Thanks for the tip, I'm definitely keeping my eye on the bestseller list. The amount of religious fiction, romance, and out-of-copyright stuff has so far been hard to wade through to find anything that I'm really interested in, though - I keep hoping I'll stumble across some gems hidden in there, though.

I've been up to my arse in pre-1932 classic literature since the inception of project gutenberg - i'm specifically trying to avoid loading up my kindle with that stuff. i mean, it's good stuff and i'm glad it's there, don't get me wrong - i've just read most of it that i care to read already. like a million times. and whenever you look for free or cheap resources, out-of-copyright stuff is always waved around, particularly by manufacturers, as "TONS OF FREE CONTENT AVAILABLE!" while technically true, yes, it's also the same "free content" that's been around since my grandparents - or older.

modern content, meanwhile, is stuck in this horrific and complicated licensing/copyright/distribution morass that is strictly controlled by people in suits who haven't read anything beyond the wall street journal for their entire lives, it seems.

in general, it seems like it's getting harder and harder to break established revenue streams and replace them with new ones. of course nobody wants to lose revenue streams but nobody seems willing to even upgrade or shift them i a new direction. these industries are *extremely* risk-averse and overall resistant to even the hint of change. you know, i don't even think Analog/Asimov's took anything but a postal submission until recently, as an example - can you imagine, publications purporting the latest-and-greatest imaginations in science fiction that can't even take an email? it's symptomatic of what it's like that all over the publishing industry.

Hopefully something will break and modern, relevant content will become cheap and ubiquitous, everybody will get paid, nobody will go broke, and happy smiles and fuzzy bunnies for everybody, right? right? yeaaaaahh. :)

The Kindle and the iPad both support their own DRM. Almost everybody else out there supports Adobe's. (It would be easier, in the short term, if everybody supported it, and there are certainly market-based reasons to do so. But that would still leave the "standard" in the control of one company, which isn't fabulous in the long term.)


If you like science fiction or fantasy, and you've never been to the baen.com site, check it out. They offer many of their books for free, especially early volumes of long-established series, and the ones that aren't free usually have the first few chapters available as a teaser.

Adobe is generally awful and I applaud anybody's efforts to get away from them. I don't really like DRM at all, to be honest. Digital music folks are just beginning to understand that nobody really does and allowing access on other devices is probably the best way to sell music - you just have to make it as easy as possible for people to buy things and chances are that they will buy rather than steal. There may always be pirates, but their impact can really be minimized if you make things easy on folks. Also, pricing close to what people see is an appropriate value - that's some free market action there. Publishers jack up prices and act all surprised when suddenly people are just stealing their stuff! I hope book publishers and e-reader manufacturers can come in line with the same ideas without having to go through a repeat of the past 10+ years of stupidity that's been going on in music.

I will definitely check out baen.com, thanks! I'm a big science fiction fan. Slightly less so on the fantasy stuff these days, I'm a bit pickier there, but even so. It looks like a good site, and I like their free library introduction. Good for them, that's really forward-thinking and brilliant, and I hope they make oodles of cash. Or at least enough to keep doing what they're doing and live happily ever after, which is after all the point.

It came two days earlier than estimated. There are benefits to living less than 50 miles from the shipping point.

The DX Graphite is nice, but I'm having some minor challenges adapting to the new navigation strategy. The five way switch is nice, but I thought the Kindle 1 was a lot more intuitive to use out of the box. The shipping container was a lot more utilitarian, but it was sturdy.

It was very easy to transfer files from my computer to the new DX (rather than downloading one at a time from amazon). took about 5 minutes all told. I've been going back and forth through the afternoon between reading and starting to sort things out into categories.

I like the size of the screen, but the keyboard is a little challenging to use, as I can't balance the DX on my hands and type with my thumbs, like I did on the Kindle1 and the Blackberry.

The display is much clearer, with better contrast, and the native PDF reader is fantastic.

I like the graphite gray case color. It makes the Kindle itself fade more into the background than the white.

I think the DX and I are going to get along just fine.

Brilliant, glad to hear it. if i had that kind of dough, i'd love to play with one myself. the bigger screen i can tell already must be superior just by virtue of size, not to mention the improved clarity and contrast.

i do wish they had better sorting options. i like my data neat and orderly, and it's tough to do that on a kindle, which sort of bugs me. call it my inner librarian, but i like my books organized on my own terms, whatever those may be.

is the keyboard thing because the device is that much larger and the keys are spaced apart further? do you have to put it down, or hold it with one hand and hunt-and-peck with the other?

If you have the version 2.5 upgrade you can make "collections" ... sort you books into categories you define. It's pretty easy to do. A lot of users are hoping for the ability to create folders within these collections. So far amazon has been fairly responsive to ideas from customers like that.

Typing is easier if I hold the KDXG with my left hand and type with my right. It is a size of the keypad issue. It's not as easy to type on as the Crackberry.

i definitely did the upgrade pretty much right out of the box, and collections are definitely a step in the right direction. i'd like to see still a bit more advanced sorting, group tagging and moving into collections, stuff like that to make it easier to manage overall.

i'm probably going to pile together a list of my likes and dislikes and email amazon's kindle feedback to let them know what i think. i don't know if any of it would ever happen, but hey, can't hurt, right? i try to follow a general policy of letting companies know when they do something right or when i think something could be changed after an experience with their products. sometimes they even pretend to care, which is awesome.

also, man baen.com, i grabbed a handful of books and have not been disappointed with having some good light scifi reading. very happy with that, so thanks to stevedallas for that :)

For what it's worth, I got my moleskine case today it's very nice, but also very bulky particularly with the notebook insert. it's very book-like now, though it loses that neat charm that the unit has when you're just holding it - the light, thin quality of the unit is completely negated. on the other hand it looks like it'll be quite protected for transport, so i'll be able to take it out of the house with slightly less fear. seriously, it quadruples the thickness of the unit and is two or three times heavier now.

Amazon is reporting more sales of eBooks than of hardcovers.

Yeah, sure. What are the bookstores and libraries reporting?

This "eBook" thing strikes me as a culture-change much like the past few years in the music industry, and before that the photo-copy industry, with much ado about keeping control of money-streams through copyright, etc.

For good or evil, things are probably out of the control of the industry-gurus and in the hands of the market place. A digital reader that satisfies the majority seems to me to be inevitable. I'll even bet that we see the addition of (timely / personalized ?) advertising and product-placement within future ebook texts.

My wife is wishing for an eBook, but unfortunately for me I probably will always go after the hardcover and will have to pay thru the nose for my affection.

It very much is a culture change. It's a change in consumer culture and it's a change in corporate and industry culture. The latter two are the slowest and most difficult and resistant to change and typically the least responsive. But with any technologica product, it's where the cultures meet that things happen. The closer together they can be brought, the more awesome things happen.

Really, I only got an e-reader because of the woot.com sale, though. They were still too expensive otherwise - $40 off was just enough to put it in my price range. They're still new to consumers and new technology. I hope they continue to get better and better. And as I've said before, I hope that it doesn't spiral out of control like digital music did for so long, until distributors finally realised that holy crap, you CAN make money by giving people what they want! Go figure, right?

Another followup, this time about reading lights for e-readers.

I picked up two book lights to try out. One was the eBook*Lite from Target, for $20. It has a special padded clip mechanism that slots onto the top of a kindle (or other device) and a fold-up 3-LED lamp with a low and high setting. It runs on 2 AAA batteries.

The other, also from Target, was an Energizer LED Book Light reading light with clip for $6 and change. One LED, runs on two button-cell lithium batteries. It has a padded clip designed to fit the spine of most books and fits quite well in a hardback.

The verdict? Well, the eBook Lite is good looking and color matches the Kindle, and runs on standard, cheap AAA batteries. The lighting quality is decent for reading, but not stellar - the angle of the unit means there is a definite light gradient from the top of the reading screen where it's the brightest, down to the bottom, where the light grows a bit thin.

The Energizer unit, though only having one LED, is on a very adjustable bendy neck and is surprisingly very, very bright. Center it properly and your screen will be lit up very, very well all over, as it's got a wide-angle beam to it.

It's tough to recommend one or the other - the two biggest factors vary depending on your individual preference and circumstances.

If you're spending too much money on books and can't afford the eBook*Lite, get the Energizer - it's cheap, nicely bright and works great overall, but battery replacement will be a little annoying. However it also has potential uses besides for an e-reader, as it can easily clip to anything. It may not transport in a bag as easily as the Ebook*Lite, though - I can see the clip or flex neck getting damaged easily.

On the other hand, it *is* quite bright and could potentially bother a spouse trying to sleep, which the eBook*Lite wouldn't do nearly as much. Plus AAAs are cheaper to buy than the coin cells, which may help offset the initial investment of $20 versus $6.50 or so. It also folds up into a compact, self-protective package with a small slip case to ward off scratches.

Hope this helps anyone with accessory choices.

Also, I really do like my moleskine case. It's still easy enough to use the kindle, and the energizer lamp clips nicely into the spine whereas the eBook*Lite fits a little awkwardly. It does work, but it's not as nice with the moleskine cover as it is attached to the unadorned Kindle unit itself, where it actually looks quite natural.

I have an LLBean headlamp for a reading light. It is awesome and the light falls wherever I'm looking so I don't have to adjust it.

However I look like a complete geek wearing it.

Since I am a complete geek this is not a significant issue.

I am sad_winslow, and I approve this message.