With prices for e-readers hovering around $100, we decided it was time to jump in. What better excuse do we need? With lots of time for relaxation and rejuvenation on our sabbatical, it's definitely time to catch up on some reading. But who wants to lug a bunch of books all around southeast Asia? Before committing to a Kindle, I tested an iPad in bright sunlight by the pool and the reflection on the screen bothered me quite a bit. When it comes to replicating the feel of reading a real book, the iPad just didn't stack up to the Kindle. Besides, it's more than twice as heavy as a Kindle and its battery life is only 10 hours as compared to two weeks for typical Kindle users.
Since my partner and I were both in the market for e-readers, we decided that it would be fun to buy two different brands just to compare. So that's how we ended up with both a Kindle and a Kobo. For pure reading pleasure, both devices performed extremely well -- the type was sharp, the contrast was good, the screen reflection non-existent and the battery life very very long. The Kindle 3 was definitely a faster device, but the graphics and user-interface on the Kobo was more visually elegant. Typing was painful on both devices, so even though the Kindle had wireless capabilities, I didn't use it. Instead, I managed all book downloads on a laptop and synched the files to the devices the same way I would synch a computer to an iPod.
And that's where Calibre comes in. Not only does this amazing free application manage your e-book library for you, it also translates between various e-book formats seamlessly (the Kobo accepts epub files while the Kindle accepts mobi files). Amazingly, the software is free and it is well documented and supported. As a bonus, Calibre can also download hundreds of magazines and newspapers in e-book format for free (Amazon charges for the same service). The only format Calibre chokes on is PDF (but then, so do other applications that attempt to reformat PDFs into e-book formats). The only complaint I have so far is that the graphics-rich color layouts of magazines and newspapers don't translate well to the small 600x800 black-and-white screens.
Since my partner and I were both in the market for e-readers, we decided that it would be fun to buy two different brands just to compare. So that's how we ended up with both a Kindle and a Kobo. For pure reading pleasure, both devices performed extremely well -- the type was sharp, the contrast was good, the screen reflection non-existent and the battery life very very long. The Kindle 3 was definitely a faster device, but the graphics and user-interface on the Kobo was more visually elegant. Typing was painful on both devices, so even though the Kindle had wireless capabilities, I didn't use it. Instead, I managed all book downloads on a laptop and synched the files to the devices the same way I would synch a computer to an iPod.
And that's where Calibre comes in. Not only does this amazing free application manage your e-book library for you, it also translates between various e-book formats seamlessly (the Kobo accepts epub files while the Kindle accepts mobi files). Amazingly, the software is free and it is well documented and supported. As a bonus, Calibre can also download hundreds of magazines and newspapers in e-book format for free (Amazon charges for the same service). The only format Calibre chokes on is PDF (but then, so do other applications that attempt to reformat PDFs into e-book formats). The only complaint I have so far is that the graphics-rich color layouts of magazines and newspapers don't translate well to the small 600x800 black-and-white screens.
