Kindle 3 Questions

[Purge]

Hey,

I've got a PRS 600, but really, the screen drives me nuts. I barely use it anymore and I've been using an iPad instead, which, for all the convinience it gives, is a pain in the ass with the size and the LCD screen (As good a screen it may be), so while I wasn't really looking for a new reader the lower price of the new Kindles and the improved screen - well, it's just too much to refuse, isn't it?

So I have a few questions, if people wouldn't mind answering them.

Firstly, would it be possible for me to somehow load books on to it remotely, from my own collection? As in, if I have Calibre running, can I connect to it and download books? If not, what about Dropbox? If I set up a way to access them via a public directory, or even log in to the Dropbox page, can I download books through the browser and on to the Kindle?

Does Savory work on the Kindle 3?

I also enjoy Audibooks and podcasts - How suitable is the Kindle for this? It wouldn't be all the time, but if I could grab one with the browser, how well would I be able to play it back? Does mp3 playing work in the background?

Finally, any other things I should think about before leaping in and ordering one? The only reservation I have is the lack of ePub support, but I think I can live without it for now.

Thanks for any help!

[matt314159]

well I'll answer the portions that I can for now. I owned a PRS-600 for about a week, the returned it because of the screen. I've owned a PRS-300 before that which I still own and love for what it is.

The new kindle screen rocks sony's socks off. The white is not "whiter", anyone who says otherwise is embellishing things, IMHO...but the ink is much blacker. This makes a huge difference in readability. second is the multiple font sizes and justification of text. this also helps readability.

You can undrm any of your sony books and convert them to .mobi in calibre, and then sideload them right onto your kindle via uSB cable. I don't know about dropbox, but you can email documents right to your kindle, where they are converted and downloaded automatically via whispernet. I think it's like 15 cents per MB though, but the fee is nominal for the convenience, if you ask me. I don't *think* the browser allows downloading documents from any sources, but someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong. But the @kindle.com email address is so dang handy, I don't mind paying the fee. If you want a document converted and don't want to pay the fee, you can send it to your address @free.kindle.com and it will convert and send it to your email address, where you can then load it via USB.

I was thinking I'd miss the epub support at first, but calibre does a pretty good job on converting things to mobi format, and I really don't miss it at all.

I hope this helps touch on some of your points anyway, I really don't think you'll be sorry, especially if you only want the wifi version, $140 isn't much to drop on a reader of this quality, it really stands head and shoulders above the crowd. It's not perfect (see my posts about my two crashes I've had today) but I think as the software develops (and unlike sony, kindle actually updates their software frequently) those bugs will be worked out.

[pen_sq]

If you send your document to the @free.kindle.com address, the new Kindles will still deliver over your personal Wifi anyway. No USB cable, and no fee!

The Kindle 3 can browse a Calibre webserver via wifi. It will download the usual azw, mobi, prc, txt formats correctly, but still refuses to fetch PDFs & MP3s over wifi. Dropbox works fine for downloading kindle format books, too.

[TomF]

Another trick is to set your "Your Personal Document Charge Limit" on your "Manage Your Kindle" page to $0.00. This will force anything sent to your @kindle.com e-mail address to automatically go to your @free.kindle.com address and then get delivered wirelessly for free.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Purge

Firstly, would it be possible for me to somehow load books on to it remotely, from my own collection?

In addition to using calibre or dropbox (as listed above) you can also download ebook files from any simple website. A friend of mine keeps his collection on a private web page on his home server and can get to it using the Kindle browser. (Old one.)
So you can do both "Push" (via email) and "pull" wireless access.
Whatever else one might think of it. Kindle does not lack for connectivity options.

[nickinev]

Will dropbox work using 3G or just wifi?

Nicole

[Blog Kindle]

Audible works just fine with Kindle.

Podcasts are a different story. In theory Kindle supports playing arbitrary MP3 files. However the only controls available are: play/pause and next track. You can't seek to the middle of a track or go back to a previous track. So I would say that it's not usable for podcasts.

[pen_sq]

Originally Posted by Blog Kindle

Audible works just fine with Kindle.

Podcasts are a different story. In theory Kindle supports playing arbitrary MP3 files. However the only controls available are: play/pause and next track. You can't seek to the middle of a track or go back to a previous track. So I would say that it's not usable for podcasts.

If you put arbitrary MP3s (such as podcasts dragged from iTunes) in the audible directory, it works. Each MP3 shows up in the regular book list, and can be tucked into a collection. The player is a little weak, but you can pause, skip 30s back and forward, and rewind wholly. You cannot play MP3s from here and read a book at the same time.

The music folder in Kindle is for background music, and gives you little choice about playback. It's adequate if you just want to block out the world with generic classical, elevator, or jazz while reading.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by nickinev

Will dropbox work using 3G or just wifi?

Nicole

It should work with either.

[matt314159]

Originally Posted by pen_sq

If you send your document to the @free.kindle.com address, the new Kindles will still deliver over your personal Wifi anyway. No USB cable, and no fee!

oh, no way, the @free.kindle.com works via wifi? that's great to know, shoot, i sent a few docs yesterday to it @kindle.com, even though I was connected to wifi.

Thanks for all the posts, folks, I'm learning a lot!

*edit*...oh, hey, when I sent those two doc files yesterday to @kindle.com, then downloaded them via wifi, I still don't see those charges on my account, just the last time I used it, which was August 5 on my k2i. How long do they take to show up? Perhaps they have billing set so that even the @kindle.com one is free via wifi, *UNLESS* you use 3G to download it?

Or maybe the charges haven't posted yet, but it's been darn near 24 hrs, so it seems like it'd be long enough.
*edit2* decided to create a new thread on the subject rather than run this one too far off-track: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96759

[sanatogen]

Originally Posted by pen_sq

You cannot play MP3s from here and read a book at the same time.

The music folder in Kindle is for background music, and gives you little choice about playback. It's adequate if you just want to block out the world with generic classical, elevator, or jazz while reading.

Could anyone verify the instructions in the following link? It sugggest that you CAN play mp3 files and read at the same time. I'd like to read and play Binaural beats that aid study at the same time.

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/play_mp...on_kindle.html