Sunday, November 13, 2011

Kobo in UK

Wow, I just found out (via a TV commercial of all things) that you *can* actually buy Kobo readers in the UK, via WH Smith. I could have saved over a hundred pounds in shipping and import tax (why do we still have import taxes in the third millennium?)!       :-)
I guess I'd gotten too used to the thought that if I can't find something on Amazon UK, it just ain't for sale in this country. It works for 99% of the things I look for, but just occasionally, nope. I guess in this case it's due to it competing with the Kindle. Although you *can* buy the Kobo on Amazon US, so I dunno why it's different.

And WH Smith now has a substantial-looking ebook store, very smart of them.


I guess if I was forced to choose, I'd still go with the Kindle though. Perhaps just for the reason that "nobody ever got fired by buying IBM". Or in other words, safety in the established, the devil you know, and all that jazz.

But it's a close race, the Kobo is very good, it has more typeface and size options and things like that, and it looks and feels good.
The interface might be better though. It only has two buttons, on/off and Home. It would be better with a menu button and such, or at least make it clear on the screen what you have to do to pull up a menu or go where you want to go.

2 comments:

Timo Lehtinen said...

Which one is better, Kobo or Nook?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I haven't tried the Nook, because you can't buy books for it outside the USA. (At least not last time I checked.)

The Nook has also *just* been updated, and the tests are not in yet. The Nook Color has been supplemented (probably replaced soon) by a Nook Tablet, which seems to be very much like the Kindle Fire. May be a touch faster, but costs fifty bucks more.

My general impression of how people like the Nook (and Nook Color) is that it's pretty lukewarm, it's said to be sluggish and such.