Can This Notebook Replace My ThinkPads (Kobo Libra Color)
This article is a transcript of a video that you can watch by clicking the thumbnail below. Hence, certain statements may not make sense in this text form, and watching the video instead is recommended.
Intro
Can this Notebook possibly replace my ThinkPads? First of all, what is this notebook? Alright, so this was a clickbait of sorts. And this isn’t a regular notebook, but a Kobo Libra Color e-reader in a custom carry case that makes it look like a “retro” notebook. Let’s talk about my reasons for considering one.
Why an e-reader?
I’ve used this 7” Samsung Galaxy Tab as my daily driver mobile phone back in 2012, and this device isn’t a great fit for this use case, and for a bunch of reasons. To mention a few, for a 13-year-old device, the battery is doing OK, but it still runs down pretty quickly, the screen isn’t that big, neither in terms of the physical dimensions, nor the screen resolution, and like all other older mobile devices, this thing has lost much of its software support and runs pretty slow, even on a de-bloated aftermarket Android ROM.
The ThinkPad X1 Nano, although it still amuses me with its dimensions and weight, is too large to be carried as an e-reader.
And yes, I also carried physical books with me for a few weeks, but then that comes with its own set of limitations, like the anxiety of damaging the pages while turning them, and then also being limited to a single book at once, unless you carry a mini library of books with you, which isn’t practical.
And Then Comes the Kobo Libra Color
This device pretty much removes all the troubles with its perfect size and aspect ratio, a proper e-ink display, weeks-long battery capacity, and a few GigaBytes of internal data storage. This carry case just adds to its intuitiveness, and as a package, it makes a perfect reading companion.
Why Kobo, you’d ask? Well, I would never buy an Amazon product, so Kindle was out of the picture right away, and Kobo was one of the only brands that offered what I was looking for, which was an eBook reader, and not an Android tablet with an e-ink display, for example.
Bonus Learning
While exploring the world of e-readers, I also learned about two other things that I doubt I would’ve ever known existed, or at least tried myself.
- Calibre is the perfect free eBook software that one can install on a personal computer to not only sync eBooks to an e-reader, but also manage their reading library. This software supports not only Kobo, but also all other e-reader brands you can practically think of. It even has other features like fetching and syncing news articles in the form of a book to your e-reader, every time you connect it to your computer, and automatically delete them when they’re a certain number of days old.
- Overdrive is an amazing service through which one can connect to a public library and get access to books and audiobooks using their library subscription. I’ve personally tried it, and it works great.
Battery Charge Thresholds
Now, like all my other electronic gadgets, I looked for a way to enable battery charge thresholds on this device. Even though there isn’t anything like that here, I guess the need isn’t as much either, as compared to the Steam Deck, for example, you’ll barely find yourself charging the battery as it literally lasts for weeks, and even months for a user like me with comparatively lesser use.
Conclusion
So, coming back to the question of whether this notebook can replace my ThinkPads, absolutely not! Having said that, I’m glad I got an opportunity to explore this genre of electronics hardware as well, and it's great to sometimes not worry about my QWERTY keyboard and instead just leave the house with a G-Shock on my wrist and a book in my hands. I do carry it to work every single day, even when I leave behind my ThinkPads.