eReaders Ressources

Foreword

Machines

The Sony

is a very good reader, but in this country it is the most expensive of the lot - but the most complete as well.
Models shown here are PRS-350 and PRS-600
There are others, the PRS-T3 springs to mind. All of them read ePubs and pdf, amongst other things. Unfortunately, as of August 2014, Sony is pulling out of the eReader market.

The Nook

The Nook is backed up by Barnes and Nobles, one of the biggest library of the US.
It is similar to the kobo touch, but a bit more basic softwarewise.
The basic model used to go for £30 at Curries or Blackwells - but they are out of stock most of the time.

The Kindle

The kindle has become the synonym for ereader in many people's mind.
However, it is not the machine of my choice, for various reasons.

1. First of all, there is the tie to Amazon. Amazon has been known to erase books you have bought from your kindle remotely without asking permission. This happened in July 2009, and again in November 2010, and again in October 2012. Whatever the reasons, I haven't seen anybody from WHS Smiths breaking into my house to reclaim a book I had bought at their bookstore.
   
2. Amazon may also simply decide they don't like you, erase your kindle and remove your account, no explanation given, like they did with a Norwegian lady.
3. Or the book you want to read may have too many hyphens, in which case amazon will also remove it. (Dec 2014)
4. Another problem I have with the kindle is a more practical one: the format of the books. The default formats of the kindle, .mobi or the amazon format, are closed source (even if the earlier versions were reverse-enginneered). This means that there are very few tools that enables you to create your own books to put on your kindle. If you do, you have to create an ePub and use a converter. This extra step is not only annoying, but despite the best efforts of the people behind the conversion software, sometimes the result isn't optimum (mangled toc, etc).
5. I find the ergonomy of the kindle lacking. For example, it is fine if you have few books, but I routinely carry hundred of books, and the "catalog" system of the kindle is not very practical or ergonomic - not as easy as the Kobo anyway.
6. The strict management right of amazon causes problems for travelling people. This is a milder version of (1). An example of this: you buy a book in the UK, but your reader refuses to allow you to read it when travelling in Norway (or the US). Even inside the US, you might not be able to cross a state border. Don't bother if you never leave your country.
7. Milder case of the above: if you live in a country NOT on amazon list, good luck to buy some books available to anybody else.

The Kobo(s)

<== Kobo WiFi
Let's be clear: at £50 (€60), the Kobo wifi was a bargain ! It was probably the cheapest ereader on the market, and it did its job very well. It was my first reader, and I loved that machine. I say was because unfortunately it has been phased out.

• Kobo runs Linux, which explains how you can do all those tweaking to the system.
• Knowing the above, I find it quite extraordinary that the Desktop program only exists for windows and mac.
  That said, it installed perfectly on my Debian under wine 1.4.1-4. Unfortunately, the good news stop there. The update of "My Library" stopped after adding two books and never went any further (???). And of course, since at the moment wine has a very limited USB support, you can't connect to the Kobo with the Desktop program, so its utility is nil.

3 partitions: 2 of 250M, 1 of 140M

Device Boot      Start          End           Blocks    Id    System
/dev/sdf1          19456        543744       262144+    83    Linux
/dev/sdf2          543745      1068033       262144+    83    Linux
/dev/sdf3         1068034      3862527      1397247      b    W95 FAT32

2 Linux  partitions, one Fat32 partition

TrekStor Pyrus Mini

Tolino

Others

• Txtr Beagle (discontinued).
• Cybook Odyssey (Bookeen) too expensive.(€79):

• ER430 Slick Pocket Reader ($39.99) on amazon US but 4.3" screen (very bad review)
• PocketBook Mini (€ 59.42) was on maliseuse.com but seems to have disappeared
• Pyrus Mini seems phased out as well

Name	Touch Screen	Diction- nary	WiFi	Price
Kobo Touch				£59.9
Tolino Page				€69
Kobo Mini				£29.9 (phased out except amazon.com ?!)
PocketBook Touch				€79

• Dictionnary: touch a word and
  get a translation or definition.
• Wi-Fi: used to update firmware or
  send books to reader;
  with crude browser
  also allows for checking mail
  or reading online newspaper.

Envoi

Ressources

Tools

• Grab my book This is really the BEST capture tool to ePub. You can grab all your tabs, rss feeds, page, part of the page, links, whatever you want. It also gives you some basic metadata like author, summary, and even epub cover. Available for Firefox, Chrome and android. If you have a problem installing on Opera, you can download the [crx]
• DotePub Is a good alternative. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of GrabMyBook, but it does the job. It also saves natively to kindle.
• Pocket Enables you to tag articles, etc on the PC and sends them directly to the Kobo to read later. Requires 3.0.0+ firmware on the Kobo (except Glo, seems to be 2.8.1 ?) and free registration. Also has Android / iOS client. Faster than GrabMyBook for the odd article and really handy.
• Readability Is another alternative. It stores pages for you and clean them. You can then print, read, export to ePub or send to your kindle. Requires free registration.
• Sigil is a free word processor for ePub.(former repository) This is THE tool that will allow you to finish what you started with grabMyBook and give the professional finishing touch. Needless to say you can do anything in an ePub with this tools, which is also extremely simple and natural to use.
• Alternately, you can use My eBookMaker (requires registration), a web-based ePub editor. Limitation: can't upload an ebook and edit, need to start there.
• Calibre is the most misused tool for ebook. It is in fact a cataloging tool, and allows you to manage you ebooks library. It understands many format, and allows you to do some basic metadata editing, as well as converting from one format into another. I'm willing to bet 90% of Calibre user don't use it to manage an ebook library but to convert to/from .mobi (kindle) format. As far as I know it's the only tool to do that. Hint: on linux you don't need to use the GUI. You can mass-convert entire directories using ebook-convert. Get the scripts
• TeBookConverter is an alternate front-end to Calibre.
• Papercrop will transform your pdf to make them display better on phones/tablets
• PDF2Epub will transform your pdf in an .ePub
• PDF4Kindle will transform your pdf in a .mobi
• Cloud Convert will transform your pdf in epub
• Doc Pals is another nice convertor.
• BookType is an open source platform to help you write and publish print and digital books.
• tools

References

• Adding fonts: nothing easier. Just create a directory at the higher lever (same as .kobo) and name it fonts. Then put your fonts in there. Make sure you have one for each style (ie bold, italic, etc), with the proper name (by default, name convention is:
  
  • *-Regular.ttf
  • *-Bold.ttf
  • *-Italic.ttf
  • *-BoldItalic.ttf
  You may also have to modify /.kobo/Kobo/Kobo eReader.conf. I personally added Linux Libertine fonts to my Kobo. You can also add fonts that existed in older roms; To install these fonts,
  1. download one of the old firmwares.
  2. Open the downloaded Zip file and extract the koboroot.tgz to your PC or Mac; do NOT extract this to your Kobo. Now open the tgz (on Windows, Winzip handles it; Mac or Linux tar at a minimum will work). The fonts are located in usr/local/trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts Copy the desired fonts to your Kobo in the directory fonts the same as all other fonts you have installed (and yes... the case of the directory name IS important).
  3. Be sure to copy all members of the font family.
  Un autre tutoriel ici
• Kobo Touch hacking
• Transform your Kobo in Linux Tablet
Full list of to download (scroll down for latest).
• -->

  Date	Version	Mark 2 the original Wi-Fi	Mark 3 Original Touch (N905/N905B Model)	Mark 4 Mini	Mark 4 TouchLC (Low Cost - N905C Model)	Mark 4 Glo/Aura HD	Mark 5 Aura/Aura H20	Mark 6 Glo HD	Release notes
  20160912	4.0.7523							4.0.7523 77.8MB	Release notes
  20151231	3.19.5761		3.19.5761 76.1MB	3.19.5761 96.2MB			3.19.5761 80.5MB	3.19.5761 79.2MB	3.19.5613 Release notes (same as previous) Patching instructions
  20131121	3.0.1	1.9.11	3.0.1		3.0.1				Pocket addition for 3.X!

• 20120904 Touch Firmware (2.1.1)
  About 80Megs. To update manually:
  
  • Connect kobo to computer, unzip file and put content in the ".kobo" directory.
    The zip file contains the following:
    
    • \Upgrade directory and subdirectories - Linux boot and kernel
    • manifest.md5sum - md5 hashes for the \Upgrade directory
    • KoboRoot.tgz - this is the firmware
  • Disconnect and reboot kobo. Update should start automagically.
  • It is recommended to reset to factory setting before doing so, but then you need to re-install your books and your stats are lost.
    
• Full list of dictionaries links.
• Enabling telnet and ftp
• Bypassing registration after manual firmware upgrade: see here
• Experimental plugin to make the Kobo do things :-) (2.1.5+)
• Java replacement for the Kobo interface (take that, kindle! :-)
• Trucs et astuces pour le Kobo (super !)
• Hacking the Kobo Touch for DUMMIES
• Hacking the Kobo Touch
• Blog with infos on releases
• Dozens of other ebooks ressources