Whitcoulls & Borders to sell Kobo e-readers and e-books from next month

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Whitcoulls & Borders to sell Kobo e-readers and e-books from next month

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#335527 27-May-2010 14:48

The whitcoulls site is now showing the price of the Kobo reader/

It is $295.

bazzer

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#335530 27-May-2010 15:03

That's about $50 too much I reckon.

wferreira

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#335531 27-May-2010 15:04

bazzer: That's about $50 too much I reckon.

Nearly the same price as Amazon.com, not included the shipping.

KellyP

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#335533 27-May-2010 15:10

shermanp: The whitcoulls site is now showing the price of the Kobo reader/

It is $295.

Hmmm... thats AU$237.59

It's AU$199 over in Aussie.

Fair difference?

sbowness

225 posts

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#335534 27-May-2010 15:11

I suppose that's what happens when you are first to market with a new product. With no Kindle and no Nook and no Sony Reader to compete against you can pick your price point.

kiwired23

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#335537 27-May-2010 15:11

Expecting it to be around $250, I'd almost convinced myself to buy one. At $295 I'm going to wait and see if there will be a new ipod touch announcement to go with the new iphone expected in June.

robbyp

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#335539 27-May-2010 15:30

kiwired23: Expecting it to be around $250, I'd almost convinced myself to buy one. At $295 I'm going to wait and see if there will be a new ipod touch announcement to go with the new iphone expected in June.

Ipod touches are usually released later in the year and not released with the iphone. However there is a new ipod protoype with a camera doing the rounds.

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sbowness

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#335543 27-May-2010 15:44

kiwired23: Expecting it to be around $250, I'd almost convinced myself to buy one. At $295 I'm going to wait and see if there will be a new ipod touch announcement to go with the new iphone expected in June.

I've been looking at this for a few weeks in anticipation. I have an iPhone with the Kindle and Stanza readers on there and they're ok. However, all of the reviews of eink readers that I've read say that the experience is much better with an eink device than an LCD screen, particularly in low light.

In my mind, the comparison would be between the Kobo and the iPad.

kiwired23

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#335548 27-May-2010 15:55

On my budget $250 takes quite a bit of planning (my ipod touch certainly did). An iPad is out of my price range by a wide margin.

keewee01

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#335552 27-May-2010 16:04

James Bond:
shermanp: The whitcoulls site is now showing the price of the Kobo reader/

It is $295.

Hmmm... thats AU$237.59

It's AU$199 over in Aussie.

Fair difference?

Nope!

shermanp

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#335555 27-May-2010 16:07

Well, I just took a wonder down to whitcoulls to have a look at the reader in person.

I already have a Sony PRS-505, which has the same screen, so I knew what to expect there.

My first impressions:

It's not the fasted ebook reader ever to be released. Page turns in a book were fine and about on par with my 505. Scanning an SD card was SLOW, especially since the card was empty except for two epub files. Opening the Table of Contents wasn't especially fast either, although wasn't all that slow either.

One of my books worked perfectly, the other refused to open because of Adobe ID issues. Not sure why that is, but may have had something to do with being a DRM stripped commercial ebook.

The device gives you a choice of five (5) font sizes to chose from. The default size is 3, so you can go smaller and larger if you wish. This is better than my 505, which defaults to the smallest of three sizes.

The Kobo reader allows you to choose between Sans Serif and Serif fonts for reading. The Serif font does not include an italics variant, so all italics in books are emulated. This is no different from most ebook readers that use ADE though (my Sony is the same).

Menu navigation is simple and basic. Use the special buttons on the left side to access the menus, and the D-pad on the front to move and select items. Menu navigation is not too slow.

There looks to be no way of grouping books into collections/groups.

As previously mentioned, the reader includes an SD slot to load books from it.

The default reading experience of a well constructed epub is rather attractive, especially coming from my 505. It's not that there's really any differences in supported rendering features, books just seem to be presented more atractively.

Those are just some impressions from spending about 5-10 minutes with the Kobo reader in store.

Note: the free books aren't necessarily a good example of how well epub books can look. The formatting of them is very basic.

sbowness

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#335559 27-May-2010 16:26

keewee01:
James Bond:
shermanp: The whitcoulls site is now showing the price of the Kobo reader/

It is $295.

Hmmm... thats AU$237.59

It's AU$199 over in Aussie.

Fair difference?

Nope!

Actually, if you were to buy it with your credit card on today's exchange rate it would be more like NZD255.00 without taking into account any freight costs.

keewee01

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#335562 27-May-2010 16:35

sbowness:
keewee01:
James Bond:
shermanp: The whitcoulls site is now showing the price of the Kobo reader/

It is $295.

Hmmm... thats AU$237.59

It's AU$199 over in Aussie.

Fair difference?

Nope!

Actually, if you were to buy it with your credit card on today's exchange rate it would be more like NZD255.00 without taking into account any freight costs.

So therefore I should be able to buy it here in NZ for about $250... still a $40/$45 difference...

Ok, with economies of scale, sure it will always be slightly cheaper 'over the ditch', but we shouldn't be paying 20% more here!

Even converting the American price and added a decent amount for shipping ($US20) it still works out that they should only about approx $255 here - and that's on shipping a single unit! We ARE being ripped off - IMHO.

KellyP

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#335589 27-May-2010 17:25

keewee01: We ARE being ripped off - IMHO.

Yet again... sadly.

WaxerNZ

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#335595 27-May-2010 17:57

250 was my highest that I had in mind. Considering how gimped it is. There has to be a budget apeal for avg joe. I imagine anyone else is smart enough to work out how to use a web store or ebay and get a far superior product for another $50-100.
I can wait. Computex is only days away. Pixel qi will supposidly be showing off 6 devices that all use their screen tech. E-ink lcd combo with quick refresh and the option of a diy kit for those with netbooks already.

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