Hey Kobo…
Why don’t you build an e-reader that doesn’t crash on shutdown every other day, instead of trying to become the next Facebook.
I own a Kobo. It does one thing, makes books available electronically, using E-ink display technology. One thing: on, off, read. So simple, Microsoft could design it. Yet the Kobo crashes regularly. Very regularly. It’s like designing a calculator that crashes.
When I bought the Kobo in July, I was promised magazines and newspapers were available for it. They weren’t. And they still aren’t in my area. What the hell does that even mean? This is the Internet age, there is no area. The National Post is a Canadian Newspaper. You can either offer an electronic download of it, or you can’t. They can’t.
The Kobo promises ten days, or 10,000 page turns of battery life: I get maybe ten hours, a couple of hundred page turns. That’s OK though, because when I bought it I was told not to plug it in unless battery was drained, because every time I plug it in, I shorten it’s life span. That’s good, the shorter the life span, the sooner I get an e-reader that works.
And don’t get me started on the price of books. A new book is upwards of $15, yet you don’t even get a file to store for the day when you switch to an e-reader that works. Done with your Kobo? The book is gone into the ether. Fifteen dollars for nothing.
But now, after delivering on none of the promises of their product, they are expanding into social media.
On Thursday, the Toronto-based e-publishing startup will launch Reading Life, a new e-reading iPad application that integrates with the company’s digital bookstore designed to bring social-networking capabilities to the world of electronic books…
Seriously, instead of concentrating on fixing their piece of S*%t product, they are going to try and turn reading into something you do with virtual friends.
If your thinking e-reader this Christmas, they are magical machines that are truly wonderful. But save yourself the frustration and buy something other than Kobo. Their machines are junk, and they are more interested in monetizing their web site than fixing it.
Recent Comments