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Actually this is mostly about the authors continuing quest to find the perfect man bag for his Kindle. I use the Sony Reader which is a lot slimmer with better

by glymor 18y ago

Actually this is mostly about the authors continuing quest to find the perfect man bag for his Kindle. I use the Sony Reader which is a lot slimmer with better build quality than the Kindle. I heard good things about the iLiad which would be better if you want a bigger device, keyboard etc. The real mark against the Kindle is the DRM. It's basically the iTunes choice all over again except worse as the device can't play anything not bought from there. If your not technically literate you might want to trade control for ease of use but if your on Hackers News your really should be buying the device you can hack.

almost 18y ago
Can the Kindle not read PDFs then? The text of that article (and the Kindle formatted I've seen available for download) would suggest that it can (or at least some un-DRMed or optional-DRMed format) I agree about the Sony Reader though, much prettier. Although I don't actually use mine at all, too much effort to find and format free books and the real thing is so easy to get and very convenient. I'm in the UK though, if I was in the US the wireless book store thing on the Kindle would probably interest me.
- glymor 18y ago
  I'm probably wrong about that (I'm not really up to date on the Kindle). NH wont let me edit the comment but consider this a retraction. I'm more interested on whether Amazon having a monopoly on the hardware/distribution could allow them to dictate the payment model for example they could continue pay-per-book whereas customers normally prefer subscription based models. This is already a fairly dysfunctional market where the vast majority of books are out-of-print and will never enter the public domain. There's also some question about what happens to public libraries. About the sony reader did you use libprs500 (now called calibre) to do the conversion for you? It works on Linux and autoconverts everything I've thrown at it. Personally I use it for reading trashy SF that I wouldn't otherwise buy (I'd feel like I was wasting paper if nothing else). BAEN is a practically unlimited source of the stuff.

by glymor 18y ago

almost 18y ago

Can the Kindle not read PDFs then? The text of that article (and the Kindle formatted I've seen available for download) would suggest that it can (or at least some un-DRMed or optional-DRMed format) I agree about the Sony Reader though, much prettier. Although I don't actually use mine at all, too much effort to find and format free books and the real thing is so easy to get and very convenient. I'm in the UK though, if I was in the US the wireless book store thing on the Kindle would probably interest me.

glymor 18y ago
I'm probably wrong about that (I'm not really up to date on the Kindle). NH wont let me edit the comment but consider this a retraction. I'm more interested on whether Amazon having a monopoly on the hardware/distribution could allow them to dictate the payment model for example they could continue pay-per-book whereas customers normally prefer subscription based models. This is already a fairly dysfunctional market where the vast majority of books are out-of-print and will never enter the public domain. There's also some question about what happens to public libraries. About the sony reader did you use libprs500 (now called calibre) to do the conversion for you? It works on Linux and autoconverts everything I've thrown at it. Personally I use it for reading trashy SF that I wouldn't otherwise buy (I'd feel like I was wasting paper if nothing else). BAEN is a practically unlimited source of the stuff.