[clug] Advice request - "tablet readers" for eBooks

[Geoff Swan]

>
> Does anyone have a Kobo? If so, would you mind downloading my epub at
> http://members.pcug.org.au/~rcook/perl.epub  (19K) and let me know if
> it works in that.
>
> Borders are apparently out of local stock at the moment.



I just loaded your ebook up on my kobo. You cant use the index function of
the kobo to jump to individual pages. You have to manually page through the
empty entries for A-F before you get to anything - which on a kobo is
painful, each page taking a couple of seconds. The individual entries that
you have (i only looked under f) look as though you intended to be able to
select them to get more information - I can't figure out how to do this with
the kobo. It seems to me that either the kobo can't handle the complexity of
the epub you created or their may be a fault in the epub. I suspect the
former...
I have to admit some frustration at this as I really like your idea of
creating such reference docs... I have no experience with other ereaders but
the kobo is not much more advanced than a book when it comes to searching
and dynamic linking - ie it pretty much doesn't.

In full disclosure though - I haven't had the kobo long at all - and I
suspect I may be missing how to utilise some of it's capability.

My thoughts on the kobo following two days of usage - love the e-ink display
- but am dissapointed with the UI. If you read around you will find most of
the same reports. The buttons require too much effort (yes I find it hard to
believe I just wrote that) considering how often you have to use them. And
the button is too noisy (have you ever had someone clicking away on a loud
keypad etc when trying to sleep?).
I will be much happier when I figure out how to recode multi-column image
embedded pdfs into a format more easily used by the kobo - so far no luck -
and I missed the previous CLUG on this topic and can't make it this thursday
:(
Actual ebooks - the ones that came with the kobo - these read just great -
no eye strain and no further complaints - I actually really like it.
The thing that has made me completely happy with the kobo though -
regardless of previously mentioned faults is it's display of comics (well
manga really). The conversion .cbz to epub was fairly straight forward and
the display of black and white image is *really* impressive. I can't begin
to describe how awesome this is. I know there may only be a few manga geeks
out there - but let me tell you - the kobo works for manga...

If someone would be happy to link to a decent article regarding converting
more complex pdfs to an epub or similar format I would really appreciate it
- my googlefoo has turned up plenty of articles - but none that quite handle
what I have been trying to do so far...

hope this helps

geoff