Like I did with the Kindle, I have some complaints about the Kobo Touch. Here they are:

1. Too much promotion
   When you first buy the device, there are featured books all over the place. I’m not really interested, and I understand that the device is partially subsidized by it, but I don’t like it. Fortunately, you can push the ads & etc aside so it doesn’t intrude on the UI.
2. Too much phoning home
   Reading on the web, it sounds like the device tracks itself using Google Analytics. Plus, there is already implicit tracking through Reading Life and the Awards. I disabled the Google Analytics tracking by using a hosts file on the device, but I’m not sure what else they may be doing.
3. Weird touch screen behaviour
   In the beginning I had lots of problems with the device not recognizing my touches when I wanted to turn a page. I had to resort to double clicking (which went ahead 2 pages) and then click back one page. It turns out that you have to tap and release quickly for it to recognize a click – something that is unintuitive.
4. Can’t highlight text across a page
   Or at least I can’t figure out how to do it. I think the workaround is to change the font so the text you want to highlight fits on one page, but I’m to lazy to do that!
5. Not enough awards
   “Awards” is the equivalent of badges which you can earn from reading books. It comes with about 20 awards, and I’m not close to attaining all of them, but I’m sure I will. I wish there were more awards (possibly this can be updated online).

Aside from the clicking, I don’t think any of these are terrible, so I am still fairly happy with the device.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: complaining, kobo