I’ve just about had it with my old Kindle Voyage – if I lose my place in a book it’s near impossible to find it again and the OS is confusing, with preferences scattered all over the place. It’s also not that comfortable to hold. I was quite surprised to see that it’s actually ten years old on Monday, so I think I’m probably due a new one by now.
Because fuck Jeff Bezos, I’m rather tempted by a Kobo. I’m not too fussed about a colour screen, or infinite battery life, just a better reading experience.
Any thoughts? Anyone got a Kobo and regretted it?
I’m locked into the Amazon ecosystem for now due to using a Kindle Oasis. I previously used a Paperwhite but upgraded it a few years ago. The Oasis, now discontinued is a very comfortable device and I prefer buttons to a touch screen so I’m content for now. I have no experience with a Kobo so I’m unable to help on that front but my reason for posting is to inform you that if your books are all Kindle purchases you may have some trouble shortly in porting them over. As far as I know Amazon have or intend to make the downloading of all ebook purchases to computers impossible by removing the ability to transfer via usb which will make porting them over via Calibre for instance out of the question. Others may know more about this as my understanding of this state of affairs is somewhat sketchy. I will only add that pound for pound the Paperwhite is probably the best e-reader money can buy.
Amazon removed the facility to download books to transfer by USB about a month ago. You can still copy files off a Kindle via USB, though.
In both cases the files are encumbered with DRM.
I knew they were going to move the goalposts but I was unaware that they had already done so.
Ooh, I didn’t know you could still do it via USB. I might have a go and see if I can rescue the rest of my archive.
Just tried with my ten year old Kindle. Transfer by USB of non-Kindle books converted online to Mobi is working just fine …
I’m managing to get most of my Kindle store purchases converted OK from KFX to ePub. There’s the odd awkward customer but for the most part, it’s working just fine.
Excellent news. Sticking it to the Bezos.
All together now!
(singing) “Oh Canada…”
Kobo is Canadian so “elbows up”! I have also thought of getting one but I would then lost all my kindle purchases presumably.
Go Canada! I’m about to buy a bottle of Canadian Club whisky unless there’s a better recommendation?
If you favour Islay single malts and who in their right mind doesn’t then Shelter Point Smoke Point is a nice drop if dropping around £70 on a bottle doesn’t give you a bit of a funny turn.
Something better than Canadian Club? How long ya got? A list of what’s worse would be shorter.
I think it’s seeing Don Draper drinking it by the half pint.
I remember Don Draper drinking ‘old fashioned’ which I had never heard of and didn’t really pay any attention to, until we went to the Johnnie Walker experience in Edinburgh and it was on the menu. Black Label with a little sugar, angasturo bitters, ice and orange peel…..?.wonderful!!
Please buy Canadian if the only other viable alternative is American. For Scotch get Scottish stuff in the UK I guess.
I just had a lovely visit to the English Whisky Distillery in Suffolk. A bottle of their world best single malt award winner is my current tipple.
https://www.englishwhisky.co.uk/
Looks interesting and quite a coup for an English distillery.
For my recent birthday my daughter gave me a year’s subscription to the Whisky Tasting Company. You get 5 30ml bottles of interesting whiskies every 3 months and the first set includes:
Bladnoch Samsara
Tomintoul 15 year old
Glen Scotia Double Cask
Glencadam 15 year old
The Ileach Peaty (Cask Strength)
It comes with some poncey tasting notes but I’m looking forward to sampling them.
The tour was brilliant then we had a tasting. Fab. And just outside is a lovely restaurant where we had a perfect Sunday lunch. Great day out.
Were you in the Wrong county? Norfolk methinks
I suppose you support Ipswich (I just typed that name, off to wash my hands)?
Easily done, it’s only 4 miles across the border.
Between Cambridge and Thetford on the A14 & A11, you go Cambs, Suffolk, Cambs, Suffolk, Norfolk. All those border post stops are a nightmare.
Wevs
I had never heard of these folk but I bought one on the basis of a good review. Never ever done that before 🫤
And an excellent whisky it is too, @Twang. Nice one.
Glad you like it MC.
I worded that poorly. I should clarify that Shelter Point Smoke Point is a Canadian single malt that reminds me of Islay malts hence the reference.
We are off to Islay this very weekend and have several distilleries booked in for cultural learnings.
All I will say is that if I had a bottle of Canadian Club in my booze cupboard, it would be the only bottle I reached for if a guest asked for a ‘scotch and coke’.
Not only that, but the only time I’d reach for that bottle would be when asked by a guest for a ‘scotch and coke’.
It could come in handy as a blunt instrument if one takes up bludgeoning as a hobby.
@pencilsqueezer
It gets the seal pup of approval in the country’s colder reaches
Edgy as fu*k. 😄
Isn’t that what Bells is for?
Teachers is more appropriate than either for handing out a “learning” imho.
Canadian Club is a common purchase for me, but my current choice of Canadian whisky is Bearface.
Pike Creek and Crown Royal also very worthy of investigation
Cheers RD. 🥃
This?
https://www.thebottleclub.com/products/bearface-elementally-aged-triple-oak-canadian-whisky-70-cl?utm_source=awin&source=aw&sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=176013&awc=48273_1743192321_c76bc14a51818ae210f5024751e6ec6d
I’ve broken my whisky fast this evening with a generous glass of Bunnahabhain 12. First proper drink since the beginning of the year.
Iechyd da!
That is a magnificent tipple.
Hic!
Indeed, tis marvellous
Slainte mhor!
I was reading last night about Amazon’s change in policy re exporting Kindle purchases so tracked down my stranded unread books at the Eel Market and ported them over myself, as it were.
I’d entirely forgotten that Kobo were Canadian though – all other things being equal, I think that’s probably enough to tip me over to their side of the fence. And they’ve got a refurb store on their website too, which is handy.
You’re good to go then. Elbows Up!
Actually I just remembered my daughter inherited her late Grandmother’s Kobo, don’t think she has used it. I will ask her if I can give it a go this weekend while sheltering from heavy snowfall and ice storms 🙁
I have a Kobo. It’s a nice piece of kit, though probably no better or worse than the Kindle in that respect. It’s main advantage for me is that I can link it to my library account here in Singapore and download and read ebook loans. The Singapore library system is excellent and has a very good ebook catalogue. I mentioned on another thread recently that I’ve been reading all the Maigret novels; that has been done mostly with ebook loans on the Kobo. I presume you can also do this in the UK. If so, it would be a good driver to make the switch.
I used to have a Kobo, and did use it to read books from the local library’s catalogue, although there wasn’t that much in the way of available titles.
This model had a touch screen which wasn’t that accurate, and pressure on the screen may be the reason why the screen on my Kobo cracked.
My cheap e-book, I forget the brand, unsurprisingly died when I was carrying it to work in a side bag one day, slipped on ice, and body-slammed it with my full weight.
A very bumpy trip from La Guardia airport to Manhattan in a bus with terrible suspension resulted in my first Kindle being destroyed
To add to the tales of Kindle destruction, my original Paperwhite bit the dust after I fell asleep reading in bed. It fell onto the floor and I later stepped on it’s screen in the dark, getting up to go for a wazz.
My local library uses Borrowbox, which doesn’t work on Kobo (or Amazon) so sadly I’m not able to take advantage of that.
I have a Kobo, which I rarely use (because I can’t get over that it isn’t an actual book) but it’s always in my handbag in case I feel the need to distract myself during a wait (I don’t own a mobile phone), since it weighs next to nothing and doesn’t take up much space.
It’s easy to use, the battery life is insanely long (I know you don’t care, but that’s the most impressive thing about it!) and unlike a computer screen it doesn’t hurt my eyes.
I haven’t tried to download library books yet, because I so rarely use it – I’ve just added a bunch of old classics from Project Gutenberg on it, just to have things to read without spending any more money on it.
The only disappointment I’ve encountered is that you can’t read it outdoors in wintertime if it’s very cold…then the battery dies and needs to be defrosted indoors before it starts working again (but it does). And my original reason for buying it was that one bus stop where I have to wait for 15 minutes every night, when I go home from work, doesn’t have any functioning lights. So I couldn’t read a real book in the pitch black of a Swedish winter night and thought an e-reader would solve my problem at those times… Oh, well!
Still, it’s a fine product – I’m just a bit too tech-averse to enjoy reading that way, but everyone else I know who uses a Kobo rave about them.
I’m also pretty tied in to Amazon but I can’t stand having more devices than absolutely necessary so I’ve exclusively read using the Kindle app on my iPad for about 10 years. Also means if I get desperate I can knock off a few pages on my phone (not a euphemism).
I used to read from a tablet but it gave me headaches and eye strain. Since switching to a an e-reader those two things are no longer an issue. It’s probably because e-reader screens have a much slower refresh rate and lack the glare of a tablet screen.
I’ve heard that affects some people but fortunately never been a problem for me. One of life’s joys is a few hours reading with great music in the background.
As it happens that’s exactly what’s going on here this evening. Just deciding what to listen to next…
I decided. It wasn’t difficult as this landed on my doormat earlier.
Ooh lucky you. Haven’t heard it yet.
I’m halfway deep in it and it’s choice. They play off and into one another magnificently. Simcock’s rhythmically propulsive playing drives the music as Rawicz weaves her spell. Hic!
I’ll be investing.
A sound idea.
But are you getting any reading done Pencil? Fine stuff, hondootedly, but I think I’d find its general jumpiness too distracting, this track at any rate.
Reading and music can be mixed I must admit. Oftentimes I find myself laying my book aside because I find the music I’ve selected too arresting. This was one of those times. Also whisky.
Whisky is never the wrong answer.
That looks jolly interesting …
Oh it is Mike. See also the latest albums from Anouar Brahem and Vega Trails.
A Kobo is on its way. If I’d ordered a new Kindle, I could have had it by lunchtime tomorrow but I’m going to have to wait seven to ten days for my new device. I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait though.
In the meantime, I’ve managed to crack into my Kindle with the aid of a USB lead and a few choice plugins for Calibre so I can spend the next week or so getting my metadata in order.
When I had my Kobo I used a Calibre plugin which added Kobo specific formatting to uploaded books, mirroring the special formatting used on books purchased from the Kobo store. Without this plugin, sideloaded books would not show the correct number of pages left in a chapter.
Ah, yes – KEPUB format, isn’t it?
That’s the one. I had a whole pipe of Project Gutenberg files that I’d massaged into that format and with added artwork, and then the screen cracked.
Did you download them in another format for another purpose than a Kobo? Because when I downloaded a bunch of books from Project Gutenberg I could choose format easily and it told me specifically what each format worked for.
This was some years ago, when the then Kobo software had effectively two different ways of handling files. Ones from their own store had a header or footer containing the chapter title and page number, whilst side-loaded EPUB files looked a little different, with page numbering being somewhat broken, making it impossible to tell how far you were from the end of a chapter.
The Calibre plugin added the extra formatting automatically to fix this issue. I also added some simple front cover artwork using another plugin.
Another happy Koboite here. I swapped over from Kindle about 15 years ago when I was indulging in a blink-and-you-ll-miss-it boycott of Amazon, and I’ve never had any reason to regret it. It does what it’s supposed to do without fuss.
I currently have a b/w Kobo Libra, the one with a side extension for buttons to turn pages. I find the shape and size mildly irritating, but otherwise it’s just fine. The first one I got had a faulty charge socket, so I didn’t have much chance to use it before I returned it for exchange. I think next time I’ll go back to a more basic one.
I’ve never knowingly drunk Canadian Club, but I think it might be taking elbows up too far to buy a Canadian cooking whisky when I’m quite happy with my Scottish one.
Well here’s a funny thing: after my enthusiastic endorsement of my Kobo on Friday, it thanked me by wiping my entire library when I plugged it into my computer just now. Weird. Not the end of the world of course, just a load of tiresome re-downloading coming up.
Update: I think it might be fried. The error message says that the database image is malformed…and it syncs but won’t download.
Panic over, you can all relax. Factory reset fixed it, and downloads are back.
Bezos is watching! The all seeing eye has selected your Kobo for elimination.
Canadian gin has a few fans. Better than any US muck. Very good for craft beers too. Probably too many different types it’s impossible to keep up for me and that just Ontario, 48 craft breweries in Ottawa alone.
Wines and ciders are produced in BC, around Penticton and Naramata.
Wine also produced in Ontario in the Niagara region. A beautiful area, just avoid the city of Niagara Falls apart from an obvious trip to see what’s there. It’s like Blackpool on steroids.
(But the US side is worse, a shit hole)
Went from Niagara to Buffalo in 1975, it was a shithole then. Can’t begin imagine what it must be like now.
Great work everybody. Peak Afterword that a discussion about the relative merits of reading tablets becomes a whisky (and jazz) recommendations thread. Excellent stuff.
“We aim to please.
You aim too, please.”