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This looks like it will be a great product, especially for all the technical pdfs I've built up over the years. Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made t

by mikebo 17y ago

This looks like it will be a great product, especially for all the technical pdfs I've built up over the years. Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made the mistake of buying DRMed music that I can't listen to anymore. I'm not going to do the same with books. Anyone else trying to justify a $500 pdf reader? :)

cstejerean 17y ago
I'm going to be using this to read technical books, a lot of which can cost between $50 to $100. Compared to the cost of my library, I think $500 is easily worth it for being able to take most of these books with me anywhere I go.
- gopalakrishnans 17y ago
  But how much do the PDF versions of the technical books cost ? And where do you get them? I am also trying to calculate the costs and see if I can throw the bookshelf away.
  - whatusername 17y ago
    Free. Well - there's http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ And then there's cough scribd cough
lallysingh 17y ago
FWIW, I've already paid for my Kindle 1.0 in terms of book $$ saved, and the bookshelf I didn't have to buy. The convenience of having dozens of books to read in my backpack is a cool bonus :-)
chris11 17y ago
Yes, I am. I'm salivating over the idea of replacing all of my textbooks with pdfs. But unfortunately I doubt I could get all of my textbooks on the kindle right now. And price is an issue. Checking on Amazon, there is not a large price difference between kindle textbooks, and real textbooks. So the only reason I would get a dx is if the textbook and the kindle pdf were bundled together for a reasonable price. But I doubt that will happen.
- mattmcknight 17y ago
  To make the price difference worse- your physical textbooks have a resale value, while the digital files do not.
- andreyf 17y ago
  I'm not sure if it's obvious or not, but PDF's of many popular textbooks are widely available either free as in beer: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html Or free as in money from a bank robbery: http://thepiratebay.org/browse/601/0/7 http://thepiratebay.org/browse/601/0/7
jrockway 17y ago
Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made the mistake of buying DRMed music that I can't listen to anymore. The DRM that Amazon uses is pretty crappy (isn't it all), and is trivial to remove with a Python script available from various file-sharing services. But you didn't hear that from me, I know nothing about it...

by mikebo 17y ago

cstejerean 17y ago

I'm going to be using this to read technical books, a lot of which can cost between $50 to $100. Compared to the cost of my library, I think $500 is easily worth it for being able to take most of these books with me anywhere I go.

gopalakrishnans 17y ago
But how much do the PDF versions of the technical books cost ? And where do you get them? I am also trying to calculate the costs and see if I can throw the bookshelf away.
- whatusername 17y ago
  Free. Well - there's http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ And then there's cough scribd cough

lallysingh 17y ago

FWIW, I've already paid for my Kindle 1.0 in terms of book $$ saved, and the bookshelf I didn't have to buy. The convenience of having dozens of books to read in my backpack is a cool bonus :-)

chris11 17y ago

Yes, I am. I'm salivating over the idea of replacing all of my textbooks with pdfs. But unfortunately I doubt I could get all of my textbooks on the kindle right now. And price is an issue. Checking on Amazon, there is not a large price difference between kindle textbooks, and real textbooks. So the only reason I would get a dx is if the textbook and the kindle pdf were bundled together for a reasonable price. But I doubt that will happen.

mattmcknight 17y ago
To make the price difference worse- your physical textbooks have a resale value, while the digital files do not.
andreyf 17y ago
I'm not sure if it's obvious or not, but PDF's of many popular textbooks are widely available either free as in beer: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html Or free as in money from a bank robbery: http://thepiratebay.org/browse/601/0/7 http://thepiratebay.org/browse/601/0/7

jrockway 17y ago

Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made the mistake of buying DRMed music that I can't listen to anymore. The DRM that Amazon uses is pretty crappy (isn't it all), and is trivial to remove with a Python script available from various file-sharing services. But you didn't hear that from me, I know nothing about it...