It arrived at my door, here at the bottom end of Africa, within four working days of the order going through (the actual process was a whole lot longer, but that has nothing to do with Amazon, but rather my bank - however, that's another story).
First thing I did was to charge it, then read through the user guide. While reading through the user guide, I bought my first book, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (which is not the topic of this blog) via Whispernet - a really cool feature.
The next morning, I finished reading the user guide, interspersed with a bit of The Lost Symbol, but I did notice that the battery seemed to be getting depleted rather rapidly. That afternoon, I took it with me to the pub to show it off to the locals. They were especially interested, more so when I bought and downloaded a book (Dean Koontz's Sole Survivor) from Amazon in less than a minute.
The next morning, when I switched it on, I hit the first irritation - the battery was running very low. This after just over 36 hours since I'd charged it. What happened to the one week claimed by Amazon? Did I have a dud?
As Amazon's eBook prices seemed a little on the high side, I started browsing the free classics on Feedbooks, and downloaded a few of those onto my PC. I converted them from .epub to .mobi using calibre and uploaded them to the Kindle via USB. [edit]A colleague pointed out to me that if you click on the link to the book's title, rather than the download link next to the title, you get options for different formats, including .mobi and .prc [/edit]
I finished The Lost Symbol and started with The Invisible Man and Sole Survivor. Again, I was horrified that the battery ran down within 48 hours of the last charge. I started googling for info on this and found more than one reference to upgrading the operating system on the Kindle. The recommended OS version was 2.3.3, which was an upgrade on 2.3, both of which fixed battery issues. This gave rise to the second irritation - the OS version on my Kindle was 2.2.1 Why hadn't the OS been upgraded before the device was shipped? Is it a case of sending old/returned stock to the Third World?
Anyway, I downloaded the upgrade (11MB) and installed it on my Kindle. It definitely did fix the battery issues. I've now been running for more than a week (at least four hours per day, probably more) and the battery is still more than 50%. I do have Whispernet off most of the time, I must add.
I have found that the screen is slightly darker as mentioned by some folks on the Web, and I think this has something to do with the way the screen is refreshed between pages (probably how they managed to save on battery life through software). If the ambient light catches the screen in a certain way, there seems to be residual text on it, almost like burn-in on old CRT monitors. This is not too irritating as often in some books the text on preceding/subsequent pages can be seen through the page being read. I'd rather have that than continually having to recharge.
Ok, now I'm getting the hang of this and enjoying the experience, so I want to buy some more books. So I hopped onto Amazon from my PC and started looking through their recommendations. This is where I hit the third irritation - I can't buy more than 60% of their recommendations:
"This title is not available for customers in your location: Africa"
If it's not available, why recommend it? I have subsequently found that a huge chunk of their eBooks is "not available in Africa". And then the publishers wonder why potential customers turn to pirate sources (which I will talk about in a later blog).
From the books that are available on Amazon, I started looking for a selection to buy for when I go on vacation later this month. I'm rather partial to Dean Koontz, so I started with his books that "are available in Africa" and then I hit the fourth irritation. Looking at the book Fear Nothing, I found that it costs $8.39 (it's a bit higher outside the USA because of a $2 Whispernet fee). However, and that's the reason for the irritation, a new hardcover version costs $3.92 and a new paperback $4.77. Why should the eBook be so much more? Milking a dead cow? At the rate at which Dean Koontz churns out books, he has to write them on a word processor, so they must already be available to the publisher electronically. The conversion of such an electronic document to an eBook takes less than an hour (I know, I've done it), so why is it so expensive? To reiterate:
And then the publishers wonder why potential customers turn to pirate sources.
From the books that are available on Amazon, I started looking for a selection to buy for when I go on vacation later this month. I'm rather partial to Dean Koontz, so I started with his books that "are available in Africa" and then I hit the fourth irritation. Looking at the book Fear Nothing, I found that it costs $8.39 (it's a bit higher outside the USA because of a $2 Whispernet fee). However, and that's the reason for the irritation, a new hardcover version costs $3.92 and a new paperback $4.77. Why should the eBook be so much more? Milking a dead cow? At the rate at which Dean Koontz churns out books, he has to write them on a word processor, so they must already be available to the publisher electronically. The conversion of such an electronic document to an eBook takes less than an hour (I know, I've done it), so why is it so expensive? To reiterate:
And then the publishers wonder why potential customers turn to pirate sources.
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