E-books and e-book readers

[lomuamart]

Yup. And the reason I got the email about residence etc was because Brain of Britain was accessing Amazon.co.uk not Amazon.com I need to use the latter as I'm registered as resident in Thailand.
Hours of endless fun await me.

[migrant]

My beloved Sony reader was dropped and is beyond repair. I was having withdrawals so haunted the electronic stores looking at different options, Sony's remaining reader, Ipad mini's, Nexus 7, nook and the kindles.

For many of the reasons above discussed I ended up with the kindle paperwhite.

Sony is down to just 1 reader model and I think they will eventually drop the market so I switched sides.

So far, so good. I was worried that the 100's of free books I've accumulated and have under the epub won't work, but the fantastic Calibre software translated the first few that I tried, so assume it will do all!!

Withdrawal pains gone!!!

[lomuamart]

Having a great time with my Kindle despite continual problems with downloading getting blocked as I'm doing so in the UK at present and I registered the device to Thailand. Seem to have eventually got it worked out and Amazon.com have switched my billing address to the UK for now and then told me to call them to switch it back to HH before I return. I'm assured the calls to the helpline in The States are free. They better be as the phone's not mine and I'll get killed!!
Only one thing I'm stuck on and that's how to make collections. I've followed the user manual to "Make a New Collection" and entered the author's name and check boxed the titles I want to go in there but nothing seems to change.
Anyone got any ideas how to get around this? I can foresee it becoming increasingly difficult to find stuff as the collection grows. I'm just going through all the free stuff (of which there's 1000s of books) and getting those that I want - mainly modern classics.
Thanks for any help.

[STEVE G]

Only one thing I'm stuck on and that's how to make collections. I've followed the user manual to "Make a New Collection" and entered the author's name and check boxed the titles I want to go in there but nothing seems to change.

Yes, if you do that, as you say, enter a name and check the boxes and then hit the "done" box at the bottom, when you go to the homepage, you should get those items at the top of the index where it will have whatever name you entered and it will tell you how many items are in that collection instead of listing them individually. ( If you look at the list for "Make new collection" again instead of the homepage, they'll still be listed individually. )

[Bamboo Grove]

I've today had my first experience with an e-reader and have to say, it's been a surprisinly pleaseant one. I read it for about an hour on a train on my way to my hometown and now again another hour at home. Maybe it's the 20+ years being slowly emerged into the world of computers that I've had but the first experience is much better that with any real book I've held for the last 6-7 years. The experience continues. The reader I've been using is ipad.

[Pej]

Don't know if it mentioned already.
But one disadvantage with Amazon's Kindle that it uses its own locked ebook format.
The rest of the world used the open epub format and most devices can share them.
Not a problem if you are an Amazon customer and buy all books from them.
Myself I have a Nook touch and is very satisfyed. I have used different ebook readers fore almost 15 years now and the greatest improvement for me is not the readers themself but the standardised book formats.

[poosmate]

^A Kindle will also read any Mobi format book widely available or easily converted with Calibre.

[STEVE G]

But one disadvantage with Amazon's Kindle that it uses its own locked ebook format.

I've been using a Kindle for about six months and I haven't yet come across a book that I wanted to read that wasn't available there so it hasn't been a problem so far.

[Pej]

Yes, Calibre has saved my day more than once. Recommended.

[sandman67]

re file conversion

Calibre is good software - I use it a lot.

However, you can also do it easily using online converters - my two favorite sites are

http://www.online-convert.com/

and

http://www.convertfiles.com/

I have converted stacks of Kindle format to open EPUB format via the sites with never a miss.

[migrant]

When I converted from a Sony to a Kindle Calibre did great, but a lot of books that I did buy had DRM protection.

I found, with google, some sites that show how to remove the drm protection, but has anyone done so? If so any recommendations?

Thanks!

[Pej]

I have a conversion kit for adobe drm epub.
It involves installing Adobe reader, + a certain version of Phyton, with some libraries and a script by some guy called "ilovecabbages".

Tricky to install but it worked.
I dont know if it works on sonys format though.

[migrant]

Thanks! I'm not real tech savvy but will see if I can give it a go

[tonymaroni]

I'll have to say the Kindle Fire has to be one of the best things I ever bought.
Books are cheaper than buying locally.

The Huffington Post, USA Today, Jon Stewart Comedy Central, all free online.
CNBC stock quotes. Zynga games (Words For Friends) It is a great tool to have.

Hours of fun and reading everyday.

[pharvey]

I have a fair number of books (900+) in Kindle format stored on "Box". They can of course be converted to other formats with software widely available - I'm sure SM posted some details on this previously, but I've not been able to find.

If anyone is interested, PM me and I'll let you have the download link.