Kindle - a personal view and boring information

[lib]

My personal take and view of kindle and its use.

This post maybe a bit boring and cause a few to 'glaze' over section so skip a bit if you want, I do tend to explain too deeply, sorry it's 'cos of being a IT nerd.

Kindle is two things, one a clever business ploy by Amazon, two an excellent ereader plus.

As tekky stuff advances lots of things change, information transmission is the forefront so digitising books and distributing them electronically will be big business. Even though we have been reading stuff on machines for ages there was room for a something more akin to the reading experience of a paper book, in size and portability.
A few ereaders have been made some good and others that have sunk without trace.
As with all things price and perceived value can be the tipping point with the buyer.
Kindle, when first introduced, was sold below its manufacturing cost.
Probably now with mass supply it breaks even.
The new Kindle Fire is estimated to sell 50 dollars less than it build cost.
The price was right, books are cheaper in virtual form, so Amazon makes lots and lots of money because sales are booming.
In spite of restrictive practices in the book trade.

As a reader the Kindle works, the screen can be read in bright sunlight, capacity is huge, over 3000 books, battery life great, and its easy to use. Oh and its cloud based too for storage.
OK its not all wine and roses, web browsing is too too fiddly, email only piggy backed through Amazon, difficult to sort out playlists for music.

Right the legal bits that get in the way.

Book selling on Amazon is determined by the laws / publishing / copyright agreements that are in place in each country. Taxes too.
So Amazon and the kindle in the northern hemisphere have only two supply countries. USA and UK.
(this of course will change, to the best of my knowledge Amazon.fr are currently close to signing off a deal to supply books in France direct.)
The US and UK book inventories are not the same, in content or price.
Although of course there is a massive overlap.


How does this work then for travellers and people not in the US or UK.

cont.

[Ali]

Brilliant stuff ! So far so good

[Ali]

Just had a link to this via email from amazon.fr

Kindle now available here.

www.amazon.fr/dp/B0051QVF7A?ref_=pe_142561_26973451

[lib]

Thanks Ali, my info that Amazon were close to closing and announcing a deal to supply download books in france was correct then.
Had an email when i got home telling me it was imminent and so it was.
I am told that virtually all the books held by amazon in english language will be available.
Busy tonight to check out, but would be interesting to see if this now cover the rest of eurozone.

Probaly will carry on with thread ref using the kindle and travelling with it.

Excellent news for expats, btw, the australian publishing houses make ours positively benign.

[Ali]

55 viewings so far suggest that this is an interesting subject

[Tina Turkey]

Lib, a million apologies for being so tardy in looking at this thread! I am a IT dinosaur and my PC is a dinosaur - takes me forever to get stuff done! Anyway what a WONDERFUL person you are to take the time to explain in such glorious detail. Me likes you! I love people who explain in detail - its brilliant and such a big help.

I am going to have a good look through all this later this afty when I have more time.

Getting a new PC soon, when I get the time to look at what sort I should get!! So hopefully then I can get into the fast lane!
Thanks again .

TTxx

[lib]

So the good news is that the French Kindle site is up, will answer lots of problems for people based only in France.
That still leaves the travelling about bit though, so if you can bear with me, a bit more of how kindle and amazon operate.

When you first buy a kindle, and remember that they are sold in shops as well as on the net. (UK and USA - Shop bought no address needed.)
First thing to do is register your device, this is a section of the amazon site available to all amazon account holders. Manage my Kindle. This gives lots of options as to setting up your machine.
Country is the most important one. This defines which amazon site you are able to buy from.
Please bear in mind amazon want to sell you books, if what I am saying seems very restrictive regarding sites, its because of publishers restricting where their books are to be sold and where they will allow them to be sold. Copyright and various countries laws also interfere.
As ebooks get more popular lots of these restrictions will be kicked into touch.
The setting of Country can be altered and reregistered anytime by yourself, get the idea, for the future.
So what you were supposed to do, to keep 'legal' on purchases was, if not resident in the UK, have a 'international' kindle ie one shipped from the usa to another country. You were a traveller! and could buy fro the US site. If you were a uk account holder the same applied you were supposed to reset your country when travelling and use the US site. Who could be bothered.
There are tales of users having letters sent ref download usage when not in the 'home' country but I have never met a user who has had this happen, I certainly haven't experienced it myself.
I have downloaded in the carribean and in the usa etc.

This of course only applies to purchases direct from Amazon, remember you can set up many ebooks from other sites to use on your Kindle, via a PC or a Mac.

Next, got rid of boring stuff on to what it can do, and which one does what.........

[lib]

Books - obviously its a reader, primarily to be used to buy and read books from Amazon. Browse the site carefully there are lots of sub 1£ books by new authors that are well worth reading and special offers on existing writers, plus hundreds of free ones.
There are loads of sites where books may be bought or downloaded for free. The Kindle is able to directly quite a few formats but there are several programs that will convert formats to the native Kindle. The most popular is Calibre calibre-ebook.com/ this is a ebook manager with a full blown converter, it is freeware but safe. There are others but this is good. Have a browse and watch the demo, both PC and Mac versions.

The two main ways to purchase amazon books is via your account via your PC / Mac, this is the easiest and browsing is better etc, secondly direct from the Kindle obviously you need to be in range of a WiFi connection or a 3G area (dependent on model purchased). This is perfectly feasible but fiddlier than using the PC.
Whichever method you use the kindle does not need to be physically connected to anything, using the pc the kindle doesn't even need to be in the same country.
You buy the book and the download takes a few seconds.
All books may be kept on the Kindle or removed when read and stored in Amazons cloud, pull down as and when required.
Remember ....... this only applies to Amazon purchases all other content you may have keep a backup on your PC or memory stick.

One of the problems with a virtual book is sharing.
Can't just pass it on and say give it us back when you'r done.

One modification Amazon has introduced recently is the facility to 'lend' a book to another user for up to two weeks.
Another, currently only being piloted in the USA, is a link up with public libraries where for a small fee you can 'borrow' books.
Things are very fast moving and the ebook is now very big business, I believe ebook downloads were greater than book sales for a period on amazon.
Now if i want to share my collection and I have a PC, Mac, smart phone, a tablet (like ipad etc) or two kindles; as long as they are registered to my account any book can be read on them.
Amazon provide free Apps for all devices, they want to sell you books.
The only thing that I haven't checked is if two people can read the same book at the same time.
A minor problem with this is if you have the WhisperSync turned on then what happens is, every time you open any of your devices and run kindle reader it will automatically take you to your current book and to the last page read. Has a place, in an airport just time to read a few pages and the kindle packed in hand luggage, use your phone.
Turn this off and then all books can be accessed quickly.

As an aside one of the most useful aspects of the Kindle is not having to carry round thousand page manuals. Ok most of mine are on my mac in mainly pdf format (kindle can read direct) but even a mac book air takes up space and is awkward to use in some situations, so having lots of technical manuals in a small unit is ideal.

Draw backs ..... a kindle is not a book, it doesn't feel like a book, it doesn't smell like a book; but it is so useful as a 'different' book.
I got round the feel problem by buying a proper case so it open up like a book, a must i would say. A book doesn't have my podcast downloads either ...

So which one to buy and what else can it do.......

[Pasha]

Hi lib lol--

got my kindle from daughter -- brill kit--

and she gave me disc with 5000 plus books on --

will pass on to ali as a base ok--

thats a serious selection of reading materials

out there some where PASH---------

[lib]

Back again - So which model to buy? Firstly remember there are lots of ereaders out there, it may be one of those would suit your needs, have a look around. From speaking to people I am getting the impression that Kindle is now being used a generic word like Hoover has become the word for vacuum cleaner.

Right what you need to do is, like any other bit of kit decide what you are going to do with it then the choice can be narrowed down. At present only the US has the full range of Kindles so we are having to restrict this discussion to the two kindles available to Europe; although this will change soon.
Let me declare now, if I did not already have a Kindle, was not in hurry to have one, and cost did not come into the equation, I would wait until there is full access to the range. Although the rest of the world was never originally offered the large screen Kindle DX it has now become available as an international version and is shipping to countries outside of the US. It is a non starter; unless you really must have a 10 inch screen; on the grounds of cost alone. Not best value for money. Probably to be dropped as Fire production is ramped up.
OK, comparing the 2 available presently in the UK and the one available in France.

French one first, and this is the same as the english version, the basic kindle. What can it do, well it downloads via WiFi and is a dedicated ereader. It's smaller and lighter than previous models without loosing out on the screen eink quality that makes a kindle so easy to read.
It supports other languages other than english. This does not mean that books in french can't be read on the old model kindle, it means that the 'keyboards' are in the correct language format, ie accents etc. Therefore the inbuilt dictionaries are in the correct foreign language chosen.
Sum up an excellent budget reader at a very low price.
It's biggest drawback is the fiddly way of 'typing', you have to select the letter off the screen keyboard by moving a cursor with the 4 way pad. I would not see this as a major problem as most people would be browsing and purchasing the books from the amazon site via a PC.
continued later.......