Amazon's Kindle

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Let us know about battery life. My sony (which is the older model whose battery life is supposedly shorter) could last a good amount of hours without a charge and would only eat more battery if you were changing pages too quickly (and still last for hours). Given that the kindle uses a cellular network it could potentially eat more battery, hence my curiosity.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Let us know about battery life. My sony (which is the older model whose battery life is supposedly shorter) could last a good amount of hours without a charge and would only eat more battery if you were changing pages too quickly (and still last for hours). Given that the kindle uses a cellular network it could potentially eat more battery, hence my curiosity.

Will do.

The cell thingy has a very convenient switch next to the main power...and I have it in the off position. 

I had it on earlier, playing around with the "shop for books wirelessly" option...and it works.   I wondered how well it might do that, but it's pretty clever.  First, I used the "browse the web" under "experimental" (this way, if this currently free feature gets abused, they can always defeat it claiming it was not even beta-testing...) I tried the Weather Underground, as that was in the list of pre-loaded bookmarks. 

That pretty quickly took me to a text-based version, with a little box, center-stage for keying in your location, and a button underneath.  Since there's no mouse, and only the "line-by-line" scroll-cursor, I moved opposite the text-box, and clicked.... a sub-context menu pops up, allowing text entry.  Put in my city, state as [tulsa, ok] and clicked on the wheel.  Then I went down a line to the "search" button and clicked again-- another sub-context menu pops up (generated by the Kindle's software) asking me which to click?  Box of text (for editing) or the button....I chose button.

It trundled a bit, and a local, current forecast/weather conditions pops up...again, all text which is fine.

Too cool.

So, how is the shop-for-books experience?

Not bad, not bad at all-- even has black-and-white representations of the book jacket's cover art.

Presented me with my familiar "recommended for you" list, filtered for books and filtered for kindle format.  Nice.

I browsed several titles, ended up downloading a few "trial pages" for free, and bought Pratchett's latest Discworld title, "Making Money".  Haven't opened any of those, will report later.

I wanted to use a search-specific of titles _I_ was thinking about, not recommended (and possibly pre-fetched).

Keyed in author:  "l neil smith" and there was one book by that author on the Kindle-format.  I got the sample text for that, too.

This is where I noticed at the bottom of the screen are some indicators I had not previously noted.  There was a cell-strength meter (showing full bars-- I was lying in bed during all this).  And a "all downloads are complete" message.

So I navigated back out of book-browsing, to the "home" screen, which is a list of the current files/books on the machine, including the SD card.   I turned the cell off, and the signal-strength bars went away, and a "off" symbol replaced that, telling me I'd turned off the cell.

I sorted by "newest first" and all the recent titles appeared, including "Making Money".

At that point, I put it away, and picked up the novel I was finishing....this one is in the Traditional Dead Tree and Lamp Black version....... 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Here's some comments I posted in another forum.  There may be some overlap, but most is new.

Well, I've had it for a day so far.  Battery life is holding up well-- but I always turn the cell off, unless I'm actually using it.

The cell-network is Sprint, so it has excellent major US coverage (rural areas may not work).  Overseas?  It won't work at all-- Sprint is non-existent outside the US.

I've used the "experimental" functions several times, now.  There is a primitive browser, that uses the Sprint data net.  Mostly, I've looked at the local weather (I made a bookmark for that...!)

The Kindle apparently only understands a single format:  Kindle-specific. It is closely tied to your Kindle's serial number, and the books are encrypted with that number.

Thus, if you already have books, you must e-mail them through Amazon's servers, back to either your PC (free) or through the cell-thing ($0.10/book) directly to the Kindle.

So far, I've converted 58 E-books that were in the LIT format-- I had to google a utility which converted these to DOC (microsoft word) and then, I e-mailed them via the free process back to my PC.

Putting these on the Kindle is as simple as adding files to a USB drive--for that is how your PC sees it:  two USB drives, with letters (on a Windoze machine.  On a Mac, would be similar I imagine).  Drag-and-drop, cut-and-paste, open a command-line and use XCOPY, each of these methods works (I've used all 3 so far).

The e-mail conversion takes roughly 1 to 3 minutes between the "send" and the "you have mail".  Downloading is quicker than the send, because it uses FTP within your browser, not e-mail ASME conversion.  The returned E-mail contains a clickable link to each of the books you sent for conversion.

I'm not that happy with the conversion of the DOC files, so I will locate the CD's that I got those books from-- they were included in a couple of Honor Harington (David Weber) hardbacks.   I had copied the LIT files into my pocket PC, and that is what I started with.  The original CD's had various other formats-- and I plan to experiment (the DOC format does not preserve title and author tags, for example).

I also converted roughly 30 PRC files-- (some pocket pc/palm format, I forget which) that I had from the Gutenberg Project.   These converted quite well.

There appears to be a way to publish your own content, which I'm thinking about doing-- the best seems to be convert to Moby Pocket version, then having Amazon convert that to the Kindle.   There is free software that lets you publish in the Moby format, with proper tags and such.

So far, I've enjoyed it immensely!

As J.E. Pournelle has said in the past, "recommended"

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

It doesn't read plain .txt format? With Project Gutemberg files in the sony, the only trick is to remove the carriage returns and the book is understood immediately (in fact is understood with the CRLFs but it may look like carp on screen), also with PDFs although the format can be a pain at times.

Sounds capable but convoluted. 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

It doesn't read plain .txt format? With Project Gutemberg files in the sony, the only trick is to remove the carriage returns and the book is understood immediately (in fact is understood with the CRLFs but it may look like carp on screen), also with PDFs although the format can be a pain at times.

Sounds capable but convoluted. 

It reads DOC format, if you send it off to be converted.  I haven't tried simple ASCII text, though--- worth a shot.

And, no, it only understands it's native, highly compressed and encrypted format.  A drawback if someone already has a huge library, as the conversion process takes some time, and is limited to the size of file you can send as an attachment.  You can ZIP them up (which I did), but they are "delivered" via a series of one-click per title in return (via FTP-link from within the e-mail)

I wish there was stand-alone software, but I think this is just a matter of time...Amazon has not made a serious effort to hide what they are doing.   Loads of conversation on various forums.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Discovered an interesting twist re: the buttons.

It seems that I had the large buttons wrong.

On the right, is a large page-advance button.  below that, is a small "back to previous menu" button.

On the left is a large page-back button, and below that, is a duplicate page-advance button.

Other than that, I'm enjoying it immensely.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

More on the Kindle....it's like learning to program all over again...FUN! (no, I thought learning to program was fun...if you don't think so, use another analogy instead...  )

I discovered quite by accident that the Kindle reads plain ASCII files just fine-- no need to convert them via the E-mail process (unless you wanted to send via wireless to the kindle, @$0.10/item).

Just dump into the memory a plain vanilla text file and it reads it just fine.  Of course, that file is not compressed in any way, but quite useful for putting your own notes about various things onto the Kindle.

For example, I have all of the Honor Harrington Universe by David Drake on E-book.  Whenever I drag those out to re-read, I always want to read them in order-- so I have a list of the order they are to be read in (which is basically the published date, but the Kindle does not sort by that).   Anyway, I made this list in good old NOTEPAD as a simple text (.TXT) file.

I dumped it into the Kindle-- and it hit me, what would it do with that file?  Answer:  it displays it just fine, no worries.   Useful.

I will now have to experiment with other format files, to see if I may skip the e-mail/convert step.  Will post here my findings.

[anthrobabe]

How tech savvy is the AB?



I thought it was kindling you could get via mail (post) now.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

How tech savvy is the AB?



I thought it was kindling you could get via mail (post) now.

Uuuhhh....sorry?   (you may safely assume I'm dense....what's 'AB'?)

[Pachyderm]

I'm going to guess it is herself, the AnthroBabe.

However, I may be wrong. It has happened once before.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

For project Gutenberg files I suggest you to download notepad++ and use the unwrap text plugin (under TextFX Edit). Given that the size of books isn't that big compression isn't really that necessary much less if you have a 4Gb card.

Try placing a pdf in it too. The sony reads them with no problem.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

For project Gutenberg files I suggest you to download notepad++ and use the unwrap text plugin (under TextFX Edit). Given that the size of books isn't that big compression isn't really that necessary much less if you have a 4Gb card.

Try placing a pdf in it too. The sony reads them with no problem.

Excellent idea-- but the e-mail/compression routine is not onerous at all, and I do like the compression-- loads faster.

PDF is specifically not supported directly according to Amazon's blurbs.  However, no harm in trying....will post results.

I found "The Complete Works of Sam Clemens" in a honkin' huge text file (Gutenberg, natch...I already have a bookmark for that).   I like the idea of all-in-one doc.  But, the text file lacks chapter tags and hyperlink tags.

I'm thinking of editing that file, and adding start-of-books hyperlinks in the contents pages, and adding chapters and sub-chapters.  Moby pocket reader has a free "publish yourself" program, and the moby files convert nicely.

I'll do a small project-test, just to see, obviously.

And...if I'm successful, I intend to send the finished project back to the fine people at Gutenberg Project...someone ELSE might appreciate a "chapter-aware" copy. 

[pieces o nine]

I'm thinking of editing that file, and adding start-of-books hyperlinks in the contents pages, and adding chapters and sub-chapters.  Moby pocket reader has a free "publish yourself" program, and the moby files convert nicely.

I'll do a small project-test, just to see, obviously.

And...if I'm successful, I intend to send the finished project back to the fine people at Gutenberg Project...someone ELSE might appreciate a "chapter-aware" copy. 

Let me know how that goes, Bob.

I downloaded Beirce's Devils Dictionary, which I am reformatting and A-Z illustrating in an (extremely) dilatory fashion. I never thought of offering it back to them with a little improvement.

[Aggie]

Hey Bob,

I don't know if you have access to anything comparable, but my library offers eBooks (generally PDF format, some Mobipocket) which can be downloaded for a limited time period (3 weeks).  Might be worth looking into in your area.

I'm not one for buying 'toys', but I like the sounds of the Kindle.  Keep updating us on how it performs and if there's anything that gets on your nerves.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Hey Bob,

I don't know if you have access to anything comparable, but my library offers eBooks (generally PDF format, some Mobipocket) which can be downloaded for a limited time period (3 weeks).  Might be worth looking into in your area.

I'm not one for buying 'toys', but I like the sounds of the Kindle.  Keep updating us on how it performs and if there's anything that gets on your nerves.

Thanks, I'll look at my local library... but the problem with me is that 2 or 3 weeks is usually not enough time to read something...my reading's too sporadic.  I like to borrow from friends or purchase.

My idea behind the Kindle is that I can purchase new books, but not add to the mass/volume in my limited house.