Kobo Super Early Review

Just wanted to post a quick update (who am I kidding, you know this thing is gonna be long when I write...) that I now own a Kobo, what an interesting device! It's not what you would expect from a regular handheld device and the technology of e-ink seems almost alien.

First off, it seems slow, not the response time of new shiny toys you are used to, but I don't know if that's because it's weak, it wants to preserve battery, or it's really this magical e-ink stuff that's taking the most time. When you see screens change, it is literally like watching someone redraw something new with an etch-a-sketch while the old stuff starts to be "shaken" away. I mean it's more instant than that, but for lines of text that's how it feels. It kind of flashes black on screen/page turns, but I figure that is a mechanism to help erase the old e-ink or something, but I imagine I'll get used to it.

I haven't really started reading anything much on it yet as I need to find a good book that I want to read, something to enthrall me and bring me back, more so than just the feel of a new toy in my hands. It's kind of like what I feel when I get a laptop, so excited to get it, then I open it up and start using it and it's just another computer like the rest, and I don't really have anything special I need to do with it or differently, so I just end up returning it.

The most crazy thing I must say is that this e-ink is semi-permanent yet doesn't "burn in". It just flies in the face of everything I'm used to, turning off a screen means it doesn't display anything, and leaving something on either means wasted energy/battery or burn-in. This "e-ink" can stay on the screen with no charge or power consumption (I think?). Let me explain it, I pull it out of the box, I see something written on the screen telling me to plug it in to install the app and charge it, so then I peel off the plastic screen cover and I'm confused as the label I just read didn't come with the plastic! Was there a second layer of plastic on the screen with those instructions? There didn't appear to be! This thing was just shipped, but god knows how long it was sitting around with no juice in the battery, or how long it could be sitting around in a stock room (in the far future where it's not selling like wii-fits). I notice that when I turn the thing off, it writes something to the screen like "Kobo: press power to read some more". It's really cool, but so goddamn weird because it makes me think it's still on! I turned it off and on again without realizing it as when you read a book and power down it puts the cover of the book on the screen and says in small at the bottom press power to continue reading. I thought I just pushed menu by accident, but no I did turn it off, then on again in my confusion. Pretty damn cool.

I was a little surprised on how it had no (real) instruction book and no instructions bundled with the desktop app, it was almost one of those explore the simple UI and you'll figure it out yourself kind of things, which confuses me as I imagine most of the people buying these things are somewhat tech illiterate. I mean sure they are buying new e-book readers, but these things are priced to sell and I imagine there is a mass population of older people out there who want a new convenience of reading but aren't necessarily tech savvy people. Suffice to say I actually had to google for the manual and view it myself to figure out how to use all the functions without having to experiment too much and miss out on key tricks. I was surprised to find that the manual wasn't even that friendly a read, and it was 42 pages which made me say whoa, that's big, but it turned out only the first 16.5 pages were real content, the rest was all legal mumbo-jumbo! Why would you package it all in one PDF in this day in age? More than half the content of the PDF was garbage to 99.9% of people reading, so put in a place people will look if they need to!

The reader is a little slow to browse/page through the library, but it gives you time to read what titles are on each page, and the hundred books that come with it seem like a good choice, my girlfriend was so pumped to see a lot of them. My time is limited enough though that I'd rather stick to reading things I want to read versus the bundled which may be good and I might enjoy, but that I have no time or will for. The review on that experience will come when it is experienced.

I did try uploading a PDF, it wasn't obvious how and was one of the reasons I got the Manual. When exploring the device on my computer I noticed there were no special folders listed (just adobe app & install crap), but apparently just drag and dropping files into root will do the trick. This particular PDF didn't fit the screen well any way, landscape or portrait. It will fit, but man is the text tiny, even for my hawk eyes. Making it bigger and readable means scrolling both horizontally and vertically and it doesn't work that well, would rather just read on computer or paper, and when you get to the end of a scroll it automatically moves to next page, so you have to be careful. 4 Steps the Epiphany will have to be read on my PC, oh well!

Apparently I can bluetooth sync my Kobo to work with phone and PC I think so I can read on any device anywhere and keep em synced up, probably won't try it though, doesn't make sense for my use case.

When in landscape mode, you'd think the menus and d-pad would change orientation as well, but they don't, which is too bad, but firmware updates could fix that.

Anyways it seems light enough with a soft quilted back thingy, I imagine it'll be nice to read, but still haven't given it the try it deserves yet, so I'll let you know how comfortable it is compared to a real book when I get the feel for it.

Also taking suggestions for good business/startup/entrepreneurship books!