Monday 2 June 2014

In praise of Kobo

Around about 3 years ago I was given a Kobo E Reader by my brother in law as a birthday present (it could have been Xmas but I digress....).  The choice was actually mine but he bought it.

I chose Kobo at the time because I wanted to avoid the ever present Kindles and I was worried about Amazon cornering the market in E books with their proprietary formats and readers.  I also liked the idea that they were available here in the UK at WH Smiths who have a branch locally and I remembered from my childhood.

As time went by I found I used the Kobo quite a lot although mainly when I was on the train to work.  I bought quite a few books from their store and also downloaded some of the classics that were available for free.  I kept updating it as new firmware came out and all seemed well.

Around 6 months ago the Kobo started to play up a bit.  I found that it would no longer mount as a separate drive when attached via USB to a computer and it seemed a little bit slower.  I had backed up my books to a computer and the ones that were bought from the Kobo store were always available via their web portal and online store but I worried that I would lose my content eventually. 

So with a heavy heart I contacted their online support people and started a long correspondence aimed at fixing it.  Despite our mutual best efforts it appeared that all was lost and the Kobo was going to fail.

Then to my surprise they offered to replace the Kobo for free (apart from some shipping charges to Europe which to be fair were probably in place to stop jokers trying to get something for free).  I am now the proud owner of a shiny new replacement Kobo!

So praise be to Kobo.  My cynicism was misplaced and it only seems to give praise where its due.  If you are in the market for an E reader perhaps this will give you some more confidence to go with the Kobo instead of a Kindle and together we can at least put off yet another monopoly for a while.