Re: [tlug] Kobo-Glo Reader on Sale

[Darren Cook <darren@example.com>]

> Just a heads up for anyone wanting an inexpensive monochrome-screen 
> e-book reader with a good reputation. The Rakuten Kobo Glo, ...
> .... Other than that, it does reading at a quarter the cost of the
> Kindle and seems to play all of the same formats.

By quarter did you mean the hardware cost, or book cost? (Kindle is 9980
currently, though mine was 7660 when I got it in July.)

Does the Kobo support mobi format files now?

I have what I think is the previous version of the kobo (it was the
current version as of 12 months ago), but it was almost unusable due to
slow response. Trying to add an annotation was horrible. I got it just
before losing my beloved Kindle 3, but I actually switched to using the
kindle reader on my Android phone because the reading experience was
more immersive than the kobo, despite the smaller screen! The new kindle
paperwhite is good enough. Compared to the previous kindle 3, it is
slightly quicker, and the built-in backlight is quite useful. I miss the
physical keyboard, but the touchscreen is responsive enough that
annotations are not too hard.

I also miss a couple of keyboard shortcuts: you could jump back and
forth a chapter at a time. For the rare times I need to do this I have
to go the table of contents now.

O'Reilly Safari does not work well on kindle. It will display with the
built-in browser, but the Safari mobile site is not-a-nice-experience
(listings as images have been scaled to the point of not being
readable), and the desktop site use various colours which are hard to
read on a grey screen. If Safari is your main source of computer book
reading, get a tablet. Or cancel it and just buy the ebooks you want :-)

PDFs are generally still not easy to read on the kindle: I use a tablet
for them.

Darren

-- 
Darren Cook, Software Researcher/Developer

http://dcook.org/work/ (About me and my work)
http://dcook.org/blogs.html (My blogs and articles)