So I have received my Kindle 2.
And so far I love it. It's a bit addictive. I love the feature of being able to change the font size as someone who needs reading glasses. The little five-way cursor button was a bit hard to get used to at first but it's getting easier to maneuver. I'm loving being able to read ebooks on it and having multiple books at my disposal. When I get tired of one book, no problem, just switcheroo.
Most of the ebooks I purchased in the past were PDF documents and it is true that Kindle doesn't support PDF as well as other formats. Basically you email them to your Kindle and Kindle converts them to a readable format, but the formatting is a bit off in that there aren't really page breaks but it is definitely readable and preferable to re-buying all your ebooks in a more compatible format. Supposedly Mobipocket has a program that will convert the PDF files to a .prc document but I tried figuring out how to do it and my brain turned to mush. Someone else might have more patience and ability to figure it out.
New books I can buy either directly from Amazon if available or I can buy the .prc file most epublishers now offer. I've bought a few since the Kindle arrived and they worked quite beautifully on there. You can either email the .prc document to your Kindle or you can hook up the Kindle to your computer and drag and drop the file from your computer to the device. Either is pretty easy but I find emailing to be the easiest for me. When you buy a book directly from Amazon it is delivered instantly to the Kindle which is way cool.
Also books that you pre-ordered for the Kindle will be delivered instantly to your Kindle they day they become available. I liked this feature.
A con for me is the Kindle Users Guide on the Kindle is really huge and long and long and long. Or it seemed that way to me. I don't have the time or inclination to read the whole thing. I wanted to know how to buy books, send books to my Kindle, read them, and change the font. And I know that now, so all of the other features it no doubt offers, well, maybe someone else likes to read endless user guides.
A second con is that most older books are not available in Kindle form yet. A lot of newer releases are (not all but a fair amount) but if you are looking to get a favorite author's backlist on Kindle it won't happen, at least for now. For instance I love Julie Garwood's old historicals when she was writing them and can read many of them again and again. It would have been cool to have them on my Kindle but none of them were available.
Another con is that I am addicted and I don't want to do anything else but read my Kindle or shop for my Kindle or transfer files to my Kindle. This is especially bad because I am a writer and I earn nothing if if I don't continue to create new material. Now likely it is the newness of this and my fascination will eventually wane enough to let me return to productivity.
No doubt about it, the darn thing is expensive. It certainly won't be worth it to someone who isn't fairly addicted to reading or someone who still wants to hold a paperback when they do read. It's like holding a book but to turn the page you press a button not flip the paper. This is very cool to me, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea.
Of course, if you are reading this, you probably already read Ebooks because you wouldn't be reading my blog otherwise (or likely not). I went a number of years reading pdf files on my computer so if that works for you and in this economy you can't afford a lot of luxurious items than by all means stick to your computer. But for me this was a great investment and I am looking forward to reading oodles of books on my pretty new toy.
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