Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

I don't believe it's toast at all. If ebooks are competitively priced and easy to buy, people will buy them. Apple's gone a long way to proving that with its music and app stores.

Also, most people don't know how to use BT, much less set it up to download a working copy of the book they want. No industry is dying due to BT despite their foaming-mouth claims.

In the UK at least so many ebooks are more expensive than the paperback versions. And many ebooks available in the US aren't available in the UK - presumably because of Euro-VAT on ebooks and whatnot. Considering the publishing industry has had a decade-long heads-up on this from music and video I think they've shown incredible lack of forethought. Think when ebook torrenting begins in earnest its all over...

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In the UK at least so many ebooks are more expensive than the paperback versions. And many ebooks available in the US aren't available in the UK - presumably because of Euro-VAT on ebooks and whatnot. Considering the publishing industry has had a decade-long heads-up on this from music and video I think they've shown incredible lack of forethought. Think when ebook torrenting begins in earnest its all over...

― Stevie T, Tuesday, 1 March 2011 23:20 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yep, I agree 100%. The same crap happens here – some ridiculous recent decision to maintain ancient parallel import laws means all our books are obscenely overpriced. Last week I imported a book from the UK at almost half the local shelf price. Many of our ebooks are also overpriced and the range is crap (some publishers simply won't allow their products to be sold in this territory), so the only way to get those ebooks is via... certain means.

My post upthread refers to a desirable point in the near future. Right now it's difficult to justify spending $10 on an ebook when (a) other countries get the same book for less, (b) the paperback is less again and (c) we're actively blocked from purchasing some books, but I trust competition (including piracy) to change all that.

the send-to-kindle thing is really the best thing ever, especially if you're a writer. a geographically-distant friend and i have been exchanging fiction by just sending it to each others' kindles--the kindle owner doesn't even have to do anything; he just wakes up one morning and there's the other guy's short story.

also i read my EMP talk from my kindle. basically i haven't printed anything out since i got it.

anyone had issues with converting PDFs using the @free.kindle.com address? I assume it's automated at amazon's end?

it's automated, yeah, although i found the formatting didn't work very well (for the one thing i tried). DOCs and plaintext seem to be ideal.

broke my 2nd kindle (got up on the bed and put my hand down on the kindle and crrrrack, top half of screen is now frozen. not to worry, amazon sent one out instantly but it's currently lost in the depths of the uk post service as i wasn't in to sign for it today).

first time was a huge pain as i had to recreate all my collections again. had the books backed up on my pc so no major worry but putting 300 books back into collections was agony.

anyway i hunted about and realised that if set your pc to show system files then just copy the previously hidden 'system' folder in the root of the kindle (should be about 47mb) then it'll keep all the collection structure intact. or at least some json file in there does.

so so glad i found this as it'll save me like 2 hours of clicky slog. hope it helps some of you ilx bros out there

i tried reading the alistair campbell diaries, but it was a pdf with a weird layout - the text was kinda small and centred with a huge white margin but on the very edge of the margin theres a |_ type shape, which means the kindle can't zoom in to show just the main text, making it unreadable as the text is just too small. so i converted it to mobi using calibre but the structure is all screwed, with page numbers interupting it all the time. does anyone know of a good guide on how to fix these little annoyances?

another calibre gripe, when i try to send a downloaded newspaper mobi file to my kindle it just won't work, blames the email address but i've tried a bunch of different ones and all the same. anyone have a similar problem? it's not a major deal as i can just mail it or drag it on there manually but it'd be nice to fix it

Really considering going with the Color Nook. The ability to read PDFs and Word docs (but, sadly, not edit) would really come in handy when I need to look over drawings or specs on the road and I like the idea of Android apps.

I'm reading mostly PDFs on my K3. Most of the time zooming to 150% and making the text one step darker works perfectly. I love this thing. Have gotten thru a few ebooks/texts of varying lengths since December - something that rarely happens with my (beloved) paper books.

did amazon discontinue their £30 versh of the cover?

the light-less cover actually screws up the device (it keeps restarting at random) so they discontinued it. i just sent mine back for this reason

"i tried reading the alistair campbell diaries, but it was a pdf with a weird layout - the text was kinda small and centred with a huge white margin but on the very edge of the margin theres a |_ type shape, which means the kindle can't zoom in to show just the main text, making it unreadable as the text is just too small."

you could shop off the white space using briss: http://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/

ahhhhhh, did not know that. assume they'll reissue it at some point once they have a fix xp

just learned about this, p.cool

Okay, the Kindle's coolest feature isn't even a "Kindle feature" at all. Project Gutenberg, the huge public domain e-book repository, has created a Magic Catalog of its tens of thousands of Kindle-formatted offerings.

The Magic Catalog is a text file of all these e-books, complete with links to the Kindle version of the file. Download the Magic Catalog to your Kindle, open it like a regular book, and use the search feature to find favorite authors or titles. Then click on the URL, and the Kindle's Web browser pops open, downloads the book, and puts it atop your library on the home screen.

Forget the more tedious process of transferring material to the Kindle from your computer; this is the way to go, and the small file size of most books means that downloading anything, even over the 3G data network, is almost instantaneous.

This doesn't work well for foreign literature, since the best modern translations are still under copyright; use Project Gutenberg and you might well end up with some 18th century Alexander Pope rhyming couplet version of a classic work. But for English-language originals, this is terrific. Because it makes the material so easy to access and read, I've already plowed through huge amounts of material, from Byron's Don Juan to the Communist Manifesto to a P.G. Wodehouse novel.

If it always seemed like too much work to actually track down a copy of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Project Gutenberg makes it simple to find, and Kindle makes it simple to read.

oh awesome.

Fantastic! My Kindle comes through in a few days, this is most likely the very first thing I'll do on it.

the light-less cover actually screws up the device (it keeps restarting at random) so they discontinued it. i just sent mine back for this reason

― kl0ppa kl0ppa down (tpp), Thursday, March 10, 2011 2:21 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

whoah for real? i haven't had any problems with this (though i haven't had time for leisure reading lately

i ~have~ noticed not-great battery life---is that because the wireless is on? i've got the 3g/wireless vers

i ~have~ noticed not-great battery life---is that because the wireless is on?

i noticed this too, and yeah turning the wireless off helps, but more importantly (though totally unhelpfully), after i'd had the thing a month or so it suddenly started lasting way way longer. like it went from two days to a week. so i dunno if you have to "break it in" (i drained it to nothing and recharged to full a few times in that first month), or if my kindle's crazy, or if i am, but that happened.

You do have to break in lithium-ion batteries. It's the same with phones etc., they need 2-3 full discharge cycles before the battery life really picks up.

huh

oh and apparently the wireless hacks off about 25% of your available battery time so yeah, if that's a problem for you turn off the wireless and see what happens.

The Magic Catalog

3G wireless on goes through standby time at about 5-7x as fast as when it is off. Without 3G, I've seen standby times of 2 months+.

Also, when you first get it, and load it up with all your books, it burns through the battery indexing all the files for search.

Just upgraded from Kindle first generation to Kindle 3. Debated about whether to spring for the 3G but I realized that one day I'd be stuck in some cabin somewhere- or I'd be at home with malfunctioning WiFi- and just have to download that one more thing that would make my reading life perfect.

Noticed that with the line spacing the way it was the amount of text on the Kindle 1st gen was about half that of the 3rd and the same as that on the iPhone app.

If your phone acts as a wi-fi hotspot you don't need a 3G Kindle, unless you'ree ultrafanatical about whispersync.

^otm

Seems like I'd have to jailbreak my phone then put some buggy software on it to do that, and I don't want to go there.

4.3 has hotspot in it (3GS or better)

Thanks. Just downloaded 4.3, but in fact Personal Hotspot only comes on iPhone 4.

Really? I've got it on this 3Gs. That's dev build tho, poss different. Swizz if so, because it works fine.

Yes, looks like it was on there for a while and then they removed it when it went production.

magic catalog has magically stopped working for me

every time I click one of the links it says kindle unable to open the page :/

magic catalog has magically stopped working for me

every time I click one of the links it says kindle unable to open the page :/

ditto :(

Think gutenberg is up and down.

Also, after one instance of navigation error to the Gutenberg pages, the error page tends to redisplay with new links clicked, *but* it still DLs the new book asked for. Well, on mine at least.

gutenberg is/was moving servers, there's a note on the homepage.

have just installed KindleForPC under wine on linux laptop. just for larks, really. but the ease of clicking gutenburg links and having them download and pop up in the reader means i already have 12 things to read.

This thing is amazing. Suddenly the Kobo feels like a neglected stepchild.

I haven't used this in ages. I think I read one book from it. Maybe I'll just give mine away.

It either suits you or it doesn't. Nothing beats it for travelling though.

i'm considering this, is there anything i should know, or alternatives anyone would rep for?

Looking at the 3g etc model, if they ship to ireland, which can be tricky for electricals with amazon sometimes

I can't rep for anything else anymore. Kindles are the shit.

Unless you really need to (a) urgently buy books on the go and (b) urgently sync your current page with Amazon on the go every time you turn a page, get the wifi. If your phone has a hotspot feature or if you have regular exposure to a wifi hotspot, get the wifi. If you don't have a wifi thingy at home and you don't know wtf I'm talking about, get the 3G.

i have a wifi thingy at home, but am likely to be moving in the near future and wifi status is uncertain going fwd.

i do however have an awesome gf (whom i plan to be taking with me) who doesn't mind getting the 3G model for me.

ta for confirmation, i was 90% certain anyway

how is the quality of free public domain books on the kindle?

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/magiccatalog.html <--- 456735725186782 times better

Quality is reasonable ime

I should explain that link.

1. Open the link in your Kindle's browser
2. Let it save the file as a book on yer Kindle
3. Open the book (called "Magic Catalogue something-or-other")
4. Search for a book or author
5. Click the link to that book and it will download the book to your Kindle

the display on my kindle broke several weeks ago (by "broke" i mean, 2/3 of the screen was stuck looking like a scrambled cable channel). got another one under the warranty but after a few weeks the new one's screen is broken as well. i believe i can get yet another replacement. i think the culprit is my tendency to carelessly tossing my backpack around.

have you considered not tossing your backpack around