I got this thing the other day. But I suppose that isn’t the beginning of the story…
I’ve been buying Humble Bundles here and there, and since I’m very interested in the promos, I’ve agreed to let them send me emails about new Bundles and other related stuff. It was a couple months ago that I got an ad for Story Bundle, which is a similar idea, but they sell bunched of e-books instead of video games.
Anyway, the Story Bundle advertised was the third bundle of video game-related books. I wasn’t too interested, even though it included the entire run of Ray Barnholt’s Scroll magazine, which I really wanted, but would rather have the actual magaznies than epubs of. However, one word caught my eye and convinced me to drop the twelve bucks or whatever: Earthbound.
Yep, they sold me with a book about Earthbound. How was I supposed to resist that? You can present me with basically any piece about Earthbound and I’d gleefully read it. I just love the way that everybody seems to have a different story to tell about it. Anyway, I read that book right away on my phone, since I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. It was a painful experience, trying to read a novel on such a tiny screen. It was then that I decided it was finally time to pick up an eReader.
I kind of forgot about that mission for a while though.
Last weekend, the wife and I were killing some time in Chapters before a movie, and I noted that there was a big kiosk covered in eReaders. We talked about it and looked at them for a while, and decided to think about it and make our decision after looking around the rest of the store. I hung out in the comics section while she browsed, and when we reconvened, we selected the Kobo Arc 7HD.
This, I should note, is not really an eReader. It’s a straight-up tablet that’s very transparently masquerading as an eReader. See, I originally wanted to go cheap, but then we decided we wanted a colour screen, and from there it wasn’t a much more expensive leap to this bad girl. She was on sale too, so if there was ever a time to make a spontaneous technology purchase, that was it.
I never really wanted a tablet, but I couldn’t be happier with my purchase. I’m still not very familiar with the Android OS, but I’m getting there, and it’s been fun to learn how to use a new device. I’ve discovered that I really love reading on it, which I didn’t think I would. I love the feel and smell of a book, but the tablet is just so comfortable and light. I really had no idea how little I would miss flipping pages.
It’s also become my second favourite way to browse the internet. It loses out to the Wii U gamepad because I prefer browsing with a stylus to a finger, but it’s certainly more convenient, since the startup time is quite literally two seconds.
The only thing I dislike about this tablet is that it doesn’t have an SD card slot. Not that that’s really a huge issue, because I’ve been living with an iPhone for four and a half years now, but I may have shopped around a little more if I’d even thought about that beforehand. Also, I bought the thing to read books, not for games or music or movies. Sure, it can do those things, but I don’t see myself using it for them often, if at all.