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Comment by mmrezaie | Hacker News Reader

How are the alternatives. Although i will miss my collection of books but I'm going to be in the market for the next ebook reader.

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I wrote https://remy.grunblatt.org/blog/kobo-aura-h2o-hacking.html a while ago. At some point it sent ISBN to google.

The domain I extracted for my kobo aura:

  api.ipinfodb.com
  api.kobobooks.com
  auth.kobobooks.com
  authorize.kobo.com
  kbdownload1-a.akamaihd.net
  kbimages1-a.akamaihd.net
  mobile.kobobooks.com
  pool.ntp.org
  script.hotjar.com
  social.kobobooks.com
  ssl.google-analytics.com
  static.hotjar.com
  stats.g.doubleclick.net
  storeapi.kobo.com
  vars.hotjar.com
  www.google-analytics.com
  www.google.com
  www.google.fr
  www.googletagmanager.com
  www.msftncsi.com

Nice, thanks for that writeup

Kobo's have comparable (even superior, IMO) hardware to the Kindle line. The thing that everyone who migrates from Kindle to Kobo seems to get hung up on is that it does not have an option to wirelessly sync books that have been sideloaded across devices. This is because Kobo does not give everyone a private cloud like Amazon does (I imagine it would be prohibitively expensive to do so for anyone but Amazon).

It's not a big deal for me, but apparently it's a dealbreaker for some Kindle refugees that they can't start reading a sideloaded book on their phone and pick up where they left off when they open their Kobo.

I have a $350 Kobo Forma and the UI is so slow compared to my $200 Kindle. It takes a long time to startup and it has horrible & slow touch detection which makes it really hard to highlight quotes properly.

Maybe other Kobo variants do better however.

I don't see why that should be expensive/difficult. Ebooks are mostly small files. It would be hard to ramp up a gigabyte unless you end up with image laden items such as pdfs.

Synching can be an issue. I had a one of the early kindles, and it was fine until I hit a few hundred items. It would re-index and be completely unresponsive for 10minutes at a go. That could have been done cloud side. In the end I decided I needed to purge loads of documents/titles to get it useful again. But accidentally sat on it. So game over. Moved to a simple Nook and SDCard loads.

I just switched from my Kindle Paperwhite to the Kobo Libra H2O and I really like it.

It's easier to hold with dedicated page turn buttons, good lighting, and fast screen response time. Also water resistant and good battery life.

So far I've been able to get all the books I've wanted, mostly from the Kobo store, but it can work with any open format.

I've switched from Paperwhite to Kobo (Aura I think?) and the highlighting feature is really making me miss my Paperwhite.

1. I can't highlight text across pages.

2. There's also an issue in which I navigate to some highlight and the text gets shown in a dark grey against black background, making it nearly impossible to read.

3. Since I can't highlight text properly (thanks to issue 1), I can't simply extract my highlights from a book, so I have to manually type it on a laptop, which is a painful experience thanks to issue #2.

What drove you to abandon your Kindle Paperwhite, MattPalmer1086?

The battery stopped holding its charge, so I looked around. I particularly wanted open formats, and I've been getting away from Amazon in general.

Though I haven't analyzed other devices (because I don't own them), they could easily have similar issues. I personally really want an open e-ink device, but I haven't seen one for sale unfortunately. For now, I do Calibre ODPS server with Marvin app on a phone, but it doesn't really compare.

I have an Onyx Nova 2 and I like it quite a lot. It runs android and has access to the android ecosystem, so I can read my webnovels and mangas and even kindle books without needing to use any external applications like Calibre.

I read this comment on my Nova 2. It's a very nice capable device for tasks like web browsing, email, and note taking (either with the pen or Bluetooth keyboard).

I don’t know the alternatives, but do know you have software like Calibre in order to keep your book collection despite changing your device.

Got my mother-in-law a Kobo Forma. Relatively pricey but I was able to walk her through how to check out a book from her local library via Cloud Library & transfer it to her device. Was a life-saver while the physical library was closed due to Covid-19. I was a little concerned as there were complaints about fabrication but her experience has been very positive.

My favourite ebook reader is:

Aluratech black and white https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e2WoVRsap9Q

No drm, suppported all formats, held a charge for a week. No internet. Fits in jeans pocket.

It came out in 2009... I wish they still made them.

Feels somewhat abandoned at times, but Apple Books is okay.

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