Amazon's Kindle--Now with New Take-Backsies Feature

Mark Dygert

So it looks like Amazon deleted 2 books from customers accounts who purchased the books for their "kindle". They took back George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Irony with a side of hilariously sad, yes please.

http://gizmodo.com/5317180/amazon-remotely-deletes-legitimately-purchased-books-from-thousands-of-kindles

I agree with the gizmondo guy, they just sealed the fate of the kindle.

More news:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10289983-56.html

Vailias

solution:
http://www.planetebook.com/1984.asp

I have no paid for media on my kindle. All ebooks, manuals, and other such material available in PDF format, happily converted by me and residing in the kindle memory. Then again my primary use for it sofar is more mobile information device than e-book reader. Whispernet is great for mobile email, myspace, wikipedia and such.

rooster

pah. roll on hitchhikers guide

Xenobond

As long as they don't remove Zombie Survival Guide & Game Developer Postmortems from my Kindle, I'm happy. If there is a book that I absolutely HAVE to read, instead of listening to on audiobook, then I'll try the free sample, then purchase the Kindle edition if I'm that interested in it.

Andreas

Vailias wrote: »

solution:
http://www.planetebook.com/1984.asp

I have no paid for media on my kindle. All ebooks, manuals, and other such material available in PDF format, happily converted by me and residing in the kindle memory. Then again my primary use for it sofar is more mobile information device than e-book reader. Whispernet is great for mobile email, myspace, wikipedia and such.

Is there a way to do this? Will I have to hack the Kindle? I am thinking of buying one, mostly for learning a language, as I have amassed hundreds of PDF's over the years but find it difficult to study on a computer. But I hear you have to pay Amazon for a .PDF converting service? Which one of the current lineup would people recommend? Should I buy cheaper and hack the machine to get rid of the ads (I really hate ads hehe). What are people's experiences with the device?

praetus

I see you tapped your Necro Thread card

Andreas

Well I, unlike others, actually SEARCH for an existing thread on a topic before I go posting.

Also funny is Vigs post about them dying out. They aren't ridiculously popular, but they still sell quite well :P

Anyone have an informed opinion on what I asked about?

MikeF

personally i'd find a nice android tablet and a good .pdf reader app.
you'd have less hasle with converting (just drag and drop) and you get the added bonus of everything a tablet has to offer.

The only thing dedicated e-readers have going for them is longer battery life and less strain on the eyes.

so many cheap tablets out there nowadays, i got an archos home tablet about half a year ago for under $100, use it for e-books, email, games, music.

System

MikeF wrote: »

personally i'd find a nice android tablet and a good .pdf reader app.

+1.

I think the Kindle is great, and if anyone wants a simple book/magazine reader and is happy to use the Kindle Store, then I always recommend them. However, for what you want, I agree a tablet would be a better choice. Not only will you have an easy time getting the media onto it, you'll also have apps for your language learning as well as your PDF's.

Now, you know what I'm gonna say now, but every TeeJay post comes with a pinch of fanboyism...

I'd recommend an iPad. I don't need to go into the whys hows and whats but I wouldn't buy an Android tablet in a million years... the OS is a clunky, sluggish mess on the best of mobile handsets, let alone a tablet, and you don't even need to be a fanboy to see how superior iOS and its App Store is. But, and it's a big but... they're a damn sight cheaper than the iPad, and they get the job done, so if cost is a factor, grab an Android.

Wesley

After reading up about the original post, it wasn't really all that bad? I mean, what the original post doesn't mention is that these copies of 1984 and Animal Farm were actually illegal and bought for $1.

Amazon then admitted that they made a mistake in removing the items and said that in the future they wouldn't remove books; even if they were illegal.

Obviously they should have better systems in place to stop people from putting illegal copies on their marketplace though...

Kwramm

I guess this happened with the "publish-yourself" marketplace? which is a royal mess. I like the idea but it's flooded with junk and nobody seems to control or review the content. Which is a shame.
If it were better organized, it could actually be useful.

Andreas

MikeF wrote: »

less strain on the eyes.

Bingo (also cost). Do all e-readers do that weird inverting thing when the page changes? It really gets on my nerves :poly127:

Andreas

Necro-bump... About to splurge out on an e-reader, most likely the new kindle touch. I've heard though that the PDF support is unsatisfactory, anyone experienced this?Personally I love the partial refresh feature; no more polarizing screen? Would a Kindle touch be a good choice or are there better e-reader out there now?

monster

I had a Kindle DX and even though I read lots of books on it, I never liked e-ink. I prefer my iPad. You can avoid eye strain in dark or dim light by using Night reading mode that makes the background black and the text light grey.

My sister has a Kindle Fire and thats pretty nice too, and much cheaper than an iPad.

Andreas

Kinda agreed on the iPad. I tried reading a book on it once and had no problems. The big screen ment I could easily read in landscape mode too. Just don't have the dollas for an iPad right now. Might pick up a kindle touch today and see what they're like for PDFs. Thanks.

DEElekgolo

I read books and comics on my droid using the adobe reader and "perfect viewer" with the PDF plugin.

Andreas

Yeah the new Asus tablets look better that the iPad 3 tbh... though they are pricey. The best thing tablets are good for is comics I find, gaming on them is a mild distraction at best.

Bal

I read lots of books and disagree with all of you, e-ink type readers like the Kindle are much more comfortable to use, mostly because they are super light, and cause 0 eye-strain for me (unlike on regular screens). I can read while standing up in the subway, it fit's in my jacket pocket, etc, it's just super handy to have around.

About the Kindle itself, I have a Kindle 4 and I love it as an e-reader, as a gadget it's not so great though, the user interface and all leaves a lot to be desired, but I just read books with it, so don't really care about that. Haven't had any trouble converting formats so they read on the Kindle (I use the free app Calibre to do it, really handy).

System

For books, I'd agree that e-ink can't be beaten.

If, like me you read a lot of magazines though, I can't begin to explain how good they look on the iPad 3 display.

I regularly buy a bunch of magazines (3DWorld, 3DArtist, ComputerMusic, FutureMusic, Computer Arts etc etc) and recently stopped buying the 'paper' versions and now grab them from Newsstand on the iPad since they now include all the disc content as a download, and man those things look incredible on the retina display. Text/Vectors are all scaled beautifully and a lot of the magazines I read have already included the double-res graphics on anything rasterized so that looks awesome too.

But yeah, for B&W print books, Kindle definitely wins.

EDIT: Lol I already posted in this thread raving about the iPad... I really need to stop being such a fanboy.

Mark Dygert

I bought a Kindle Fire for my wife for Christmas mostly based on their response to the issue in the OP. They say they learned and so far haven't done anything that stupid since.

I like it for reading anything lengthy with text I almost always pick it up for books and comics, the book interface is fine, the rest of it needs a lot of work. My iPhone and my iPad are great for playing games (I wish some of them where actually more than just up-scaled).

There are a more than handful of things I really don't like about the Fire but here are the main ones:
- You can't get rid of the carousel on the main page, it's giant, its annoying and with a few people in my house using the device what was last used is hardly ever relevant to the next person who picks it up.
- It's a little slow and unresponsive at times, its easy to trip it up and even surfing Amazon's site can cause it to lag badly.
- The touch interface isn't as precise as other devices. Other interfaces do a pretty good job of guessing what it was you wanted to click on when links are tiny and close together but not so much on the Fire.
- Typing anything on it reminds me how much the iOS gets it right... and how much farther the kindle has to go. Just rip off Apple exactly on this one aspect, they nailed it.
- Actually removing books requires you to log into your amazon account, navigate a tiny complex web interface with a not so accurate touch interface. Which is annoying when you download a trial of a book and then don't like it.
- If they want the kindle to be a portal to people buying things on Amazon they need to dramatically overhaul their site to work better on the Kindle. There have been a few purchases where I said "screw this I'm going to the PC to get this done". That should never happen.

There are plenty of other annoying little things that they should fix but I'll stop at the big ones. If they aren't careful those little annoying things add up to resistance when reaching over to pick it up again, especially when I already have my phone or my pad in my hand.

So for me its a good e-reader and decent for movies, the iPad is great for music and games. Where they overlap Apple wins but I'm not so sure they should compete head on.