Is the Kobo cool?

On the con side:

First, the Borders website search function is truly appalling. You put in a specific author and it returns hundreds of hits which seem to relate only marginally to your search. Fortunately there are other online e-book retailers.

Second, some books on the Borders site are ridiculously expensive. My wife was looking for American Rust by Phillip Meyer, which is $25 as an e-book but $18 with free delivery as a paperback! Fortunately she can get it for $18 from another e-book retailer. Nevertheless it seems the great bulk of books on Borders are $10 (e.g. all Nick Hornby titles) and it seems you can get the expensive ones elsewhere for less anyway.

Third, there’re no luxuries like an in-built dictionary or voice. All you can really do is browse the library, turn pages and bookmark your place. These limitations don’t bother me.

Fourth, there’s a slight delay as you “turn” the page. We were aware of this before buying and after a demo decided it wasn’t an issue. It still doesn’t bother us. The number of words per page is less than with a paperback so you click often. Check out whether or not this bothers you before buying.

Fifth, the Kobo only has eight shades of greyscale (the Kindle has 16) so it’s not much chop for showing pictures. It probably won’t suit if that’s important to you. If you want to read newspapers you’ll probably need an iPad.

Sixth, there’s no 3G so you’ll have to download books direct from the PC. Ditto for recharging. Doesn’t bother me.

Seventh, although there are supposedly millions of books available for e-readers, there are still some that aren’t. For example, we couldn’t find The Summing Up by Somerset Maugham. Still, I expect in time it will be easier to get books this way than having to trawl through book shops.

Maybe some serious problem will emerge over the next few weeks or months that’ll drive us mad, but for the moment my first impression is that this does the basics well. I’d like to say it’s a Kindle killer but I’ve never used a Kindle. At this price it should go gang-busters. Get yours before the dive of the dollar drives value downwards!

Why even buy a Kobo in the first place? One, you can carry lots of books when travelling. Two, you can download books instantaneously, including those hard-to-get books that drive book club members crazy. Three, you save a fair bit, largely because of our publishing industries refusal to acknowledge that times have changed. Four, you can adjust the font size if your eyesight, like mine, is no longer perfect. And five, if you have something like a Kindle, you can easily and rapidly check the meaning of words as you go.