How would you change Amazon's Kindle?

[Jeff Duntemann]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

sounds like you should have bought an iLiad. It is much closer to meeting your needs. What you want would certainly cost much more as is indicated by the iLiad price. You don't get all those features for free.

By the way the SD card slot is SDHC already.

Dale

I don't mind paying for a machine that helps me get things done--else I would never have popped for the Thinkpad X41, which is the platform on which I read most of my ebooks these days. The Sony reader is OK for things that don't have artwork, but I find myself grumbling about how small it is.

As for the Kindle's SD slot, most of the sites I see online indicate that while it will accept an SDHC card, it will only access 2 GB of storage on the card. Since I don't have a Kindle I can't test it, but 8 GB SDHC cards are now fairly cheap (~$50) and it's almost unforgivable that the external slot is limited to 2 GB. Many of the ebooks that I read are holograph scans of old books available from Google Books, and some of them are immense; The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1911) is over 85 MB all by itself. Put a few of those on a 2GB card and you're out of card fairly quickly.

It's not a bad gadget, but we're speculating here on how it could be made better. Size matters, in storage as well as display real estate. I wouldn't mind paying $1,000 for something that did what I need. I'm not a casual reader; reading is my life. Where reading is concerned, I don't compromise.

[Gideon]

Keep in mind, though... the Kindle doesn't read PDFs. It can take a pdf that has been OCR'd and convert it... and then a 800 page two column encyclopedia is about 4mb.

A huge amount of storage isn't really needed. Handy, but not necessary given the very small size of ebooks and the ability to get files off the device. Right now the poor organization abilities of the Kindle would make 8 gbs of ebooks almost un-navigable. I have 4 pages of content right now and I'm finding it a pain in the butt.
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I'm totally with you on the text books, gladtobeamom!!! 8x10 won't happen anytime soon, obviously, but I can't wait till more textbook creators get on board. I'm using every text book I have in my Kindle right now and it's great (and my syllabi!) Unfortunately, for technical type books the publishers would have to create the versions needed to accommodate the graphical data appropriately and really spend some time tweaking it for the Kindle.

But as a Religious Studies student, I'm in the clear!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

As for the Kindle's SD slot, most of the sites I see online indicate that while it will accept an SDHC card, it will only access 2 GB of storage on the card. Since I don't have a Kindle I can't test it, but 8 GB SDHC cards are now fairly cheap (~$50) and it's almost unforgivable that the external slot is limited to 2 GB. Many of the ebooks that I read are holograph scans of old books available from Google Books, and some of them are immense; The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1911) is over 85 MB all by itself. Put a few of those on a 2GB card and you're out of card fairly quickly.

I think some people get the Sony capabilities and the Amazon capabilities mixed up. The Sony does not go beyond 2 Gig and will not work with SDHC but will accept the 4Gig cards that are not SDHC.

Several people in the forum have indicated that 4 Gig cards on Amazon Kindle were recognized and they did fill them past 2 Gig. I am not sure about 8 Gig but there is a huge amount of confusion and assumptions going on without facts.

Dale

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Alisa

Yeah. I think an A5-sized reader like the HanLin V9 would definitely have some appeal especially if you're reading a lot of technical and academic PDFs. There are people that would be willing to pay a premium for a screen that size if there were enough of them in production and being marketed. 6" is nice for recreational fiction reading, though, and I'm glad that it's available to me at a lower price. It's a great size for when I'm out and about, too. Now when the screens get a whole lot cheaper and there's more variety, I'll probably have more than one.

An A5 device would have appeal, but to a different market to the existing Kindle, I think. The reason I sold my iLiad was that I personally found it a little too large to conveniently carry around, whereas my Gen3 goes with me everywhere.

[gladiator]

I dont know if this has been shared before but I researched the solution to the kindle sample problem in europe. The solution is to first buy the book and return it within 7 days if you dont like it. This has been confirmed by the Amazon Customer Service.

[cathyWeeks]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

for the Kindle's SD slot, most of the sites I see online indicate that while it will accept an SDHC card, it will only access 2 GB of storage on the card. Since I don't have a Kindle I can't test it, but 8 GB SDHC cards are now fairly cheap (~$50) and it's almost unforgivable that the external slot is limited to 2 GB.

I think you've got the Kindle confused with a different reader. The Kindle is advertised as being able to accept either SD or SDHC cards up to 4 gig in size (not 2). And I know of people who have put an 8 gig sd card in the Kindle (despite it being advertised as only accepting up to 4), and said it worked just fine. I imagine the only real drawback to using the 8 GB card is that it might be a little slow.

[Jeff Duntemann]

Originally Posted by cathyWeeks

I think you've got the Kindle confused with a different reader. The Kindle is advertised as being able to accept either SD or SDHC cards up to 4 gig in size (not 2). And I know of people who have put an 8 gig sd card in the Kindle (despite it being advertised as only accepting up to 4), and said it worked just fine. I imagine the only real drawback to using the 8 GB card is that it might be a little slow.

I will certainly withdraw the objection if it's true, but the majority of online writeups indicate that support stops at 2 GB, including Wikipedia's description of the Kindle:

A SD card expansion slot is present. SDHC is supported, but only the first 2GB is accessible.

Going up to 4 GB is good, but why stop there? 4 GB cards are now ~$25. The SDHC spec allows up to 32 GB (a limitation of the FAT32 file system more than the hardware spec) and those cards will be with us soon and cheap even sooner.

All engineering solutions are compromises, and the Kindle is a nice piece of engineering. Some things (like the tiny display) are understandable simply because that's the current state of the art. Other things, like limiting the expansion card slot to 2 or even 4 GB, are beyond comprehension.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

I will certainly withdraw the objection if it's true, but the majority of online writeups indicate that support stops at 2 GB, including Wikipedia's description of the Kindle:

A SD card expansion slot is present. SDHC is supported, but only the first 2GB is accessible.

Going up to 4 GB is good, but why stop there? 4 GB cards are now ~$25. The SDHC spec allows up to 32 GB (a limitation of the FAT32 file system more than the hardware spec) and those cards will be with us soon and cheap even sooner.

All engineering solutions are compromises, and the Kindle is a nice piece of engineering. Some things (like the tiny display) are understandable simply because that's the current state of the art. Other things, like limiting the expansion card slot to 2 or even 4 GB, are beyond comprehension.

And you say you own a Sony Reader and think the Kindle is poor beyond comprehension? It has been stated that it likely works on 8Gig and probably beyond but nobody has tested it. You Sony reader can only read 2 Gig and many devices are even limited to 1 Gig. All hardware design has tradeoffs and expenses. I suspect the controller chip in the Sony is cheaper than the one in the Kindle and the Kindle specs are just conservative since no one has a 32 Gig card to test with.

Dale

[radleyp]

Improving is one thing, but redesigning is a different matter. Make the screen much bigger and what you have is a different device (and one I would not buy, since portability is crucial for me). As others have pointed out, we must be realistic, so let's first improve the software: a file system is needed (like Gideon I find it cumbersome, to say the least, to navigate through 5 pages of books), and I would like the ability to read other alphabets (especially cyrillic). I would also like to add foreign-language dictionaries, and I am looking forward to improvements over the present Amazon system for converting pdf's. And, lastly, I would like more books to be available.

On a different note: I showed the Kindle to my doctor yesterday (he was a pioneer in computer use and was linked to the hospitals he serviced 20 years ago). He was very impressed and said he thought the device "beautiful". SO, the Kindle's looks do have appeal.

[cathyWeeks]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

I will certainly withdraw the objection if it's true, but the majority of online writeups indicate that support stops at 2 GB, including Wikipedia's description of the Kindle:

A SD card expansion slot is present. SDHC is supported, but only the first 2GB is accessible.

So Wiki is wrong (it wouldn't be the first time! As wonderful a resource as it is, you shouldn't take its info as perfect). And so are the writeups. Those writeups are examples of virus-like spreading of an incorrect piece of information. I HAVE the Kindle, and I'm telling you, the documentation clearly states it supports up to 4GB. Here's a URL for you:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...27480&#storage

From that page, here is the key bit of info: "Kindle also has an expansion slot for a Secure Digital (SD) memory card that supports storage capacity of up to 4GB."

I also have online friends who have tried 8 GB SD cards, and it is reading all but a tiny portion of it. An Amazon customer rep told me that they just haven't tested all SD cards and all SD card sizes, so they wrote their documentation on the conservative side (I had had a bad SD card for my Kindle, and so was working with them on the issue).

[Jeff Duntemann]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

And you say you own a Sony Reader and think the Kindle is poor beyond comprehension? It has been stated that it likely works on 8Gig and probably beyond but nobody has tested it. You Sony reader can only read 2 Gig and many devices are even limited to 1 Gig. All hardware design has tradeoffs and expenses. I suspect the controller chip in the Sony is cheaper than the one in the Kindle and the Kindle specs are just conservative since no one has a 32 Gig card to test with.

Dale

I didn't say the Kindle is "poor beyond comprehension." I said it was incomprehensible why Amazon would limit the card slot to 2GB--and as it turns out, this isn't the case (see Cathy Weeks' post a couple up from this--thanks, Cathy!) so I humbly withdraw the objection.

I'm not totally in love with the Sony Reader, and had I not bought it, I might have taken a chance on the Kindle. I read fiction on the Sony, but it's worthless for the bulk of the material I read, which is nonfiction containing art that requires good PDF rendering and a large screen--that, and holograph scans of 19th century books stitched together as PDFs.

[cathyWeeks]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

I didn't say the Kindle is "poor beyond comprehension." I said it was incomprehensible why Amazon would limit the card slot to 2GB--and as it turns out, this isn't the case (see Cathy Weeks' post a couple up from this--thanks, Cathy!) so I humbly withdraw the objection.

I'm not totally in love with the Sony Reader, and had I not bought it, I might have taken a chance on the Kindle. I read fiction on the Sony, but it's worthless for the bulk of the material I read, which is nonfiction containing art that requires good PDF rendering and a large screen--that, and holograph scans of 19th century books stitched together as PDFs.

No problem. I think I agree with an earlier poster that suggested an iLiad might be a better tool for you. It has a bigger screen (it's an 8-inch diagonal, instead of a 6-inch like the Kindle and Sony) and it has native PDF support, though like the Sony, the support for PDF isn't great (better than the Kindle, though). I'm not sure what the resolution of the iLiad is, though, so I have no idea how well it'll display the holographic scans of 19th century books!

I'm guessing though, that in the end, there isn't a product available outside of a lab that will suit your needs at this time. Give it 2-3 years though!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

I didn't say the Kindle is "poor beyond comprehension." I said it was incomprehensible why Amazon would limit the card slot to 2GB--and as it turns out, this isn't the case (see Cathy Weeks' post a couple up from this--thanks, Cathy!) so I humbly withdraw the objection.

I'm not totally in love with the Sony Reader, and had I not bought it, I might have taken a chance on the Kindle. I read fiction on the Sony, but it's worthless for the bulk of the material I read, which is nonfiction containing art that requires good PDF rendering and a large screen--that, and holograph scans of 19th century books stitched together as PDFs.

Sorry, I did a bad paraphrase of your statement which was "limiting the expansion card slot to 2 or even 4 GB, are beyond comprehension." I was just surprised that you hold the Amazon to a different standard than Sony. I was also a bit surprised when you took such an extreme position as "beyond comprehesion" but I am starting to get used to people going over the top on anything they don't like. I apologize again for the bad paraphrase. By the way I fixed wikipedia yesterday. We'll see if it sticks.

Dale

[phuocle]

I can confirm this:

I received my Kindle 2 days ago. On a whim, I took out the 8 GB SDHC card from my Nikon Coolpix P5100 and put it in the Kindle. The Kindle read it and said there was 7.5 GB available on the card, which is about right. I'm ordering another one from Amazon to use in my Kindle. If you're interested, it's this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-8GB-...2447552&sr=8-1

I'm an Amazon Prime customer, so shipping was free... what more can you ask for?

[agnimidhun]

After reading all the talk here the requirement of more capacity for storage, I would like to know as to how much would one usually store in one's reader ? I guess a 2GB card would be more than enough. I do not own any reader as of now, but I do have lot of PDF e-books on my laptop. There are around 1600 files and they occupy only around 1.37GB. And reading 1600 books would take me not less than 5 years I guess..

How much storage do the people who own readers usually require?