Inbound is a Kobo Forma e-reader. The Forma is not the latest and greatest large-size e-reader from Kobo, but the last generation of this particular size. It’s selling at a better price1 than the e-reader I have been coveting since I purchased a Kindle Paperwhite some five years ago, the Kindle Oasis.
I decided on the Kobo after reading a few articles my Jason Snell, who reads way more books than me. He lauds Kobo’s typography and price, two things that could be improved from the Oasis. It also has better Libby/Overdrive support.
Changing platforms and devices always involves due consideration, and moving from Kindle to Kobo means moving from Instapaper to Pocket.
Instapaper, created by Marco Arment, employed an ingenious service whereby it would send an ebook digest of articles you added to Instapaper to your Kindle. At the time, Amazon’s Whispersync service was a defining feature of the device; this allowed for purchases–and Instapaper downloads–without a costly data plan attached to the Kindle.
Even under new ownership, Instapaper still sends digests to your Kindle , and it’s amazing. In fact, I don’t see a particular reason to use Instapaper outside of it, since most major browsers support a full screen, distraction-free version of the article you’re reading.
To be clear, this feature by itself isn’t enough to make me choose one platform of the other, although it did occur to me–after having ordered the Kobo–that my Instapaper flow would be disrupted. There’s no Instapaper support on Kobo.
But there is Pocket on Kobo.
Pocket is an Instapaper-like read-it-later service. I knew I had tried Pocket out; I reset my password and my saved articles were still there. It was late 2011 when I did. What was I reading?
- Joe Kissell’s review of Nisus Writer Pro 22;
- A bleak, poignant essay by David Rakof about cancer screening and the human interactions that fail to soften the blow of the seriousness of the undertaking;
- Lodging for a friend’s wedding;
- A funny but embarrassing video of a college acquaintance, drunk, who has publicly become both sober and fit;
- an article on fiscal austerity;
- How not to Kill a Cyclist;
- An argument against using test scores to measure teacher effectiveness;
- How to use Launchbar;
- An article about Obama’s popularity;
- children of hoarders;
- and article on ODD
There was more, but they’re all interesting to me, even now.
But that wasn’t my way as a school psychologist; I worked alone, doing my own thing, and my reports were my own. Everyone used the district-issued Windows box, while I carried a Mac around. I have written about this before, using Nisus Writer and even LaTeX to keep things interesting.
I don’t use Nisus at all these days, although I would were I writing psychological evaluation reports.
- minus some notable features, including stylus support on the Kobo, and audiobook support on both the Oasis and Kobo Sage ↩
- I did end up using Nisus Writer Pro for everything important after that review by Kissel. I talked about it the other day with a colleague; we were discussing how some teachers struck out and used Zoom during virtual instruction, while the district uses Google. Meet would be the obvious choice (I can be a company man and toe the line on things, and in the case of virtual instruction, I felt that using the same tool across the organization was the best choice). ↩