13 ms·

I've had Kobos since abandoning the Kindle many years ago. I run two accounts with them. One is on the device, has never purchased any books, and is a placeho

I've had Kobos since abandoning the Kindle many years ago. I run two accounts with them. One is on the device, has never purchased any books, and is a placeholder for easy software updates etc (I quite like their UI). The other has all my purchases, but is never put on the reader. Instead I download, then use Calibre to create an open copy (for personal use only) and move it to the reader via USB sync. It usually takes about 30 seconds to do for a book, and the result is a legally-obtained curated collection. And every book is tagged with where it came from (its legal provenance) for my own peace of mind. My main motivation however is actually the metadata. Publishers/authors haven't got a clue when it comes to title, author, series, genre, covers etc., so all my books are now standardised and categorised and each has a cover of exactly the same size and aspect ratio. Maybe I'm an obsessive, but if you do it as and when you buy a book then it really does take a minute or two at the most. And the result is quite satisfying and, more importantly, as future-proofed as I can reasonably get whilst also being a very easy library to navigate.

alwayslikethis 4y ago
> legally-obtained curated collection In the US and many other Western countries (mostly forced by the US), circumventing or otherwise removing DRM is illegal in and of itself, even for personal use. I like Kobo's devices for the most part, but I've only ever used KOReader on them. Kobo software seems to contain telemetry. As a side note, you can circumvent the registration requirement after wiping the reader by inserting an entry to a sqlite3 db, thus allowing your reader to be unaccounted for by Kobo or Google Analytics.
- kcartlidge 4y ago
  It does contain telemetry, as you say. But with a throwaway account on the device, and no payment method or other details on it, I don't really care. Plus unless I'm doing an update check (about once a year) it's always offline. I recognise it's probably still gathered info and is sending it in a bulk catch-up, but again I don't really care. For the registration requirement you're right, but as I'm not replacing their software then by the simple expedient of a dummy account I don't need to do anything to the device, even the DB entry, and personally I'd rather not bother. Nice to know, though, thanks.

alwayslikethis 4y ago

> legally-obtained curated collection In the US and many other Western countries (mostly forced by the US), circumventing or otherwise removing DRM is illegal in and of itself, even for personal use. I like Kobo's devices for the most part, but I've only ever used KOReader on them. Kobo software seems to contain telemetry. As a side note, you can circumvent the registration requirement after wiping the reader by inserting an entry to a sqlite3 db, thus allowing your reader to be unaccounted for by Kobo or Google Analytics.

kcartlidge 4y ago
It does contain telemetry, as you say. But with a throwaway account on the device, and no payment method or other details on it, I don't really care. Plus unless I'm doing an update check (about once a year) it's always offline. I recognise it's probably still gathered info and is sending it in a bulk catch-up, but again I don't really care. For the registration requirement you're right, but as I'm not replacing their software then by the simple expedient of a dummy account I don't need to do anything to the device, even the DB entry, and personally I'd rather not bother. Nice to know, though, thanks.