Loading multiple ebooks onto Kindle 3

[Viviners]

I am patiently waiting for my Kindle 3 (3G). Amazon tell me it will only be another week before it arrives. I hope they are right!

In the meantime, I have downloaded from the web about 150 ebooks ready to load onto the Kindle. All are in either MOBI or PRC format. My question is, if I merely drag and drop all 150 books onto the device in one go, is anything untoward likely to happen - e.g. freeze, crash etc?

Or should I do just a few at a time?

Thanks.

[Purge]

It won't freeze, but it might take a while to index them. It might be a tad slower and run the battery down faster while it's doing that.

Best bet would be to load the books you want to read first on to it, then load the rest over night, letting it index while you're not using it.

[Outrager]

You should also probably keep it plugged in so that it doesn't run out of batteries while indexing. Indexing really kills the batteries. Some people said it also slows down the Kindle, but I didn't really notice it when I first put books on my new one. From my experience, 150 ebooks might take 2-3hours to index.

[Viviners]

When people say it slows down the Kindle, what is actually meant?

Does having (say) 150 books on a Kindle rather than 10 or 20, slow down the general operation of the Kindle, even after indexing has take place?

[trekchick]

I noticed that trying to play one of the "Active" word games while indexing was problematic (screen refresh lagged and froze, then the game crashed and went back to the home page).

After indexing, the only thing that slows down with large number of books is searching from the home screen (searching within a book does not seem to slow down). Searching through 100 books is somewhat quicker than searching through 500 books, but I doubt that you'd notice a difference between 20 and 100.

[Leep]

You might also want to load your ebooks in some sort of organization as it's easier to put them in collections if you don't have 12 pages to page through all at once.

cheers

[pietro99]

I am also waiting for my Kindle 3 to replace my Bebook. (which has been great)

Regarding collections: can this only be done via the Kindle itself, or can I create folders etc via the PC/USB and drag books into various folders?

[Leep]

You must create the collections manually on the Kindle. The exception is that there is beta software called Kindle Collections Manager developed by a Mobile Read member. It still has some burbs in it, but some are using it successfully to create and organize collections.

cheers

[zoran]

Originally Posted by Leep

You must create the collections manually on the Kindle.
cheers

So, making directories named after author does the trick? Frankly,
that is the most natural way of sorting.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by zoran

So, making directories named after author does the trick? Frankly,
that is the most natural way of sorting.

no - kindle collections work from (kindle added) tags, not via a folder structure.

you can use a subfolder structure but KIndle ignores it,

one title can be in several Kindle collections

[desertblues]

Think about the way you want your books organised in collections before you download anything. Perhaps load the books by collection- create a collection on the Kindle- put all the books in it - and on to the next category. I like to use Calibre for downloading my books. There're several threads discussing collections on MR.
Lots of books seem to slow down the searchfunction. Other than that I didn' t notice anything.
When downloading a lot of books; you want to give the Kindle a rest and a load as long as the 'spinningwheel' (sign of work in progress;upper left corner) is still visible. Also give it enough time for indexing. I loaded about 2000 books on batches of 2/300.
Most of all; have fun. It really is a nice ereader.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Viviners

When people say it slows down the Kindle, what is actually meant?

Does having (say) 150 books on a Kindle rather than 10 or 20, slow down the general operation of the Kindle, even after indexing has take place?

No, it doesn't slow it down.

[TheKindleWorm]

As others have said, you might just want to think about it before dumping loads of books on your Kindle.

I loaded over 500 in one go via Calibre but the Kindle was plugged in to the USB at the time and I left it plugged in for around 5-6 hours while all the indexing took place. Once the indexing was complete, I recharged the Kindle to a full battery and everything worked fine. Adding all the books to collections took a further hour. So this took the best part of the day. Some people might prefer to load books in smaller batches - I just wanted to do it in one go. At least this is something you should only have to do once!

[Outrager]

Just a heads up. Make sure you like the way you set up the directories on the Kindle. If you move files from 1 directory to another the Kindle will think it's a brand new book and re-index it and take it out of any Collections it's in. I originally just slapped a bunch of eBooks into my new Kindle and wanted to reorganize the directory structure a few days later, but I don't want to go thru with the indexing so I'll just keep it all unorganized.

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by Outrager

Just a heads up. Make sure you like the way you set up the directories on the Kindle. If you move files from 1 directory to another the Kindle will think it's a brand new book and re-index it and take it out of any Collections it's in. I originally just slapped a bunch of eBooks into my new Kindle and wanted to reorganize the directory structure a few days later, but I don't want to go thru with the indexing so I'll just keep it all unorganized.

Yes. The Kindle identifies items by the folder they're in + the filename and not the contents. It does this for speed as it doesn't need to inspect the contents of each file every time it wants to display a collection. If you alter either then it will think that it is a new item.