Amazon's Kindle

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

Here are the specs of the keyboard-less model.

I get books from many sites, in various formats.  Having to convert some via Calibre is no trouble - my way is to assemble all titles for side-loading into one folder and load them when there's five or six waiting.  I've pretty well squeezed Amazon dry for free stuff now, though I keep an eye out because new stuff is always coming in.  Therefore almost everything goes in through the USB.

However, there really is no need to carry 400+ books, if you have WiFi-- just keeping, say, 20-50 books you are currently interested in, on the "main" menu, and the rest in Archive?

Well, I've got space for a lot more than 400 - probably more like 1,400.  Most of mine are not from Amazon, so I need to store them somewhere - why not on the Kindle?  There are a few Amazon titles I've banished to the archive, but only ones I'm never likely to want again.  If you divide them into collections, finding them is not a problem.

Oh, I agree-- on my Kindle DX, I have a couple of hundred collections to organize my books-- I usually use the "hack" method of naming them-- I put a couple of non-characters, which always sort before "A", so that if I sort by title, the collections are first on the list.

I use a few logical groupings, such as "reference" as I have few of those.  The majority of mine are authors, and so I have a collection for each author who I have more than one book for.  And I have some "general fiction" at each 4 groups of alphabetic letters, for authors that I only have a single volume of.

Yeah... I'm anal retentive when it comes to sorting/organizing.  Too many years as a programmer/data analyst I suppose...



But my TF101 (transformer tablet) uses the Android Kindle app, which does not support collections.  That's okay-- I only have 200 Amazon-only books, so it's not that bad (sort by author, as I'm used to in a Library).   My non-Amazon books, I have elsewhere, and use a different reader app-- (Cool reader, if you're interested, mainly due to it's customization features).   I also use iReader to read some really old books I bought back in 2000-2001 to read on my old Palm-- it will read palm DOC files.

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

Or, perhaps, from Many Books?   I like this one better, as most of their content has already been converted to Mobi (the Kindle format).

How come they are free? And why are the banned books banned? They are just classics.

Thanks everyone for all the info. Really helpful.

Blue, do you buy from US amazon? I just bought a toy for my grandaughter in Sydney from amazon.com, having checked they shipped toys to Aus. - delivery failed, notified don't ship toys to Aus. even tho says they do on web page.

They are free, because the copyright has run out, and nobody renewed them-- public domain.

Banned?  I did not know there were any such... I'll have to check.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Re: weight, I was checking my old sony reader (about the size of the keyboardless kindle) and it weights slightly more than a paperback, my new tablet (10" larger than the DX) weights about as much as a big hardcover (say, a Harry Potter book), and for what I remember the last time I handled a DX,  it isn't as heavy.

[Bluenose]

Blue, do you buy from US amazon? I just bought a toy for my grandaughter in Sydney from amazon.com, having checked they shipped toys to Aus. - delivery failed, notified don't ship toys to Aus. even tho says they do on web page.

Yep, I buy from Amazon US.  I think that you have run into the thing that not everything on the Amazon site actually comes from Amazon, and some of the stores that list there will not ship to Aus.  I have no idea why, I am quite prepared to pay the postage if it's something I want.

Actually, it annoys the hell out of me.  Surely it is no more work to address it to Aus, pay the appropriate postage (paid by the customer, so they're not out of pocket) and send it just like everything else they send out.  IMHO, it should be a condition of being allowed to list through Amazon that you will ship anywhere that Amazon ships to.  [/rant]

[pieces o nine]

And why are the banned books banned?

Because each and every one of them mentioned something that someone Did Not Like and thus they were banned, to protect the rest of us from the depravity contained therein.

[Sibling DavidH]

Quite right, too.  Black Beauty is well known for the subversive anarchist message lurking behind the pornography. 

[Griffin NoName]

Actually, it annoys the hell out of me.  ...............................  IMHO, it should be a condition of being allowed to list through Amazon that you will ship anywhere that Amazon ships to.  [/rant]

I am not surprised. And yes, they should.

And why are the banned books banned?

Because each and every one of them mentioned something that someone Did Not Like and thus they were banned, to protect the rest of us from the depravity contained therein.

But that's ridiculous. I don't like eating kidneys, but I don't stop anyone else doing it.

Quite right, too.  Black Beauty is well known for the subversive anarchist message lurking behind the pornography. 

Might as well ban Bill and Ben. 

I have decided on a Kindle Keyboard, just have to decide whether 3G.

[pieces o nine]

And why are the banned books banned?

Because each and every one of them mentioned something that someone Did Not Like and thus they were banned, to protect the rest of us from the depravity contained therein.

But that's ridiculous.

Well, yes. And that is *always* obvious to everyone except the Concerned Parent, Concerned Politician, or Concerned Clergyperson.


On a related note, I periodically check the (historical) Index to pick another book to add to my library...

[Sibling DavidH]

[On a related note, I periodically check the (historical) Index to pick another book to add to my library...

So did Sir Thomas Bodley - everything he found on it went into the Bodleian Library.

Might as well ban Bill and Ben.

Of course!  We don't want to encourage druggies and welfare cheats.

[Swatopluk]

Mark Twain is and has been a notorious target for book bannings.
In case of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn the attacks come from both the Right and the Left. The latter critics claim that the rather accurate descriptions in those books amount to racism because they are not condemned on page. The Right never liked that godless ex-river pilot  in the first place even without the foul language.
For that matter, Grimm's FairyTales have been targets for the most silly reasons, e.g. that Little Red Riding Hood carries a bottle of wine to her sick granny because that would give kids the impression that alcohol consumption is healthy (not to forget the silly psycho anal cysts that claim that the bottle must be a symbol of LRRH's hymen).

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

Blue, do you buy from US amazon? I just bought a toy for my grandaughter in Sydney from amazon.com, having checked they shipped toys to Aus. - delivery failed, notified don't ship toys to Aus. even tho says they do on web page.

Yep, I buy from Amazon US.  I think that you have run into the thing that not everything on the Amazon site actually comes from Amazon, and some of the stores that list there will not ship to Aus.  I have no idea why, I am quite prepared to pay the postage if it's something I want.

Actually, it annoys the hell out of me.  Surely it is no more work to address it to Aus, pay the appropriate postage (paid by the customer, so they're not out of pocket) and send it just like everything else they send out.  IMHO, it should be a condition of being allowed to list through Amazon that you will ship anywhere that Amazon ships to.  [/rant]

Blame stupid and paranoid gub'ment tariffs and prohibitions of exportation of "strategic stuffs"....

... meh.

[Griffin NoName]

Might as well ban Bill and Ben.

Of course!  We don't want to encourage druggies and welfare cheats.

  .....apologies for UK references

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/images/2006/02/06/bill_ben_350x250.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Pot_Men

[youtube=425,350]hcF9JSxkUSE[/youtube]

I watched this every week as a young child. Oddly in my memory it was in colour but of course it was black&white as in YouTube vid. above - no colour TV in those days. The picture from the BBC above is of 2002 remake, and in colour, and matches pretty well the colours in my mis-remembered memory which only goes to show how b&w was not really a problem and perhaps we didn't need to invent colout TV.    The wiki article is accurate and quite amusing.

Blue, do you buy from US amazon? I just bought a toy for my grandaughter in Sydney from amazon.com, having checked they shipped toys to Aus. - delivery failed, notified don't ship toys to Aus. even tho says they do on web page.

Yep, I buy from Amazon US.  I think that you have run into the thing that not everything on the Amazon site actually comes from Amazon, and some of the stores that list there will not ship to Aus.  I have no idea why, I am quite prepared to pay the postage if it's something I want.

Actually, it annoys the hell out of me.  Surely it is no more work to address it to Aus, pay the appropriate postage (paid by the customer, so they're not out of pocket) and send it just like everything else they send out.  IMHO, it should be a condition of being allowed to list through Amazon that you will ship anywhere that Amazon ships to.   [/rant]

Blame stupid and paranoid gub'ment tariffs and prohibitions of exportation of "strategic stuffs"....

... meh.

But why prohibit toys FFS ? Does Aus. have stricter standards for toys than US? or CA? or UK?

BTW, excellent topic drift 

[pieces o nine]

That was an interesting look back, Grif, thanks. I can't imagine any kids I know now sitting still long enough to watch the entire clip!   
Vaster than empires and more slow...   yeah?   

[Griffin NoName]

I can't imagine any kids I know now sitting still long enough to watch the entire clip!  
Vaster than empires and more slow...   yeah?    

No, nor can I. It's amazing to realize how slow life was 60 years ago, with the highlight of the day often being the Rag and Bone man going past with his horse and cart saying "any old iron" in a deep nasal atonal shout.

[Swatopluk]

I read these flower pot men were voiced by the same guy wgo did the Daleks.
I smell a plot in that pot/d.