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ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
All kindle purchases in Canada go through the international Amazon.com store. If you have a Canadian shipping address they will refuse to sell you anything but the $110 Kindle 4, $140 Kindle Keyboard, $190 Kindle Keyboard 3G, and $380 Kindle DX, as well as a presumably smaller selection of books. I'm not sure, but I recall some people complaining that they also have this restriction based on the address on your credit card too.

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ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Codiusprime posted:

So, I've played with Caliber a bit but I don't really understand the appeal. Am I doing it wrong? Can someone tell me why the use caliber? I just buy and download the book from my Nook and it seems to work alright. What advantages does caliber offer? I tried to set it up for my mom because she was going to have to download books on her computer then transfer them to the Nook but I never got an iTunes for ereader vibe.

It's really nice if you want to get ebooks from sources other than your e-reader manufacturer's store, but they don't come in a compatible format. It also has this feature where it will download articles from websites you specify, and convert them into the ebook format of your choosing for your reading pleasure.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
I'd like to here some opinions on the Kindle touch v. Kindle 4. I can get the K4 severely discounted because I have Amazon.com gift cards, but I'd have to get the touch somewhere else because I live in a third world country that Amazon won't ship their more advanced devices to.

Is the touch that much better? Is it even really better at all? I would think that the slow response of an e-ink screen would make for a frustration touch experience, but I haven't actually been able to try one to see for myself.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
I got a Kindle 4 for Christmas, and I see I can email myself a mobi file that I converted from epub through whispernet. I was under the assumption that it should be able to sync the last read page between my Kindle and my phone, but I'm not even given the option to deliver it to devices other than the Kindle. Is this behaviour intended? Is there a way to make this work?

edit: nevermind, seems that only works with iOS.

ZShakespeare fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Dec 27, 2011

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
The screensavers on the (non-touch-non-ad because I live in Canada) Kindle 4 are gorgeous. I wouldn't think to replace them.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
I'm really glad that they decided to get rid of those horrid pictures for the 4th gen kindle.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
Amazon knows that there is no particular reason that your epubs could not have been legitimately acquired through one of the many stores that sell ebooks. Format shifting these books is perfectly legal as long as you got them in a legal manner. It's not Amazon's job to punish someone because they have files that weren't purchased from their store.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Lazyhound posted:

I got the basic, keyboardless Kindle (international version), and I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it handles PDFs. I thought it would dire, based on the the OP and my other research, but even files formatted for letter-size pages are perfectly legible. O'Reilly and Apress books look much better in their original layout than the .mobi versions. My only complaint is that it won't sync / back up last read positions, even if the files are uploaded through PDS.

I really want the cover with light, but $80 shipped?

Personal documents only sync to other kindles and iOS devices. The iOS thing is brand new, so hopefully they will push this functionality out to other platforms soon.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

PRADA SLUT posted:

Is the cheap kindle difficult to use for anyone? I want to get one, but I'm not sure about the lack of a keyboard. I will only read novels on it (front to back, so no searching and such). Would it be better to have the keyboard anyway?

I only use mine for reading books and I'm definitely glad I don't have the extra bulk of the keyboard or those terrifying screensavers that come with the keyboard kindle.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
If you look very closely at the text on the kindle you can see where the text could be crisper from a higher resolution display, but even knowing it's there you won't notice it at a normal (> 6") reading distance. I imagine this has a lot to do with the Kindle's proprietary font, because it was very noticeable on my wife's Kobo.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

BlueLaser posted:

That or email it to yourself so it is in your portable documents.

Syncing personal documents only works with Kindles and iOS devices. It does not work with the Android app.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
It's a textbook and would look like poo poo on a 6-7 inch screen because it has all kinds of diagrams and poo poo. Rather than give you a lovely experience they make it available only on devices with larger screens.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
Why don't you just strip the DRM and convert it to a PDF? If you are going to try to shoehorn it into doing something it was never meant to do you might as well give it some effort.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Splizwarf posted:


... come on, really? :rolleyes:


Look at the size of a physical textbook, and then look at the size of your ereader screen. In most cases you will notice a difference. Some textbooks might reflow to the size of the smaller screen very well. Others not. I have three textbooks, this semester, that look absolutely awful on the smaller screen and are near impossible to read without zooming and panning. If I hadn't had to jump through hoops to read the books in an unsupported configuration I might have felt that I was spending money on something that was a really substandard. I'm certain that Amazon thinks many of its customers would also feel this way and would rather have a few people go on internet rants about customer choice and openness rather than devalue its brand.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Splizwarf posted:

For that matter, why would anyone buy movies on DVD? They don't have a 2 story screen like a theater does.

Because you're sitting a lot closer to the screen and it still fills your field of vision? If you had a 5 inch TV and sat 8 feet away on your couch then it would be a pretty dumb idea to buy a DVD because it would be terrible to watch.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Splizwarf posted:

:ughh:

Seriously, are you just trollin' us at this point?

Is it that hard to believe that someone thinks is dumb to complain that publishers are evil for minorly inconveniencing you as you attempt to squint at 6.5 pt font and graphics on a small screen designed specifically to display human readable prose?

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Alucard posted:

I also noticed that it does a full flash every page turn now as opposed to every 5 pages. It's probably too early for any statistics on this, but I assume that it's going to have a notable effect on the battery life? I have had mine since Xmas and I'm just getting around to needing to recharge, so I held off on the update until I had to give it a full charge.

I don't know if this is the case for the touch, but the non-touch kindle 4 got a software update to make full page refreshing ever page turn an option. You may be able to turn it off.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Civil posted:

My wife and I both have Kindle 4's with ads (no keyboard/no touch), and it's not easy to tell them apart.

I don't mind the ads, but is there a way to add more wallpapers to these? We both leave wifi off long enough that they end up reverting back to the non-ad screensavers, and it would be nice to customize them.

I googled around and haven't really found one site that seems to house this type of info.

I have this problem as well. I've been looking for a nice sticker to put on the back of mine or something. As far as I know there isn't a way to gain root access the the Kindle 4, and so there is no way to change the screen savers.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Trico posted:

Can any Canadians help me out here: Would the Kobo sleeves they sell at Indigo or Chapters be a good fit for my Kindle 4? The K4 is actually slightly smaller in dimensions to Kobo, so it shouldn't be too loose a fit, right?

I don't have any experience with that specific sleeve, but my wife created a sleeve for her Kobo before she got a kindle herself and before she modified it to fit the kindle properly, it fit fairly well.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
You should probably check some other ebook stores to see if the publisher has worked out a deal with another distributor in Canada.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Anne Whateley posted:

In general when a publisher doesn't have a digital edition available in Canada, it's because they don't have the rights (Canada is sometimes with other Commonwealth countries / digital rights are sometimes US-only), so unfortunately this probably won't help.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you claiming that all Canadian ebook stores have identical selection, or that Amazon's ebook selection covers all other ebook stores?

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Bhodi posted:

Before this descends into :filez:

b-b-but ~*My Freedom*~ :saddowns:

If they don't make the content available in the format that doesn't make me leave my basement :filez: is justified right? :downs:

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Splizwarf posted:

Still have one of those, do you?

All over the place in our socialist paradise :canada: They even lend eBooks. Crazy.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

melon cat posted:

Do any Canadian e-inkers have a preference for Kindle vs Kobos? We're about to splurge on one or the other, but we're not sure which direction to go.

Kindle wins hands down. Page turns are faster, the battery lasts longer, the build quality is MUCH better, and the library is much larger. The only downside is that you can't borrow books from a library.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
Hell yes, the Android Kindle app just updated to sync personal documents including last read page.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

spixxor posted:

I've never even opened the app on my phone before today, so what does this mean, exactly? There's no way to sync all the books on my Kindle to the app, right? Only the ones I've bought from Amazon? Either they're classed (personal documents and non-Amazon books, I mean) as two different things or I'm a dummy (possibly both).

Any of the books you emailed to your kindle through amazon personal documents will now sync to your phone.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_pdoc_main_short_us?nodeId=200767340

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
I personally prefer the non–touch kindle simply for the reason that responsiveness is what makes touch interfaces work well, and e–ink just isn't there yet. On the other hand the battery is bigger in the tough version; though I've only had to plug mine in four times since I got it on Christmas.

I heard someone complain that you can't page forward if you hold it in your left hand, but that sounds like a huge thing for amazon to overlook and it's more likely that person was overlooking something.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
The one single feature that makes the kindle the better choice for me is the personal documents syncing feature. I convert whatever book I have to mobi using calibre and email it to my kindle, then amazon will remember which page I read last and sync between my kindle and my android phone. Really handy for when I find myself delayed and want to bust out a chapter or two.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

WattsvilleBlues posted:

I've got a Wi-Fi Kindle 3.

I have a Windows Phone.

Apart from official Amazon downloads, am I able to have two copies of a file that will sync between both?

As far as I know personal document syncing only works for Android and iOS currently.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

mistermojo posted:

Is there a way to sync progress with Kindle and the iPhone app?

I can send a PDF to both the Kindle and iPhone from my computer using the "Send to Kindle" app and it downloads it on both, but it doesn't seem to save the progress.

edit: I tried it with a .mobi and the sync option is greyed out in the iPhone app and the Kindle says it's unable to sync to furthest read page, does it only work with ebooks bought in the Amazon store?

It works for me. Sometimes it takes a minute or two to update on the server. I've never tried it with a PDF though, just mobi files. When you manage your kindle on the amazon website does the file in question appear?

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Honey Im Homme posted:

Does any software exist that will allow me to sync ebooks to multiple devices at once? Calibre would be perfect but it only supports one device at a time.



:suicide:

If all you use is a Kindle/Kindle App for Android/iOS you can do this simply by emailing the ebook to you personal document service.

e: should have expanded the image first.

You're screwed.

ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!
Too bad none of this will make its way outside of the us except maybe the e-ink reader. We don't even have amazon mp3 let alone video or prime. It's still an Apple world.

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ZShakespeare
Jul 20, 2003

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Crackbone posted:

Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Amazon isn't really interested in supporting somebody with 32G of non-amazon purchased materials. It's a consumer electronic that's not intended for commercial/enterprise use.

Don't forget amazon's cloud storage either. That's an additional 6GB for non-amazon content and unlimited storage of all your legally obtained ebooks. The only reason to complain is if you suddenly need all of that and you're in the middle of the wilderness with no Internet.

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