My Kindle Adventure, Part II

After such a struggle to get the Kindle for PC installed, working, and filled with a few books, I had a chance to use it today.  I finished reading one novel in pdf format and started on a new novel with the Kindle.  I can see that it has some advantages and some disadvantages, both regarding physical books and pdf format books.

Advantages:

• Books take no shelf space.
• You can take notes in the margin, so to speak.
• You can put a bookmark at the top of the page.
• There are a lot more free books available as ebooks than as physical books.

Disadvantages:

• You still can't use it to read in the bathtub, or outside, or in bed with a cat on your stomach.
• It bothers my eyes and neck to sit here and read for any period of time.
• Math books don't translate well to ebooks.
• I suspect that the Kindle is sending information back to Amazon because suddenly their recommendations reflect the non-Amazon Kindle book I'm reading.

So, will I ever be hooked on ebooks?  No.

Will I buy a Kindle or Nook? Probably not.

Will I consider buying ebooks? Probably for newer authors, where they either don't publish in a physical form or I'm too cheap to spend $20 on an unknown.

And now, off to bed and a nice physical book!

My Kindle Adventure

Because several friends love their ebook readers and I won an ebook, I decided to try reading the ebook on the Kindle for PC, just to see if I liked ebooks.  That was at 12:32pm.

Problem #1 -- Downloading the Kindle for PC software was simple to begin, but long to complete.  It only took 1h30m, but who's counting?

Problem #2 -- After successfully downloading a couple of free books, I downloaded another one.  Some idiot forgot to read the file size -- I, er, this idiot, didn't see it was 116MB not 116kb.  Since said idiot is on a 22kbps modem, well, let's just say it wasn't working too well.  I tried to stop it by deleting it off my account on Amazon and the book stopped downloading and went away.

Problem #2.5 -- The huge book came back and started downloading again!  Some choice words were muttered at this whole ebook idea.  I tried doing what I did before and I tried deleting the partial file on my computer.  It just kept downloading!  So, I called Amazon (didn't know you could do that!) and had them kill the book from their end.  This was after convincing the techie that yes, I was on a dial-up modem and still live in California.  But he did fix the problem.  The book is gone, it's still gone, and it will hopefully remain gone!

Problem #3 -- The nifty math book by Archimedes I found is worthless, if possible.  It was free, so can it be worth-less?  All the equations are written out in weird English so instead of 3x+1, it is "three times the variable x quantity added to one".  I can decipher it, but paying 99cents for the version with the gif's would have been better.

Problem #4 -- The dictionary hates me.  It downloads to about 40% and then tells me I have no internet connection.  HUH?

So, it's 8 hours later, I have not read any books, and I'm going to go to bed with a nice, physical book!!!