Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweetpea
So, let's say I bought a Kindle. How do you think I'd put those 100's of books I already have on it? Or those books I want to download from this site? Or those books I buy at BoB or FW? Have they finally implemented a wifi on the Kindle?
|
The Kindle has always supported "side-loading" via USB. This is exactly the same approach that all other EInk readers use to get content on the device. It can read DRM-free MOBI ebooks, and Calibre can convert many ebook formats to MOBI (and Amazon has an e-mail service to do the same).
I no longer even turn on my Kindle 1. I just use its existence to allow me to buy Kindle ebooks, which I download to my PC. When I was using it routinely, I did use the 3G to download ebooks from Amazon because it was so convenient but transferring ebooks via USB is simple enough.
The primary reason I say that Kindles are easy to use is that they are designed to only accept two formats (TOPAZ and MOBI) which they display exactly the same way for all ebooks. The way they are displayed would not be my choice (wide margins, with a header and a footer), but it is consistent. Similarly the lack of folders may make file navigation painful for large collections, but it simplifies the interface. The Pocket Pro provides more features and more flexibility, but the user interface and how ebooks are displayed is not completely consistent across ebook types.
The recent addition of PDF to the Kindle 2 is a move away from simplicity, and note that all it provides for PDFs is a single portrait and a single landscape view - both of which are on the Pocket Pro with the addition of four levels of reflow.