I tested a Kindle

My parents got one, and I was at their house last weekend.

I think it's pretty nifty. A few points that I don't think have been covered here.

-I emailed the kindle a book. I emailed "The Scarlett Letter" as a .txt file to the Amazon account, Amazon translated it, and sent it to the Kindle in no time at all. It seemed to work just like a regular Kindle book. So that's good!

-They have a weird numbering system, it's not pages, and after a bit of fidgeting, I still can't figure out exactly how it works, or how to get to a certain page. Might be tricky for doing citations and such. This could be my fault.

-I used the web surfer, logged into LibraryThing, and tried to post a "hello from a Kindle" message, but that wouldn't work. The web surfing is clumsy and limited, obviously. That's why they're calling it experimental, I'm sure.

-The reading was easy, and the flashing screen did not bother me.

-My parents are very happy that they can read new hardcover books, and they'll always weigh the same, no matter how many pages the book is. The large type size choice is a big plus for them, as well.

-I found a book on the Kindle site, I don't remember which, that was $21.00. That's absolutely ridiculous. Most things are 9.99 or less, which is bad enough for a few bytes of info.

An enjoyable test, I would need to sit and read a whole book to really know, though.

Good information, thanks. I am awaiting a backordered Kindle. I am excited to be able to read some light weighted stuff and give my arthritic thumbs a bit of a break.

There are a few Kindle books that are very high priced. I think I saw a book at $74 marked down from $85, probably a text book. If I need to look at a book that expensive, I'll have to go to a regular library, or use interlibrary loan.

Just for fun, I did a kindle book search on Amazon sorting price from high to low. The highest price Kindle book is something called Growth Strategies for Software Companies. Kindle price of $1,079.96... which is guess is a nice savings over the ring bound price of $1,499.95!

The vast majority of books I'm interested in are in the under ten dollar range and hopefully that price will drop over time. When Sue Grafton's latest, T is for Tresspass, was first posted in the Kindle books it had a price of $15.95 and I figured oh well, so much for bestsellers going for $9.99, but within a couple of days the price on "T" had dropped to the going bestseller rate. Somebody at Amazon must have goofed.

I'm planning on being an active Kindle user and make many suggestions to Amazon, including keeping their prices on books low enough that we can buy their stuff. I am hoping that Amazon will continue to value customer input, as they have done in my experiences in the past.

I got it.

I agree, bereader, about the Amazon experience; I think they respond to customers' needs as one expects a much smaller business to do. It's one of the top brands in my book (no pun intended!). I'm very close to ordering a Kindle thanks to your and others input.

#5, woohoo! congrats! I'm sure you'll let us all know what you think!

ps: Do Kindle books have a different ISBN#? Or would we need to tag them "Kindle"?

oh, dear, I misspoke - I mean, I mistyped -

I meant I understood something, and now I don't even know what I was "getting".

I did not mean I got a Kindle. Mine is still on back order not expected until after the holidays.

I got all excited there for a few seconds... until I read message #8...

About the tagging... I just checked and I would have to do some more investigating, but the c.i.p. info has the ISBN listed as eISBN... and then a ten digit number... this was on a copyright 2000 book, before the new expanded ISBNs. I then searched that ISBN on Amazon, which sent me to a page listing all the different editions of the title (paperback, hardcover, kindle). So, no real answer, as I know that different editions have different ISBNs, it would make sense that this kindle ISBN is unique.

Ok, now I am really confused. I just checked one of the brand new 2007 copyright kindle books I have and this c.i.p. has no "e" indication in the front. I searched Amazon using this ISBN and got a no match, so this may not even be the correct ISBN.

Anyway, we would probably have to go to another group, where all the cataloging experts live, to find out the specifics, yes?

I'm obviously new here and don't know my way around yet... also obviously, non-print cataloging is not my forte'.

#9, hey, you made a better run at it than I did!

I suppose there's someone on the site that knows what librarians do with e-books....

last one to find out's a rotten egg . . . .

I did a little more looking and there is a group here called eBook (imagine that!) and in that group is a discussion about tagging ebooks. I knew there had to be something here somewhere.