My mom currently has a Kobo Wireless, which is the biggest piece of crap (both hardware and software!) I have ever seen in my life and I have taken it upon myself to get her a new e-reader. However, being a techie myself, I probably have tunnel vision and would like to hear the opinions of people who don’t work with computers for a living!
I’m currently looking closely at the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo (the Nook is not an option, we’re Canadian), but I welcome opinions about any e-reader!
Ease of use is important. The current Kobo Wireless software is slower than a snail, and freezes up constantly when trying to load pages on their store. Then she’ll buy books off the store, get them onto the Kobo, and they’ll be blank!
How does your e-reader handle book files acquired somewhere other than the official store? I’ve been putting some downloaded .epub files on Mom’s Kobo, but I think one is corrupted, and it tanks the entire e-reader. I mean, it won’t open any book, and using software on the computer to delete the books doesn’t fix it, you have to do a factory reset on the device. That’s unacceptable to me - corrupted files should generate an error when trying to read them, not render the entire device unusable.
I have the Kindle Touch, which is the predecessor to the Paperwhite. Since the recent update, the Touch & Paperwhite are quite similar in interface.
The Touch screen is pretty obvious - the only hang up I can imagine for a nervous user is that the menu is context dependent. That is, when you tap the menu icon, what you see changes depending on what you’re looking at, at that moment. You see a different menu from the “home” screen than from inside a book, for example.
When I first got the Touch occasionally it would hang, but I havent had that problem in the last year.
I drop stuff to my kindle by emailing it. True confession- I don’t know how to do it any other way! I know there are other ways though. I’ve had no problem with PDFs from a variety of sources, or mobi files from non-Amazon sources. How it would handle a corrupted file? I have no idea. I’ve never had one and couldn’t guess.
For ease of use the Amazon ecosystem is better. The store is easier to navigate from the eReader and getting books to the reader is simple. However, the newer touch interface of the the Kobo Glo will be a marked improvement over her current experience.
Corrupted files will crash a Kindle as well. None of the devices are good for book files acquired elsewhere if the files have DRM, non-DRM files are ok (ie. Project Gutenberg public domain books).
If you are going to switch from Kobo to Kindle, the format is not the same and she won’t be able to read the Kobo books she’s already purchased without stripping the DRM and converting them to MOBI (something not many people are interested in doing). So if she has books she still wants to read you’d be better off with the Kobo Glo, which is much improved from the original Kobo she has now.
I have a Sony PRS-505 I picked up off of Craigslist for $30 and I love it. It plays downloaded epubs (Project Gutenberg) just fine.
No wireless so you have to download books via USB cable which also provides power for charging. Storage is expandable via SD card and/or memory stick but the internal memory has room for about a hundred books or so.
It doesn’t have a touchscreen but the buttons are well positioned and, on the plus side, this also means that I don’t wind up with fingerprints on the display.
Battery life is great. Lasts weeks between charges.
Just picked up the Kindle Paperwhite because I couldn’t read my iPad outside. I love it. Easy to use for both me and my non-techie mother. Nice (not)backlight. Very natural touchscreen.
I’ve heard the Kobo Glo is a piece of crap, so it’ll depend on how attached she is to the interface and her Kobo books.
I have a Kindle Touch HD and love it. There are only a couple things to note:
If you buy an app on Amazon using your PC, you’re going to have to hit “Sync” a couple of times and wait a while for it to show up on your Kindle
I have some books that aren’t Kindle format and they appear in the Documents area, not in the Books area. Dunno why… I have to go to that different area on my Kindle to find them, other than that they work fine.
I have an early Kindle (3G) and two Fires. I do all my reading on the 3G. The Fires are too heavy to hold comfortably, and the battery life isn’t great. I have to charge them every day.
The 3G is lightweight and the battery lasts for weeks.
As long as whatever you get is wireless, your mom should be okay. Transferring books via USB is a PITA. There are hundreds of good free books available at Amazon.
I have a Kindle Touch. I’ve used it with mobi files from a number of sources and never had any trouble. I am not a techie at all – I don’t even like mobile phones, but I do like my Kindle!
I have a Nook Simple Touch, but use Overdrive and Calibre pretty much 100% of the time, so lack of B&N store access up in the Great White North needn’t be a deal breaker. A lot of people think the Nook ST is the best e-reader out there in terms of hardware alone, and they handle EPUBs and other non-proprietary formats a lot easier than Kindle.
What I’d really recommend is downloading Calibre and having your mom play around with it a bit. The program isn’t too hard to use, but if your mom is a big technophobe or something, you’re probably best off with the Kindle and its fairly intuitive store support. If she’s cool with using Calibre, you might want to consider a Nook or the Sony or even a newer Kobo.
Same issue, but I think I’ve figured it out. The problem is the “personal document” tag. You can fix it with Calibre. Just do a mobi to mobi conversion (or whatever other format to mobi conversion), and click the last icon, the one that says “MOBI Output” next to a big left-pointing arrow. There’s a field that says “Personal Doc tag” on the right side of the window. Odds are that field has something in it, like PDOC. Just blank that out and put nothing, or some folks say you can put EBOK. Do the conversion, and the new mobi files should work fine.
I like my Kindle Fire HD quite a bit. One relatively unadvertised feature is that, even though it’s not in the official Kindle app store, you can still use DropBox on it. Here are some instructions. So, if you don’t want to plug it into your computer, you can just put mobi files or other documents in your DropBox and then import them onto your Kindle, no wires needed.
I have a Kindle Fire, and I’ve used my sister’s earlier version Kindle. I thoroughly enjoy both. I have downloaded books from Amazon, e-mailed myself books and documents, and also used a USB cable to transfer things. The Kindle Fire is overkill if all you want is an e-reader, but I like having the option to look something up on line or check the news/weather/whatever. Fires’ batteries don’t last nearly as long as the paperwhite style Kindles, and as noted, Fires are heavier. That doesn’t bother me, but it might bother some people.
I’m still waffling, because the Kindle seems to be the easiest to use and have the best software and firmware, but it doesn’t have library access (which would be handy to teach my mom) in Canada as opposed to the Kobo and I’d have to do some, heh, stuff with her store-bought Kobo epubs to convert them.
She’s actually figured out how to read books on the laptop using Calibre while waiting for me to visit and fix her Kobo.
There are apps that are available to have Kindle read epubs. But if you’re comfortable with Calibre that may be easier than her having to learn another thing.
If she is interested in Overdrive library books, then you need an EPUB reader in Canada, so Kobo or Sony are your best options. The Kobo Glo has the integrated light and is attractively priced compared to the older tech Sony, plus she’s already used to the Kobo store and reader, so it wins hands down.
Stay away from the Kindle Fire tablet that a few people in this thread mentioned, it is not supported in Canada.