4 ms·
Others specifically mentioned Kobo as an alternative. I did a high level pass over the ecosystem before choosing them as an alternative to the Amazon monopoly,
by jwiley 6y ago
Others specifically mentioned Kobo as an alternative. I did a high level pass over the ecosystem before choosing them as an alternative to the Amazon monopoly, they seem somewhat equivalent to Chrome vs Firefox:
- supported formats, for the Linux issue: EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR
- no native linux client: not a deal breaker for me
- is the company behind Kobo credible, will it be around for a while: yes, its owned by a credible company, 13.4% e-reader market share, probably shrinking
- could it be sold? Possibly: https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/will-rakuten-sell-kobo https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/will-rakuten...
- is there an export path if they go under: its Adobe DRM, so assumably yes with their support
- does the store work?: Yes, the interface is reasonable if slow, I could find books on it and buy
- are prices comparable: no, Kindle is cheaper in some instances but there is a price match (I used it, it works)
- are the books I want on there: yes, ever one of the 5 or so books I looked at are listed on the store, newest version
- is the reader comparable to Kindle: yes, same settings I use on devices and laptop, fonts, brightness, clarity etc all comparable
One thing missing is 'X-Ray', which is neat but not essential technology Kindle has. Kobo has a book search that is ok, but not as good.
- se32point1 6y agoIf you mean this, https://www.amazon.com/b?node=17717476011 https://www.amazon.com/b?node=17717476011, the Kobo indeed has many of those features as of now. Supports searching a Dictionary, Wikipedia, Google, and adding notes. There are translations in the Dictionary, but the "Word Wise" feature does not exist, but I can live without that. I can understand some who wouldn't, though.
- jwiley 6y agoI was thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Ray_(Amazon_Kindle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Ray_(Amazon_Kindle) ...roughly the same thing, or maybe the same thing under different branding.
- amadeuspagel 6y agoHow is chrome equivalent to kindle? It's open source, it doesn't have a special format, you can visit any website with it.
- jmholla 6y agoI recently bought a Kobo and it wanted to connect to my WiFi before it would do anything. I ended up returning it.
- therealidiot 6y agoGlad you mentioned this, as I would end up returning such a device too and now I don't need to waste my time I'm looking for a new ereader and I don't want to have to register/sign in with anything to use it.
- TwoNineFive 6y agoI have a Kobo. This is correct -- it won't let you do anything before you connect it to Wifi. However, there is a trivial hack to get around this where you connect it to your computer via USB and manually edit a sqlite database to put in some blank entries on the registration. There are lots of posts on how to do this online. After you've done this, it works offline just fine.