).

Using the ereaders -

Home screen; I never use this so this will be brief, the Kobo doesn't seem to clutter the screen with books it would like you to buy compared to the Kindle, My books/ Library; Both of these are very similar however the Kobo's My Books screen does make it slightly easier to find your books in different ways, you have four tabs along the top Books, Authors, Series and collections, The Kindle has this but tucked away in a menu.
Reading - this is where the Kobo really shines compared to the Kindle, setting the fonts, font size, line spacing, margin size are all much more customizable than the Kindle, you should be able to get your book pages exactly as you like them on the Kobo, or at least much closer than you could on the Kindle. The Kobo also has a nice Activity menu under the more menu on the main screen, this tells you things like how many hours you've spent reading the current book, average minutes per reading session and average pages per minute, it also gives you a grand total of how many hours you've spent reading, I don't believe the Paperwhite gave you any of these stats. One other small thing the Kobo does which makes a big difference is it allows you to adjust the screen brightness just by sliding your finger up or down the left hand side of the screen, the Kindle you have to go into a menu to do this, although the Kindle had adaptive lighting (however in practice I found this adaptive lighting could sometimes get confused and kept adjusting itself which played havoc with my eyes at times) another thing to note is the Paperwhites had a problem with the LEDs that lit up the screen, some would display a distinctive yellow colour around the edges or corners, the first Paperwhite I received had this problem and Amazon had to replace it.

Battery life - Both ereaders give you plenty of battery life, you won't be forever plugging either of them in, but the Kobo does seem to give you a bit more, I think this could be down mostly to the Kindles adaptive lighting, it would brighten the screen far more often than I manually adjust the Kobos - although the adaptive lighting can be turned off.

Overall experience - although I've had various Kindles for years and the Kobo for only a week I can already say the reading experience for me is much better on the Kobo, not only because using a Kobo it feels more like your ereader, whereas Kindles always felt like they were Amazons and they were allowing you to use them (personal opinion) but the Kobo also feels like it was built for readers, it's the little things, the stats, the adjusting the lighting without having to stop reading etc I personally couldn't see going back to Kindles after using a Kobo now.

Oh one othe thing - it appears you can repair Kobo's yourself where as you don't appear to be able to repair Kindles - whether that works out cheaper than just buying a new Kobo is another thing!

Hope some find this post helpful and not too long and boring

[issybird]

Moved from the General Discussions forum.

I've moved umpteen threads started by you from the General forum to the appropriate forum. Before starting your next new thread, please see if there's an appropriate forum that's not General! Read the description pertaining to the General forum. Thanks.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by issybird

Moved from the General Discussions forum.

I've moved umpteen threads started by you from the General forum to the appropriate forum. Before starting your next new thread, please see if there's an appropriate forum that's not General! Read the description pertaining to the General forum. Thanks.

Sorry about that!, the forum isn't always the easiest to navigate or find the appropriate section I will try digging deeper next time and double check

[bluepeter]

I pretty much abandoned Kindle in favour of Kobo about four years ago. IMO, the Kindle UI had become so awful as to be not far from unusable. Like you, I find the smaller devices more comfortable to use, and for much the same reasons. My primary e-reader is also a Clara BW.

You commented on the customisability of the Kobo. In case you aren't already aware, further customisations, beyond those offered as part of the standard firmware, are possible. You might like to investigate them once you've got fully used to the standard offering.

1. Kobopatch allows you to tweak the UI to suit your own tastes. For example,

• "Remove footer (row3) on new home screen" will remove the advertising that normally appears just above the icons at the bottom of the home screen;
• "Don't uppercase header/footer text" changes the book title at the bottom of the reading screen from all upper case to mixed;
• ...and so on.

2. NickelMenu adds custom menu items to various menus in Kobo's eReader software.

3. Setting your device to Sideoaded Mode might be a bit extreme for you, but I've found that I like it. It disables Wi-Fi downloading direct from Kobo entirely (both books and firmware), and requires you to load books manually, using something like Calibre (which I favour) or Adobe Digital Editions. It also disables the home screen altogether.

If you haven't already read the thread about Amazon having removed the dowload and transfer option from its web site, you might like to do so. They've made it more difficult to transfer your Kindle books to your Kobo, but it can still be done (for the moment...).

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by bluepeter

3. Setting your device to Sideoaded Mode might be a bit extreme for you, but I've found that I like it. It disables Wi-Fi downloading direct from Kobo entirely (both books and firmware), and requires you to load books manually, using something like Calibre (which I favour) or Adobe Digital Editions. It also disables the home screen altogether.

If you haven't already read the thread about Amazon having removed the dowload and transfer option from its web site, you might like to do so. They've made it more difficult to transfer your Kindle books to your Kobo, but it can still be done (for the moment...).

Sideload mode is probably a bit extreme for me, I did consider it briefly, but I'm not very techy so probably best I don't go fiddling with things like that

Amazons draconian removal of D&T was the reason (like many I suspect) that I moved to Kobo, it was one step too far for me, luckily I had already downloaded all of my books so I closed my account altogether.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Graham44

Sideload mode is probably a bit extreme for me, I did consider it briefly, but I'm not very techy so probably best I don't go fiddling with things like that .

It's a very simple text edit.

Part of typical "Kobo eReader.conf" file. The added line is in bold

[ApplicationPreferences]
AIRPLANE_MODE=true
SideloadedMode=true
CurrentDemoRegion=
CurrentLocale=en
DictionaryOpenCount=-1
EarliestChangeLog=4.33.19611

It's in the directory / folder path .kobo/Kobo
when you connect USB. You may need to enable "show hidden files".
A text editor that does plain text and uses existing line format like Notepad++ on Windows, or any plain text editor on MacOS or Linux.

Dictionary updates and other stuff still works, only connecting to Kobo Store / Kobo Books Library and Sync to other Kobo devices/App (only ebooks bought on Kobo anyway) is disabled. You don't need to edit to sign in again, which doesn't remove that line but simply replaces true with false.

I do buy ebooks from the Kobo Store, but I only ever copy/download ebooks to any ereader via USB from Calibre.

I use Pocketbook rather than Kobo App on Android.

The My Books becomes your home page.

I don't believe SideloadMode disables manual firmware updates. But in any case I usually update via USB from these links which use Kobo: https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html

[Sirtel]

I don't use the sideload mode, although I sideload all my books, even my Kobo purchases. Getting rid of the home screen just isn't something I really feel the need for.

I do patch my Kobos rather heavily. My reading enjoyment would be considerably lessened if I couldn't patch.

[John F]

I use and like sideload mode. I don't find the home screen very useful.

I do patch, although not very heavily. And I use NickleMenu.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Graham44

Sorry about that!, the forum isn't always the easiest to navigate or find the appropriate section I will try digging deeper next time and double check

There is no try, only do.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by John F

There is no try, only do.

The forum isn't the most intuitively laid out It's a great, friendly forum but the menus could be a bit better, for instance you have general discussions - which says not specific to a reader, well if your discussing two or more does that go in there? Then you have the Amazon Kindle forum for discussing Kindles so maybe it should go in there? Then you Kobo Reader, discussing the Kobo ereader so maybe it should go in there instead?

Each and every forum has it's own flavour and it just takes a while to navigate them, some are clearly laid out (a good example is the Linux Mint forum) some are not.

As long as the topic ends up in the right place eventually

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I don't use the sideload mode, although I sideload all my books, even my Kobo purchases. Getting rid of the home screen just isn't something I really feel the need for.

Pretty much the same boat for me, I'm happy to never navigate to the home screen, I'm either in a book or on the Library screen.

[Quoth]

I've never installed any patches. I don't count sideloaded mode as a patch.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by John F

I use and like sideload mode. I don't find the home screen very useful.

I do patch, although not very heavily. And I use NickleMenu.

I agree. I love sideloaded mode: it removes all the distractions.

I also mostly read on Koreader on my Kobo. Maybe that's why I haven't tried installing any patches.

[rashkae]

I don't think getting rid of the home screen (as useless as it might be) is motivation for anyone to enable sideloaded mode. Sideloaded mode simply lets you use your kobo without bothering with adding account login. It also prevents synching with Kobo's cloud account from causing any of the many known side effects. (Battery drain, and the occasional, rare but real database errors that can occur from sync bugs.). If you *only* sideload your own books, there's no reason I can think of to *not* turn on sideloaded mode.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I don't think getting rid of the home screen (as useless as it might be) is motivation for anyone to enable sideloaded mode. Sideloaded mode simply lets you use your kobo without bothering with adding account login. It also prevents synching with Kobo's cloud account from causing any of the many known side effects. (Battery drain, and the occasional, rare but real database errors that can occur from sync bugs.). If you *only* sideload your own books, there's no reason I can think of to *not* turn on sideloaded mode.

I never sync, so have no sync issues or battery drain. Wifi is always off, automatic syncing is disabled. Yes, there is no reason not to turn it on; I just can't be bothered.