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Amazon Kindle
louise1966
Posts: 4,012 Forum Member
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I'm considering buying a kindle ebook and just need a bit of advice. Once you've paid to download the ebook you want, is it your's to keep ?
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louise1966
Posts: 4,012
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Here's Cory Doctorow sounding off about it: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/12/even-amazon-cant-kee.html
The difference is of course, with a DVD/game/book you can resell it on eBay or the likes, with an eBook you can't.
That said, the advantages of eBooks far outweigh the negatives in my opinion. Once you get over the hangup that you're not getting a physical item for your money, you'll be sold. If you're the type of person that lends a lot of books, either to/from friends, or from a library, an ereader is maybe not the way to go, but if you just generally read books without passing them on, get a kindle.
I jumped in here as I'm also thinking about getting an ebook reader but I'm concerned about both format restrictions and rights restrictions. For example I have some books & comics in these formats:
.html
pdf
.djvu
.lit
.cbr
.cbz
Are they viewable on a kindle or any given ebook reader? I'm beginning to think there might be more flexibility with a netbook or a tablet pc.
Amazon will convert anything it doesn't support natively for free. Just e-mail it to your Kindle.
Kindle is a lot easier on the eyes than any backlit computer screen and it weighs lot less that any netbook/tablet.
If they had been proper books then purchasers would have gotten to keep them.
The books in question were Orwell's 1984 & Animal Farm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
It's true that did happen but it was an unusual occurrence to say the least. More of a failing on the part of Amazon than Kindle.
Books from Project Gutenberg and similar places are yours to keep, no one can delete them but you.
I found this software which claims to convert most formats, & I'm sure others are available: http://calibre-ebook.com/
Project Gutenberg uses several formats including Kindle's .mobi.
As regards other formats there are plently of convertors out there. Calibre for instance, just do a search for 'html mobi' and google will give you some ideas.
They've promised they won't do that again.
Calibre is fantastic. It does far more than just converting your books - it does take a bit of 'learning' though.
CBR is an archive like ZIP, you can unpack the jpg files inside, put them on Kindle and use its image viewer to read them as a book. It's B&W only, of course. Maybe a cheap tablet with a colour display would be better for comics, but Kindle can handle them. Any other text format can be converted to Kindle compatible formats with Calibre.
Brilliant! It definitely sounds like I'd be getting my money's worth with this.
The books were bought specifically for display on that particular machine so I'd be very surprised if they didn't move over to the new account.
This must be a fairly common occurrence when the Kindle is bought as a gift.
Of course if you want to be absolutely certain, email Amazon.
I have ordered two books over the last few months, and neither have arrived.
the really bad part though is getting your money refunded- they rarely reply to e mails , and take about 3 weeks to repay you.
Needless to say they take your money immediately.
I've no idea why Amazon automatically registers the device to the account that bought it. It's my only annoyance about a great product.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200496580
it says about deregistering an account...
I can understand that subscriptions might have to be stopped along with anything purchased which has not already been delivered by the time the unit is de-registered.
However, the idea that you should be required to purge the kindle of all purchased material is a bit cheeky in my opinion.
I would hope that in the context of a gift within a family there would be some way of sorting this out sensibly.
You can always re-register to your friends account if you want to retrieve your books.
It's a bit problamatic when kindles are being bought as gifts because they would most likely be registered to the account of the buyer so any books bought would be registered to their account aswell. I think it would be best to buy the device as a gift, but to buy gift vouchers instead of buying books with the kindle. That way the person who recieves the kindle can register it to their own account and then use the gift vouchers to buy books.
But this piece ot kit has got me sorely tempted-nearly every review in the media has been ecstatic, and you can get loads of stuff free.
Is it really that good?