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Did B&N Pass On the 6.8" E-ink Screen That Kobo Snapped Up?
Nate the greatest writes "Rumor has it that the new high resolution E-ink screen on the Kobo Aura HD was originally intended for another ereader maker. Inside sources have told me that B&N had first claim on the initial production run of 300,000 6.8' screens, only B&N decided to pass. If this rumor is true then this was the screen that B&N would have used on their new ereader this year. Can you imagine what a Nook Glow HD would have been like? I think it would be the next best thing to a 7" Android tablet with an E-ink screen. It's a shame we might never see it." While flying cars are still on my wishlist, daylight readable screens for more portable devices are even higher up the list.
I fear you have made the Stonehenge mistake, only in reverse.
The current landscape of eReaders is incredibly frustrating to me. Your choice is to go for either the superior platform or the superior hardware. Amazon has, by far, the best platform. It is ridiculously easy to side load to your devices, be it via USB, email (with each registered device having its own address), or the Send to Kindle app. Not only that, but it syncs your current position across devices, even for side loaded documents. Then there's Whispersync for Voice, which works impressively well (and provides a cheap means to get audiobooks, as well). The problem is that the hardware is just a rectangular slab with no ergonomics.
Contrast this with Kobo and B&N. Their hardware looks and feels great. The Aura even has a higher res screen 265dpi, the same as a retina iPad). The problem, though, is that their stores are smaller and have worse prices, and no syncing for side loading (and less easy to accomplish, as well). Both Kobo and B&N have nicer firmware/reading software, as well.
Amazon's advantages are, for me, strong enough that it makes the Kindle the better choice of the three. This irritates me, because the Aura HD looks fantastic. I may get one just for the hell of it.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
In Canada, Kobo has a much higher profile because their ereaders and tablets are marketed by Chapters Indigo, a major brick and mortar book chain. Kindle has made limited inroads here, and B&N doesnt have a physical presence to sell Nooks. The Kobo Arc tablet starts at $175 and is actually quite good (got my wife one for Christmas). The Kobo Glo and Kobo Mini ereaders were popular last Christmas, too. I don't think the company bought coverage, as others here suggest. I think they're just making an aggressive play to improve their ereaders for this fall.
I think there's more difference in these devices than you're taking into account here.
While my iPad3 has a much prettier display than my Paperwhite, the backlight at the lowest setting is still blazing bright on the iPad.
The iPad is waaay too big to be comfortable reading in bed and it's too heavy to hold up for an extended period of time.
I get tired of turning Do Not Disturb mode on and off but if I don't toggle it I get notified every damm time CNN thinks something noteworthy comes up or I get an email.
Even with all this I wouldn't have gotten a dedicated reader except for the power issue. If that iPad isn't plugged in when I go to bed I'll be in dire straits the next day. Even if tablet power improves tremendously, it'll have a tough time matching my Paperwhite's battery life of 2-3 weeks heavy reading with the backlight on.
If you're just looking at readers in the store a backlit screen looks superior in all ways. In practice where you really just care about reading the text of a book, well, YMMV.
Till last week, I had never heard of Kobo. Now there is a story everyday about Kobo.
They've been around for a few years, but since their main revenue driver seems to be their bookstore they don't get as much attention as the more flashy iTunes or Amazon. I've only bought one book from them because I don't like the idea that their content is not in a standard epub format (I don't buy the argument that standard epubs without DRM aren't a valid business model... O'Reilly uses them... JK Rowling's "Pottermore" store uses them...). They've had licensing arrangements to be the bookstore that is tied to some dirt-cheap ebook readers you've never heard of, but they first came to my attention when Target gave them the boot last year in favor of a closer relationship with Barnes and Noble.
Target was carrying two models of their e-ink e-readers (the WiFi and the Touch), and suddenly put them on clearance for 30% off, then 50% off. At that point I didn't have an e-ink e-reader so I figured I'd try it for 50% off.I can only read books on my iPad for so long before the weight and the backlit screen get to me. The "pearl" e-ink screen Kobo was using made all the difference. I was spending less time watching TV and more time reading books. Then they went down to 70% off as Target tried to clear the last units from their supply chain, and I spent an afternoon driving around to different locations buying them up to give to friends and co-workers as gifts. A friend of mine who is over 65 and an avid book reader (but definitely not a gadget guy... he still doesn't even own a cell phone) has been devouring books on the Kobo WiFi I gave him. His employees tell me he's sitting in his car reading it before work, and sitting in his office reading it while he eats lunch. A friend in her 20s who is a physical book "purist" has taken to the one I gave her in a similar fashion, despite the fact that she told me she'd never read e-books. I'm sure they'd get the same enjoyment out of a Kindle (until Amazon remotely deleted their books one day), but it was cheap enough and usable enough that it turned some pretty staunch anti-e-book people into devotees.
Beyond that, their software is open source. The devices run a stripped down Linux distro and there is a community dedicated to rooting and hacking the device... and as far as I can tell they're not fighting it. It was pretty simple to SSH into the device and play around in the shell. A little Googling turns up instructions on how to do it, and videos of people running Python games on the Kobos. This alone should make Kobos a more attractive choice for the Slashdot crowd.
But their offerings weren't really all that different from the Nook and Kindle until Kobo announced earlier this week that it was selling the "limited edition" Kobo Aura with the high-resolution screen. At 256ppi, it's pretty close to the resolution of the current generation "retina screen" iPad, which is listed as 264ppi. Plus the interface looks more usable than the Kobo I'm already spending a few hours a day reading. Totally worth it to me, but YMMV.
The stuff that gets sent to the reader is in a proprietary format, but if you go to their site you can get your book in epub format. Then you may have to run it through a DRM stripper to free it completely (with the right plugins installed, this happens automagically when importing it into Calibre)
As the guy responsible for EPUB at Kobo, I can assure you that we use EPUB for all our books, and have done for quite some time now. The files inside the archive are encrypted or not based on the wishes of the publisher: Harry Potter books aren't encrypted, for example.