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Amazon Kindle |OT| of eInk superiority

H

HiroProtagonist

Member
Gvaz said:
So the fact that wifi was off, and the screensaver on, and I didn't touch it for like 8 hours means what?

How long does it typically take to index things? I have almost 1,000 entries on my kindle here.
Click to expand...
Here's how to check and see if anything is stuck indexing:

To see if you still have books indexing, from the home screen type a nonsense search like ‘xzwwx’ [or even just a period, which is quicker] and press ENTER. If the search result says ‘No items’, indexing has finished; if one or more items are listed, indexing is still in progress. If a book gets ‘stuck’ on indexing, delete it, let other items finish indexing, then re-download the book to see if it will index.
Click to expand...
 
S

Sleepy

Member
VistraNorrez said:
Did you just put a 1000 titles on there at once? That will take a long time to index if so.
Click to expand...


Could you guys define indexing? Is it when the Kindle and Amazon "sync"? Or is it when the Kindle attempts to load the ebooks? I just want to know what to look for.

Thanks.
 
V

VistraNorrez

Member
Because the Kindle and the books on it are searchable it needs to go through all the text in the file and make it apart of the database so to speak. It goes through an individual book pretty fast, but the more books you add it seems like the longer the process takes. The Kindle can only do so much.
 
S

Sleepy

Member
VistraNorrez said:
Because the Kindle and the books on it are searchable it needs to go through all the text in the file and make it apart of the database so to speak. It goes through an individual book pretty fast, but the more books you add it seems like the longer the process takes. The Kindle can only do so much.
Click to expand...


Thanks. So to avoid index-limbo, and protect battery life, one should just add a few books at a time?
 
H

Hanzou

Member
Help Me! said:
Thanks. So to avoid index-limbo, and protect battery life, one should just add a few books at a time?
Click to expand...

year or if you add a ton of books at once just leave it plugged in for the day.
 
H

Hanzou

Member
VistraNorrez said:
I've been getting the Song of Ice and Fire series one by one (got Game of Thrones as a gift so I had to), but I like when a series is collected as one giant book. If I got it on my own I would've got the four pack, although it would've been weird to get books 5, 6, and 7 individually. It must take about 500 locations just to see the percentage go up.
Click to expand...

About 750 actually. The four book pack is about 75,000 locations
 
H

Hanzou

Member
Reluctant-Hero said:
So wait, the four book pack on Amazon loads as one huge Kindle file? If so, I'd rather buy the books individually...
Click to expand...

Yeah they do. I thought about getting the books individually but the ~$9 in savings seemed like it was worth it to me.
 
H

HiroProtagonist

Member
Hanzou said:
That is perhaps the weirdest thing I ever witnessed. I click on your link all I see is the audible books. Ok, that makes sense since I was set to the Canada region and they are not available in Canada. Switch it to the US store and they load up fine. Yet when I was searching earlier in the US store the books would not show up at all. I am not sure if it was some sort of browser cache problem or what.

This leads to the next point of the Kindle store in some ways being Shit in Canada. There are quite a lot of books which are not available here for no apparent reason. If you look at the Canadian Kobo store which I think is Canada based, they have pretty much every book imaginable. The prices are slightly higher or the same but still, Amazon needs to step up their game. I can download the Kobo version and convert it with Calibre wo work on the Kindle but I like to have all my books in one place.

Is there any problem I would come across If i changed my Kindle account to an American one?
Click to expand...
I just went to amazon.ca to see what the price was for A Dance with Dragons, and no Kindle prices are showing up for me either. The kindle search option is missing, and Kindle is also missing from the 'shop all departments' drop down list. Looks like Amazon is trying to make it slightly more difficult for us to comparison shop for ebooks.
 
UltimaKilo

UltimaKilo

Gold Member
Does anyone know what procedures should be taken to ensure the health of the Kindle's battery? Should it somehow be recalibrated?
 
D

Dany

Banned
So how is the kinlde with special offers and ads? Does it interfere much? I can get that and a discount at amazon making it under 100, which would be perfect!

Also, with most electronics like a laptop or ipod, letting it drain down to o% once every 1 or 2 month is fine but IDK since apparently they have a long ass battery life.
 
S

Sleepy

Member
Does anyone know if the ad-Kindle still has the Amazon Visa card offer available? (Open the card get a $100 Amazon giftcard.)
 
V

virtuoso88

Member
Help Me! said:
Does anyone know if the ad-Kindle still has the Amazon Visa card offer available? (Open the card get a $100 Amazon giftcard.)
Click to expand...

Nope, current one is GPS and $10 giftcard for buying $10 of eligible books.

Dany M said:
So how is the kinlde with special offers and ads? Does it interfere much? I can get that and a discount at amazon making it under 100, which would be perfect!
Click to expand...

It's only on the screen saver and your book list (10% of the screen). It's awesome, my kindle has almost paid for itself in just amazon giftcards I got from the deals or swapping deals for giftcards.
 
B

brentech

Member
I've finally decided to go ahead and purchase one....not like it's some huge purchase price either - just wanted to make sure I'd use it and figure out what uses those would be. As I understand it, our library system and what is apparently used most everywhere is supposed to enable Kindle support by the end of the year.

So. I plan to buy one soon, but I would like an offer to come up as well. So while I finish the second half of ASOIAF and the 4th book on paperback, I'll hope something comes down the pipes.
 
G

Gvaz

Banned
I keep getting distracted. I didn't read any more than maybe 5 chapters of ACOK yesterday, and I went "i'll spend all day reading the last 26%!"

I haven't read a single word, I've just been scouring for more books to read and posting on forums :(
 
C

childplease

Banned
Why is it that E books tend to be more expensive then their paper book counter parts.

I recently bought the A Song of Ice and Fire boxed set for 19.97 shipped, the kindle version is 29.99.

How do publishers get away with charging more for the Ebook versions?
 
G

Gvaz

Banned
Publishers set the prices. IMO the kindle versions should be 50-75% cheaper than the paperback or hardcover ones. Especially since most of the work is just scanning it and using programs to change the images into text then proofreading it.

Drewsky said:
Does jailbreaking the Kindle do anything other than offer the screensaver change?
Click to expand...

For the most part, no. It's mostly minor changes: here However I think it's worth it because it doesn't change too much, you can still update and not have it overwrite (so far) and adds a bit of personalization to your kindle.
 
P

PhoncipleBone

Banned
gibon3z said:
Why is it that E books tend to be more expensive then their paper book counter parts.

I recently bought the A Song of Ice and Fire boxed set for 19.97 shipped, the kindle version is 29.99.

How do publishers get away with charging more for the Ebook versions?
Click to expand...

Because Amazon cuts the price of the physical book down, where the normal price is like $35 or so. But they remove most of the margin, so it makes it very cheap. The Ebook is "technically" cheaper than the physical book, but once discounted it isn't.
 
H

Husker86

Member
Gvaz said:
Publishers set the prices. IMO the kindle versions should be 50-75% cheaper than the paperback or hardcover ones. Especially since most of the work is just scanning it and using programs to change the images into text then proofreading it.



For the most part, no. It's mostly minor changes: here However I think it's worth it because it doesn't change too much, you can still update and not have it overwrite (so far) and adds a bit of personalization to your kindle.
Click to expand...
I have no idea how books are printed by publishers, but they really aren't already in some sort of digital form?
 
G

Gvaz

Banned
I'd wager most books today are in digital form, but ones that don't have the digital versions available, or ones that refuse to release ebook versions (I'm looking at you Games Workshop) the only way to digitize the book is either to hand type it (slow) or scan it and run it through an OCR (fast).

The problem is you still have to have someone to operate it since it's not fully automated. Also it's relatively expensive for the hardware/software
 
UltimaKilo

UltimaKilo

Gold Member
PhoncipleBone said:
Because Amazon cuts the price of the physical book down, where the normal price is like $35 or so. But they remove most of the margin, so it makes it very cheap. The Ebook is "technically" cheaper than the physical book, but once discounted it isn't.
Click to expand...
The thing with physical books is that you can usually shop around for prices when you're more restricted with eBooks. The fact that you can purchase a book used on Amazon is really another option.

Then again, you can still borrow eBooks through booklending.com, which I've used a couple of times already. It's really dumb you can only lend a book once though. You should be able to extend a lend for another 14 days if the owners choose.

When a new book comes out, it's usually cheaper to get the Kindle version.
 
H

HiroProtagonist

Member
salva said:
New offer: Save $15 when you spend
$20 on Amazon Kindle Skins
Click to expand...

Salva, do you remember if you had to connect to your wifi before the ads showed up? I know it probably doesn't ship with the weekly offer, as it would probably be expired by the time you receive it, but did come with the Olay and Buick ad?
 
Tornado Condor

Tornado Condor

Member
HiroProtagonist said:
Salva, do you remember if you had to connect to your wifi before the ads showed up? I know it probably doesn't ship with the weekly offer, as it would probably be expired by the time you receive it, but did come with the Olay and Buick ad?
Click to expand...

No, i didn't. At first it showed one of the older ads (buy $10 on books and get $10 back) then i pressed the switch on the bottom to turn it "on" and the new ads showed up.

And i'm not sure about the Olay and Buick ad. I'll check tomorrow.

(and there are new ads every 3 days or so).
 
H

HiroProtagonist

Member
salva said:
No, i didn't. At first it showed one of the older ads (buy $10 on books and get $10 back) then i pressed the switch on the bottom to turn it "on" and the new ads showed up.

And i'm not sure about the Olay and Buick ad. I'll check tomorrow.

(and there are new ads every 3 days or so).
Click to expand...

Oh, sorry. I wasn't clear. I meant when you first got it did it come loaded with the ads?
 
M

Manics

Banned
gibon3z said:
Why is it that E books tend to be more expensive then their paper book counter parts.

I recently bought the A Song of Ice and Fire boxed set for 19.97 shipped, the kindle version is 29.99.

How do publishers get away with charging more for the Ebook versions?
Click to expand...
The kindle edition on the Canadian store is only $17.79, I have no idea how Amazon sets different prices in different regional stores.
 
J

JoshuaJSlone

Member
LocoMrPollock said:
Anyone know how to reformat a badly formatted book?
Click to expand...
I have this problem where the end of every line
ends like this.
It's really annoying, I tried using Caliber, but didn't
have any luck.
Click to expand...

I've had this problem before. It tends to be that a text is using some fixed character width for its lines. A single line will run onto a second line, then the manual line break comes in. I usually try to take care of this with a series of search-and-replaces in a text editor.

Hopefully there's either an extra line between paragraphs, or a tab, or several spaces, or something to denote the beginning of a new paragraph. I'll search for that and replace it with something like NEWPARAGRAPH. Then search and replace every line break with a space. Then search and replace NEWPARAGRAPH with whatever I want to separate the paragraphs, and things are much nicer.

That can leave unusual formatting incorrectly formatted in a different way, though. Chapter headings, lyrics, lists.
 
1

1-D_FTW

Member
BamYouHaveAids said:
That is what mine and the one I gifted shows as well--images of dead authors. I haven't seen an add and I got the wifi only versions.
Click to expand...

Are you sure you bought the Wifi "With Special Offers"? They make a plain old Wifi only edition.
 
D

Dany

Banned
So the 30 dollar colection of game of thrones comes as one 'book' is their a way to fix this. My kindle is coming in tuesday...
 
M

Manics

Banned
Dany M said:
So the 30 dollar colection of game of thrones comes as one 'book' is their a way to fix this. My kindle is coming in tuesday...
Click to expand...
I separated the 4 books after purchasing. Well worth the effort.
 
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