(no subject)

[chhotii]

My new Kindle is charging up.

What spurred this expenditure-- finding out that the recommended textbook for my class is available on the Kindle, and the Kindle weighs less than the paper book. Sure, Kindle + Kindle version of book is more expensive than book, but many books are cheaper in Kindle form. I figure it will pay for itself over the long run.

Puzzlement: you can't get to the power button when the faux-leather cover is on. To turn it off, you have to pry it out of the cover, which appears to be hard to do w/o pressing a Next button, which would lose your place? Do people just leave it on all the time?

Comments

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

- to "screen saver", then you can mash button a lot. i find i can slip my finger in there and hit the key if i like. i rarely power the unit off - that's a soft button (it doesn't really power off, just the screen). i think. just - when i'm done, and close the cover. for LONG period, yes, i'll "turn it off".

i've put a piece of velcro on the lower-right of the unit, the corner on the back side, to hold it into the leather case betterer.

i have a dandy collection of free books already loaded up on an SD card, that SOMEBODY coming to the office here shortly can easily snag. i can burn a cd/dvd at some point. plus a crapload of the free baen/tor/etc books.

also, i have a fairly complete text list of free book sources with good formatted copies in mobipocket format. speaking of, if you use windows/pc, the free mobipocket publisher tools can convert almost anything into a .mobi file that kindle can read. a slightly old version of the list is published in my LJ a few months back. i can email you a fresh copy later if you give me a proper email addy (not sure what i have for that).

(and welcome to the club)

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[chhotii.livejournal.com]

Terrific! (regarding the collection)

We should geek about this sometime.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

yah. indeed.

someone has managed to crack into the kindle some, but nobody has done anything WITH that. it runs linux, there's java modules/jar for the reader stuff. there's a hidden console port on the back side too. someone named igor? iirc has done most of this hacking. he's written a couple helper scripts as well. otherwise, dead end.

the EVDO modem is pretty good for gmail purposes, and light surfing, as well as wikipedia ;) i usually leave this off for battery life. iirc, i got 5 bars at your house.

dictionary lookup built in is a nice selling point too.

since the kindle doesn't have "checked off" or "read next" or hierarchical views... there's a couple organization tricks you can do...

i keep all my books on the SD card. except new amazon purchases, which are few. on the card, the kindle will make a "light" structure something like:

/
/music
/books
/this
/that

under /books, i keep my stuff organized like:
/Tor
/Amazon
/Baen
/Another-Vendor...

and I also have a higher level directory at root like:

/books-read

which i can drop stuff into (with the same structure), so i just don't SEE them, but the SD card has them; which can easily be popped into a computer. i was using a Palm to do these moves, but that died, so now a computer. the kindle is not aware of those other dirs, and flattens out all the sub dirs it does know about, hence, the lack of real organization. tedious when you have even as little as 200 books on the thing.

being able to drag and drop files to the kindle's internal or SD slots without doing anything driver wise under any USB drive supported system is wonderful.

I'll send this with the collated list later (email addy!) but:
o number one forum i read about kindle/etc lately:
http://www.mobileread.com/
o on there is:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=140
o and then:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=128
a lot of kindlized books.

i have a couple VERY nicely formatted example of faerie tales, some with illustrations (grimm). don't recall the source right now, but you'll get to that.

happy reading :)

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[candle-light.livejournal.com]

Sounds intriguing. Next time I'm over can I handle it? I've seen pictures of Kindles but I want to know what one feels like before considering one more seriously.

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

You bet! (Indeed, I wouldn't have been so hasty to order one if I hadn't seen perspicuity's.)