Quote:
Originally Posted by Diso
One quick question please. I have just read in the home page that amazon will be releasing its kindle 2.0 early next month. I have been wondering how the kindle will be useful to people in Africa since it is not sold outside the United States. Even if one purchases it here (yeah, I am presently here in the states) and takes it to his country, he cannot download anything from amazon.com because they use "whispernet" instead of Internet. Is there a way out?
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Whispernet is not "instead" of internet .... it is Whispernet AND/OR internet. You always have the option to download books to your computer and then drag and drop them into the Kindle when it is connected to that computer.
They made it that way so that Kindle owners who are traveling still have a method via which they can purchase new books.
While you are here in the states, I would suggest you purchase your Kindle with whatever credit card you have now, which I would assume has a US billing address. Set up the Kindle account with that as well.
You might want to call Amazon and check, but .... let's say you move to Africa in two years, and you change the billing address on your credit card to your new African billing address. I don't believe that Amazon will then cut off your account. As mentioned .... check on that point, but it wouldn't make sense for them to sell something to a person who is actually living here in the States, and then try to take it away from them (figuratively if not literally) just because they moved.
I rather doubt that the Mark II will be coming out on 2/9. That would be incredibly bad PR on Amazon's part. I would look for them to start generating hype for it sometime around late summer or early fall, if they do anything at all this year.
The idea (for savvy companies) is to announce something not too long before Christmas (and certainly not this soon after), so that they can ride the wave through the holidays.