Amazon Kindle and Fedora

[Robert L Cochran]

I do own a Kindle and I have connected it to my Fedora 7 machine (yeah,
I know Fedora 7 is way out of date, I hope to finally upgrade later this
year.) The Kindle just appears to be another hard drive. I also happen
to have a 4 Gb flash card installed in mine, and I can see that, too, as
another hard drive.

I can't remember if my Kindle can read a PDF file directly or if the pdf
has to be converted to *.azw format. It reads HTML and I have added PDF
books but I think I first converted those to *.azw.) I do not like my
Kindle.

The Kindle has been available for more than a year now, I believe, but
there hasn't been one single firmware update made available to improve
its numerous failings.

It does not handle pdf's, even converted ones, correctly.

It shows images only in grayscale. Not having a color Kindle when you
can get a color netbook for close to the same price is a waste of money.
If I had a choice (with hindsight) I'd now buy a netbook. They do more
and are still very portable.

A similar device is the iRex iLiad. It costs more than the Kindle. I
don't know if it is still being marketed.

The Kindle forums on Amazon had one guy who claimed to be a medical
doctor and I don't understand how he was able to use his Kindle for
study. The Kindle simply does not do text, images, or HTML tables very
well. Doctors are expected to study books which are of extremely complex
nature.

Please note: I am saying all the above after having downloaded only one
free sample chapter of a Kindle-ized book, and I have never bought a
Kindle Store book from Amazon.

My impression of the Kindle is that its total purpose is to give you,
the buyer, an extremely limited experience. And give Amazon a broad,
rewarding bottom-line experience.

Maybe I really should order that netbook....

Bob Cochran



Dave Feustel wrote:
> Has anyone any experience transferring ebooks between Amazon's Kindle book
> reader and Fedora using the Kindle's usb connection?
>
> Thanks,
> Dave Feustel
>
>