Kobo standalone? (never want to connect to Kobo, or activate)

[Future Science]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Why not for the insert use the named column approach:

INSERT INTO user (UserID, UserKey, UserDisplayName, UserEmail, ___DeviceID) values(list of 5 values)

This way the syntax need not change as tables change.

Hi Peter,
I've tried to use sqlite only once, without much success.

Should I open a terminal (I'm on Linux), cd the directory of the Kobo squile file, then:

sqlite3> 
INSERT INTO user (UserID, UserKey, UserDisplayName, UserEmail, ___DeviceID) values(list of 5 values)

Am I correct?

I just want to remove my registered email address and give my Kobo Glo away.

Performing this operation is going to delete all my settings and books on the Kobo?

[PeterT]

Do you want to give the device away WITH content or WITHOUT?

[Future Science]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Do you want to give the device away WITH content or WITHOUT?

With content since I'll be giving it to my parents.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Future Science

With content since I'll be giving it to my parents.

There are effectively three types of content:

- kepubs purchased from Kobo and download directly to the device. These are linked to your Kobo account. If you sign out, they disappear. I haven't tried it, but I think if you change the user table as has been discussed, the books will still be there, but won't open.

- Sideloaded with DRM. For these to be readable, you need to authorise the device using ADE. Signing out of the Kobo account will remove the authorisation. The books will still be on the device, but will not be readable until you authorise the device with the same Adobe account.

- Sideloaded without DRM. There will be no problems with these.

What the best thing to do depends on what you want your parents to see. If you leave it logged in, they will see all your books. If you want to buy them a book, buy it under your account and have them sync.

You can also create a Kobo account for them. With that, they don't see your purchased books, and have to buy their own.

If you fake it in the database, they won't be able to buy and download books from Kobo, so all books have to be sideloaded

For all three methods, you can sideload books. You can also authorise the devices for Adobe and sideload DRM books.

I'm not sure which is the best option. The first is the simplest, but they get to see what you read. The other two are pretty much the same, but them having a real Kobo account might be more flexible (allows them to buy books). The last means you dump a pile of books on the device and forget about it until they have read them all.

[Future Science]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There are effectively three types of content:

- kepubs purchased from Kobo and download directly to the device. These are linked to your Kobo account. If you sign out, they disappear. I haven't tried it, but I think if you change the user table as has been discussed, the books will still be there, but won't open.

- Sideloaded with DRM. For these to be readable, you need to authorise the device using ADE. Signing out of the Kobo account will remove the authorisation. The books will still be on the device, but will not be readable until you authorise the device with the same Adobe account.

- Sideloaded without DRM. There will be no problems with these.

What the best thing to do depends on what you want your parents to see. If you leave it logged in, they will see all your books. If you want to buy them a book, buy it under your account and have them sync.

You can also create a Kobo account for them. With that, they don't see your purchased books, and have to buy their own.

If you fake it in the database, they won't be able to buy and download books from Kobo, so all books have to be sideloaded

For all three methods, you can sideload books. You can also authorise the devices for Adobe and sideload DRM books.

I'm not sure which is the best option. The first is the simplest, but they get to see what you read. The other two are pretty much the same, but them having a real Kobo account might be more flexible (allows them to buy books). The last means you dump a pile of books on the device and forget about it until they have read them all.

Thank you for your very complete and informative answer!

I think that they'll mainly sideload older ePubs from Gutenberg and similar websites (they just read older books / classics), but I prefer the flexibility so I'll keep it as it is, apart from restoring nickel / getting rid of koreader + KSM.

[PeterT]

An update to what I had said earlier

INSERT INTO user (UserID, UserKey, UserDisplayName, UserEmail) values("00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000","00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000","MyDummyUser@dummy.com","MyDummyUser@dummy.com")

(I don't think __deviceid is needed so lowered it to 4 values)

Just remember that the UserID has to be unique within the User table.

This approach SHOULD be independent of database version.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Future Science

Thank you for your very complete and informative answer!

I think that they'll mainly sideload older ePubs from Gutenberg and similar websites (they just read older books / classics), but I prefer the flexibility so I'll keep it as it is, apart from restoring nickel / getting rid of koreader + KSM.

If you have a current version of Koreader, you might want to check out the OPDS function that lets you search and download from a number of the free catalogs, including Project Gutenberg.

Luck;
Ken

[Alpha o]

Rather interesting. My original Nook simply will not list over 200 books. I have an 8G sd card and it is mostly empty. Having an SD card is a must as I will not use Amazon, B&N, Google for any books. I will buy from Baen and other independents. I happen to like Sci Fi and other books that I might want have not been put into ereader form.

I tried the small Nook, gave them a phony email and just loaded to the SD card. Reader didn't feel right, too small. The original Nook was just right. Touch only doesn't bother me. I have a smart phone and the Acer tablet.

Is it true if you don't use wifi, you can just use it as a reader? I don't need updates, I search for books on a computer, and I transfer via changing SD cards. Can you just input a fake name and addy and turn off wifi?

I have a wifi only tablet that has all on it, but it can get heavy, and the screen has reflections and glare.

If it sorts either by author or alphabetically, I'm good. The Nook had shelves and I never used them.

I have all books, music backed up. I figured I paid for it, I'm keeping it, (I don't share)
I prefer to buy and download to computer rather than device.

Thanks

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Alpha o

Rather interesting. My original Nook simply will not list over 200 books. I have an 8G sd card and it is mostly empty. Having an SD card is a must as I will not use Amazon, B&N, Google for any books. I will buy from Baen and other independents. I happen to like Sci Fi and other books that I might want have not been put into ereader form.

I tried the small Nook, gave them a phony email and just loaded to the SD card. Reader didn't feel right, too small. The original Nook was just right. Touch only doesn't bother me. I have a smart phone and the Acer tablet.

Is it true if you don't use wifi, you can just use it as a reader? I don't need updates, I search for books on a computer, and I transfer via changing SD cards. Can you just input a fake name and addy and turn off wifi?

I have a wifi only tablet that has all on it, but it can get heavy, and the screen has reflections and glare.

If it sorts either by author or alphabetically, I'm good. The Nook had shelves and I never used them.

I have all books, music backed up. I figured I paid for it, I'm keeping it, (I don't share)
I prefer to buy and download to computer rather than device.

Thanks

You never mention a Kobo device, do you have a question on Nooks or tablets? If so there are other forums that address issues with those devices.

If you are asking the questions in your third paragraph, of Kobo devices in general, then the answer is yes.

Luck;
Ken

[Alpha o]

Sorry, this didn't paste.
Kobo N905-Kbo-L Kobo Touch 6-Inch E Ink Screen
Just ordered from Amazon. Haven't received yet.

My Acer A500 holds all the books, but the 10" device is heavy and I prefer e ink for reading. The phone screen, while 5.5" is not comfortable to really read for pleasure on.
The same problem with glare.

I hope this fora has most of the answers - for the Nook, it says factory reset. For some reason, mine won't. I had B&N try to restore so I could give it to daughter. They tried for a couple of hours and it was a no-go. It still works, but I must have collected 500 books, mostly from Creative Commons license, and places like Gutenberg. I download to computer and transfer via USB. It will not accept more than 200 books at one time.

I read the specs on the KOBO and the card and reading from card is a necessity.

The Acer tablet and FB reader don't care. The phone accepts PDFs and also has no restrictions on how many. The NP service puts out free guide info, and there are also free roadlogs for travel, mostly in PDF. I have The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders which is an 82M PDF file. ( I bought it from scientific book publisher) As I said before, glare and backlit are a problem and tablet gets heavy after while.

I dislike being a marketing statistic. I have an Android phone, so I only use Google Play store for apps. I have a Windows computer, so I want nothing extra from MS. I have not bought ebooks from Amazon, B&N or Google. There's Booksamillion and a few other independents that I will buy from. Baen and Double Dragon sell. I'm not just hunting free books. I store all books on an external HD for backup.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Alpha o

Sorry, this didn't paste.
Kobo N905-Kbo-L Kobo Touch 6-Inch E Ink Screen
Just ordered from Amazon. Haven't received yet.

My Acer A500 holds all the books, but the 10" device is heavy and I prefer e ink for reading. The phone screen, while 5.5" is not comfortable to really read for pleasure on.
The same problem with glare.

I hope this fora has most of the answers - for the Nook, it says factory reset. For some reason, mine won't. I had B&N try to restore so I could give it to daughter. They tried for a couple of hours and it was a no-go. It still works, but I must have collected 500 books, mostly from Creative Commons license, and places like Gutenberg. I download to computer and transfer via USB. It will not accept more than 200 books at one time.

I read the specs on the KOBO and the card and reading from card is a necessity.

The Acer tablet and FB reader don't care. The phone accepts PDFs and also has no restrictions on how many. The NP service puts out free guide info, and there are also free roadlogs for travel, mostly in PDF. I have The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders which is an 82M PDF file. ( I bought it from scientific book publisher) As I said before, glare and backlit are a problem and tablet gets heavy after while.

I dislike being a marketing statistic. I have an Android phone, so I only use Google Play store for apps. I have a Windows computer, so I want nothing extra from MS. I have not bought ebooks from Amazon, B&N or Google. There's Booksamillion and a few other independents that I will buy from. Baen and Double Dragon sell. I'm not just hunting free books. I store all books on an external HD for backup.

I can't find a question in there. I am guessing that you want to know if the Touch can perform to match the things you mention here. For Kobo it seems that they are all about marketing statistics, but as mentioned here you can disable/hamper the devices ability to phone home.

As to PDFs, I would recommend that you add Koreader to your Touch, most prefer its handling of PDFs, over the stock readers.

Luck;
Ken

[Alpha o]

Guess the question was, will it read (recognize) all the books you have on the card? Are they all available in list form at once? If you have 500, can you scroll through all 500?

I think I saw a 32G card mentioned somewhere in a review. Someone said the Kobo only had 1G of internal memory, but it didn't matter as it had an external SD card. I'm only using an 8G card, with a very minimal amount used.

Problem with the reviews, most of the features that get a thumbs down (no carrier data, no sync, etc.) are things I simply don't care about. Such a hurry to get to the negatives, some positive or other helpful information is left out.

I do understand that if you don't register, you don't get a lot of services, but I don't need the services. I simply don't sync. I swap cards.

[Ken Maltby]

I have ~7000 files on my external uSD card. They are in a structure of ~50 folders. This is for Koreader, the stock software uses a database approach not files in folders.

Luck;
Ken

[PeterT]

Noo... the stock software also stores books in folders, either on the internal storage or the external card.

The metadata (titles / chapter info for ePubs) is also stored in a database. This database is then used to store what Kobo call Collections; ie a book can be in any number of collections.

However, when an external card is removed from the device, the book records are removed from the database. I'm not sure but I think that includes Collection data. On reinserting the external card the books are reprocessed, however I doubt that the Collections are recreated.

I'm also not sure if the Touch supports 32Gb uSD cards.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Alpha o

Guess the question was, will it read (recognize) all the books you have on the card? Are they all available in list form at once? If you have 500, can you scroll through all 500?

I think I saw a 32G card mentioned somewhere in a review. Someone said the Kobo only had 1G of internal memory, but it didn't matter as it had an external SD card. I'm only using an 8G card, with a very minimal amount used.

I have a Touch which has an SD card with about 1200 books on it. It has no problems displaying them in the library lists. It can take a bit of time with the initial load of the books. The firmware processes them to load details into an internal database. I think it was about two hours the last time I did it.

I don't use the Touch much. I usually use a Glo. I don't bother with an SD card in it, but have about 1500 books on the internal memory. Again, processing them in one go takes a while, but I this is an accumulation of books over the last couple of years.

You can scroll through 500 books easily enough, but, I rarely do. The search works well, there are collections, the list can be filtered by reading status and it can be sorted. I'll scroll through the first five or size pages to look for something I know I loaded recently, but, use the search more than anything else.

Problem with the reviews, most of the features that get a thumbs down (no carrier data, no sync, etc.) are things I simply don't care about. Such a hurry to get to the negatives, some positive or other helpful information is left out.

I do understand that if you don't register, you don't get a lot of services, but I don't need the services. I simply don't sync. I swap cards.

Swapping cards doesn't work that well. You can pull a card out, add books to it and then put it back in. The device will handle any changes - add new books to the library and remove deleted books. But, if you take a card out and put a different one in, then removes the books that were on the first card from the database and adds all the ones on the new card. If you swap them again, it does the same thing.