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Reading the New York Times On a Kindle 2
reifman links to his thorough and thoughtful review of the experience of reading a newspaper on the Kindle 2. "I've been eager to try The New York Times on the Kindle 2; here's my review with a basic video walk-through and screenshots. I give the Kindle 2 version of The Times a B. Software updates could bring it up to an A-. Kindle designers should have learned more from the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, my Kindle display scratched less than 24 hours after it arrived. As I detail in the review, Amazon customer service was not very accommodating. Is it my fault — or will Kindle 2 evolve into an Apple 1G Nano-like $22.5M settlement? You can read about Hearst's e-reader for newspapers from earlier today on Slashdot."
You're forced to create an account and then send pdfs and text files to an email associated with the account for a fee ($0.20 per file or something like that). It's difficult, and Amazon has everything locked down.
You can't load pdfs directly on to the Kindle but instead of sending the file to youraccount@kindle.com for $0.10, you can send it to youraccount@free.kindle.com and it will send you back a link to the converted file which you can download and load on to you Kindle via USB. You can load text files directly on to it. Also, Kindle supports unencrypted Mobi-pocket format, so you can use any available mobi creator to convert pdfs and other documents.
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You obviously never even looked at the website, let alone read a review of the thing.
I think they're kind of lame(no removeable storage, non-removable battery), but my wife recently got one, so I know that:
A)You can(not must) send PDFs to an account for translation. It costs $.10 if you send it via the cell network(duh, that costs money). If you transfer them by computer, it costs $0.00 My wife, being an artsy type, has the Adobe suite, so she just converts them herself if they aren't just used as an image container.
B)You can just plug it in a USB port and copy plain text to it like a thumb drive, albeit with no meaningful folder managment. She has loaded it up with a bunch of ebooks she already had in plain text, plus the aforementioned converted PDFs.
From experience with the Kindle 1, which I've had for ~ 6 months, its a very durable device with the exception of direct pressure on the screen. I've accidentally spritzed it with water and soap, so as long as you're not giving it a bath it does fine. I stick it in my backpack on the way to school and takes a fair amount of abuse that way.
However, the one sticky point is that the screen is very susceptible to direct pressure on the screen. Because the e-ink relies on a glass backing for its operation, if you lean too heavily on it, it will shatter and the screen will be non-functional. This happened to mine when I had it on my bed and it disappeared under some blankets and I put my palm down on it crawling back into bed. Fortunately, I had a very good experience with Amazon customer service and received a new one within a few days. Keeping it in its leather carrying case and being aware of it eliminates those problems for the most part, and it can take quite a bit of abuse with just minimal precautions.
With how thin the new version is, and the fact that the case doesn't come standard, I wonder if the screen isn't more durable on Kindle 2. Can't say I'd want to test it myself though...
Seriously? Every time with this shit?
Let me summarize the obvious: reflective display, not an LCD, ie you can actually read on it; first more-or-less practical generation of a new technology, as with everything else in the entire history of all technology, price will come down as it becomes more popular.
What is so fiendishly difficult to grasp?
sic transit gloria mundi
I think you've missed the whole point of PDFs. They are meant to preserve formatting.
People use PDFs for the same reason they don't use HTML or plain text for said documents, and vice versa.
Now if the documents you want are perfectly readable as plain text you should blame the source for using an unsuitable format, rather than hating the format for doing what it is supposed to do.
I want all the benefits of paper books but without wasting all the space on books.
Let me help... libraries... buy/sell used books... a bookcase... or, a $400 gizmo that will be useless one way or another inside of a year.
Well, considering the Kindle already runs Linux, I'd say it's more of a matter of time until somebody figures "something" out.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
It ain't difficult, you're spreading FUD.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Um, they do allow Authors to give their content away. I downloaded a free e-book from Amazon over the weekend.
The sheer amount of ignorance on this forum has been STAGGERING. What the hell is wrong with you people?
And if you look up the Kindle Wikipedia page, they list off a dozen stores that sell and give away books that are readable on the Kindle.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
-in case the Kindle should be lost/broken or I buy a newer model, then all books are lost, too?
No, book purchases are tied to your Amazon.com account, not to the device. You can redownload any of them on a new device. This includes books that get pulled from the Amazon.com store after the date of purchase! (I have a Kindle, I tested this)
- in case I switch to a different brand of ebook reader, I'm stuck with a load of unreadable books?
Yes. Hopefully Amazon will switch to the ePub format for more openness soon.
- I cannot loan a book to a friend, except by giving him the whole device?
Yep, although you can share with family who have a second or third device on the same account.
- I cannot try to remove the DRM, otherwise Amazon will kill my service?
That's pretty standard, isn't it? However, I haven't seen any cases of service getting cut off, or anyone even trying to break the DRM.
- Amazon is snooping what documents I have on my reader?
Only the documents you bought from them. They back up your annotations and bookmarks for the books you purchased from them, but not from any books you got from other sources or created yourself. You can also turn this feature off, if the idea of Amazon poking its nose in your stuff bothers you. Or you can never turn the wireless on and do all book purchases by USB, just to be completely paranoid.
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The end of the story is that proprietary formats and DRM suck, but that's the way it is and is going to be until Amazon can break away from it the way Apple did.
For the record: Amazon's .azw format is really just .mobi with the DRM. So if you can break the DRM, you can read the book on any device that can read .mobi, from Palm Pilots to computers. The tricky thing is that some of the books they sell are in .tpz (Topaz, sometimes .azw1) which allows them to imbed fonts in the file. I presume that this is an evolution of .mobi, but we really don't know, and other readers might not be able to handle it.
Not true at all. I just spent the weekend converting all the e-books I had purchased on Baen's webscription site for the Kindle. Bean has a link in the download section of each book to "convert to Kindle format". You enter you kindle email and go. Now you can enter the email address @kindle.com and it will convert and use Whispernet to push it to the reader. That costs $0.10 per book. Or you can use the @free.kindle.com address. The conversion happens and a link is sent to download the e-book to your computer. It's then a simple drag and drop to the Kindle and you're good to go. That one costs nothing.
Incidentally, this option is available for the "Free Library" section at Baen which has a pretty extensive collection of their published authors.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
Completely untrue. If you want the convenience of emailing documents directly to your Kindle over Whispernet there's a potential charge (they don't actually charge it). You can transfer a gazillion files to the Kindle over the USB cable for no charge.
Don't people at Slashdot ever feel like they have to have to slightest knowledge about what they're commenting on? As some one else said, the amount of misinformation here is just STAGGERING.
There is always the iRex 1000 or iRex iLiad if you want a larger screen.