If you lose your Amazon account, your Kindle loses functionality

Ian bought a Kindle and some Kindle ebooks from Amazon. He also bought some real-world stuff from them, some of which he returned. Amazon decided that he'd returned too many things, so they suspended his Amazon account, which meant that he could no longer buy any Kindle books, and any Kindle subscriptions he's paid for stop working.

After some phone calls, Amazon granted him a one-time exception and lit his account up again.

Leaving aside losing your subscriptions, this would not be such a big deal if the Kindle had graceful ways of putting competitors' ebooks on your device. What's your experience getting non-Kindle books onto the Kindle?

Amazon has banned my account - my Kindle is now a (partial) brick. (via Consumerist)

• [eclectro]

  And why is it I would want to buy a kindle again??

• [markfrei]

  While I don’t use a Kindle, I have the iRex Illiad, an older, somewhat nicer, and way more expensive reader from Phillips. I love it – but I’m someone that loves being able to have a good chunk of project Gutenberg at my disposal at anytime. Being able to bring up any classic public domain book on a whim is a great thing. And the screen is totally readable. I read Moby Dick on this thing – I wouldn’t even think about doing that on my laptop, never mind a device with a smaller lcd screen.

  For newer books, well I just buy the damn book since DRM makes me wanna puke.

• [Brother Provisional]

  Wow. That thing I don’t need that solves a problem that I don’t have has serious flaws. What am I supposed to spend my tax return on now?

• [manicbassman]

  just boycott the Kindle… and anything else that deprives you of your first sale rights…

• [Anonymous]

  Disclaimer: I do not own a Kindle, but I own Sony Reader.

  The only books I have purchased with DRM are those that have pricetag $0.00 at the Sony Store.

  There are quite a lot sources for free ebooks on the net. There are also online stores that sell DRM-free stuff, like Baen and as a last resort you can buy DRM-ed stuff where you can remove the DRM protection. One such example is .lit format. Using Convertlit software you can remove DRM protection FOR BOOKS YOU HAVE PURCHASED. You still need to know the password.

  Once you get such a book (either DRM-free or DRM-liberated) you can use Calibre, BookDesigner, or MobiPocketCreator to create *.mobi book. You can upload mobi a book to your Kindle using USB cable. Visit mobileread wiki to see exhaustive list of software for creating mobi books for Kindle.

  Whispernet [and an Amazon account] are an OPTION, not a necessity for uploading your books.

  Yes. It sucks, if you purchased Kindle *solely* to subscribe to your favourite newspaper in electronic form, or to read those $9.99 books from “NY Times Bestseller list”.

  If you do not believe there are enough free books to last you a lifetime visit our forums (where Ians story appeared for the first time) at www (dot) mobileread (dot) com and see our Wiki for sources of books (and list of alternative devices if you decide to sell your Kindle). Also see “books” link at the top of the mobileread page and download any of the tenths of thousands lovingly formatted and repeatedly proofed e-books for your Kindle.

  kacir from Mobileread forum

• [broklynite]

  I’ve got a Kindle 2. Books and text were easy enough to figure out how to import. The tricky thing was figuring out how to stick comic books in there. But I’ve done it and it is possible, ladies and gentlemen.

• [Jenonymous]

  *sigh* I really want a Kindle, but stories like this are what’s holding me back. I think if the price dips to $199 I may just take the plunge, but not before.

  Also thanks to all for links for creating your own Kindle content; keep em coming.

• [Jonathan Badger]

  Selling books (at least non-textbooks) is unlikely to gain more than a buck or two per book, at least in my experience, making the whole issue of selling books a non-issue. You might as well put books you don’t want in a recycle bin when you factor in the time required to take it a used book seller. I really don’t get this whole concern. Yes, I understand the moral objections against DRM, etc — I just don’t understand the practical issue of not being able to sell Kindle books.

• [spookyone]

  In re: #8
  People who spend LOTS of time in front of multipurpose screens all day have things like IM and email clients etc running in the background and can’t read on a multipurpose screen because we’ll get interrupted, like, every ten minutes and/or our short attention span will lead us away. (I’m pretty sure I’ve read Cory complain about this exact thing somewhere but I have no idea where or if I’m mixed up. Cory is just too many places and says too many things that make sense to me to be sure.) Almighty, this happens every time I try to do any non-work project on my Mac!!! I’m planning a trip to California to see my sister at Christmas so today (4 hours ago) I booted the Macbook and started to find a deal on airline tickets. I still don’t have tickets, but I have signed up for a BoingBoing account, answered a couple of computer related questions at Yahoo Answers, bought a new case for my Pre and a new app for my iPhone and… See? If I can’t finish finding a deal on a plane ticket how could I finish a book? Clearly I can’t read on my Macbook, or any other computer. Cut off the internet access and I’ll just play a game or write a little code or any of the 1000 other non-internet things a computer does. Both the iPhone and the Pre don’t work as book readers for me for the same reason. That’s just one reason I love my Kindle.

  I enjoy reading, but I need a stand-alone reader. Books are one answer, but my Kindle gives me magazines and newspapers as well. I’m disabled, and reading a newspaper is hard for me as the huge papers are almost impossible for me to control. I can’t reach high enough to fold it and see many parts of the page. Until the Kindle I had given them up. Books are difficult to keep open due to the weakness in my hands. I can’t carry more than one book, even if I’d like to. The Kindle gives me freedom my disability took away. That’s another reason I love my Kindle.

  I see flaws. But what doesn’t have flaws? I hope the music and movie and publishing industries see the light and realize that DRM actually costs them money, but I also have to make my quality of life as good as possible and my Kindle has improved my quality of life.

  I also agree in part with #33 as to BB revealing with every Kindle post their connection to Amazon and the Kindle. But I don’t agree that BB sucks on the Kindle. It’s better in a browser, but if you don’t have time to fire up a browser because, like me you can’t fire one up and get off in less than an hour, the Kindle version is okay.

  Personally, if I had a BB complaint, it would be that posting an anonymous comment comes with what is clearly a threat. It’s just not nice.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Personally, if I had a BB complaint, it would be that posting an anonymous comment comes with what is clearly a threat.

    Moderator note: Huh?

    • [technogeek]

      Seconded: Huh? I post anonymously when I’m in too much of a hurry to sign in, or on rare occasions when I want to make a comment without my identity biasing how it is interpreted. No other significance.

      Sure, anonymous posting _can_ be misused (or could if the moderators permitted it), but I really don’t think any threat is implied here on BB. Elsewhere, deponent saith not.

    • [spookyone]

      If you reply anonymously you are warned that if you reply without signing up it may take a very long time to get posted or it may not get posted at all. I preferred to reply quickly without a whole signup ordeal but the idea that you may choose not to print my opinion simply because I didn’t jump through the signup hoop and waste the time took me to write it convinced me to sign up. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you are suggesting I sign up or you may choose to ignore my opinion. That feels threatening, whether you intend it that way or not, and, as I said, it’s not nice.

• [Anonymous]

  The Kindle is a DRM device for books.

  Never, ever buy one.

• [fALk]

  I never understood why some copyleft advocates have hailed the kindle. Maybe they all had book deals and where hoping for some money from kindle sales? Its no better then the sony walkman mp3 player line in my opinion and is hopefully failing as bad. Just because the newspapers where writing great reviews because they see drmed locked up ebook readers as their only way out of their internet doom. Expect more of the same stories to surface soon – when people try to load unauthorized stuff (most of it legit) on their dysfunctional bricks.
  Great thing there are DRM free ebook readers rising on the horizon and when they shine the kindle will look like the faintest star next to a rising sun.
  (http://reader.txtr.com/ most promising of all (I have no correlation to the company but love they way they confront big corporation head on))

• [Anonymous]

  how can you convert your Kindle azw file books to mobi file books to read on your computer or another reader?

• [Anonymous]

  I have a Kindle 2 and I love it. I read a lot of Gutenberg books, and falling asleep on the couch with my laptop was getting dangerous. Also, printing out 30 pages to take books with me to the waiting room was getting wasteful. Reading is so easy on the Kindle screen that sometimes I forget and try to physically turn the page.

  I don’t buy books from amazon – I put them on the Kindle from my computer using the usb cable. I convert .txt documents to .mobi and put them in the documents folder. It is so easy to do.

  Cory, I own print copies of several of your books, but I have also put free electronic copies onto my Kindle.

  I don’t have an iphone or a smart phone or an ipod touch, so to me the Kindle, with it’s price and lack of contract made sense – especially since what I like to do is read.

  The internet capability on the Kindle is great, but without it, I would use my Kindle just as much.

  I am very happy with my purchase, and everyone who sees my Kindle understands why. If for some reason I change my mind about the Kindle, I will be sure to let you know.

• [Anonymous]

  I’ve got a Kindle on which I’m currently reading LITTLE BROTHER, and which is three-quarters full with other perfectly legitimate, non-DRM e-books from sites such as Feedbooks. Copying these books to the Kindle was as simple as copying them to a USB drive, which the Kindle basically is. Dismissing the Kindle because its primary supplier uses DRM on their own content for their product is like dismissing the iPod because ITS primary supplier, Apple used DRM (which, incidentally, they stopped using as soon as they were able).

  DRM sucks, yes. I’m sure a progressive company like Amazon knows that, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if, like Apple, they made that DRM go away as soon as possible.

  Incidentally, Cory, I plan on purchasing a paper copy of LITTLE BROTHER the next chance I get, having been so pleased with what I’ve read on my Kindle.

• [Waterlilygirl]

  #28, you clearly don’t have a clue what you are talking about.

  Please go and re-read the comments made by Kindle owners.

  And to personally respond to your gripes…

  1)All newer technology is expensive. The reason why they haven’t dropped the price is because NO OTHER READER QUITE COMPARES. Is it a niche product? Sure. Is it something that everyone will love? Probably not. Does it save you from having stacks and stacks of books cluttering your place? Yep.

  2) How is hooking a USB cable to your computer a pain in the ass? If that is a pain in the ass thing to have to do then I’d hate to see you work anything that doesn’t require a hand crank to get it going. How have you survived all this time with all the pain in the ass things around you? Damn! I have to plug in the tv! Crap! I have to program the DVD player. Bastards! I have to backup my computer files…

  I own a Kindle 2. I think it’s awesome. Amazon has hundreds of public domain books for free on their site that you can download and certain publishers and authors offer free downloads at different times. As for them shutting down your account, like any retailer, if you abuse the system they have the right to revoke your use. I find it hard to believe that they’d shut you down for authentic returns.

  AND,
  I’m not a delusional science fiction fan. I prefer mysteries.

• [Takuan]

  oh? so you’re a marginally stable wanna-be serial killer? (grumble grumble “delusional”,grrr)

• [nanuq]

  Why would anyone want to buy a stand-alone book reader when a smartphone or a netbook will do the job just fine? I can’t understand why anyone would saddle themselves with a dedicated device that only does one thing considering all the other things I could do with the gadgets I already have.

• [ank]

  Hi, I’ve been saying this for a while now. You do not own your Kindle books, neither do have any automatic right to access them. Imagine Amazon in the future charging for use of its network. It’ll happen, you can be sure. So, Imagine this, there’s a beautiful library full of great books and writings, well-kept and nicely indexed, tailored just for you. Only it’s not yours. You have to pay someone at the door to enter the reading room, and the books are brought to you but you cannot take them away with you. They are not your property and you cannot pass them on to your children. Is this the answer to digital reading?

• [Bugs]

  @Nanuq – Because it does it really, really, well. An eInk display actually looks like printed text, albeit printed on a smooth matte plastic surface instead of printed on paper. I find that much more pleasant to read than a backlit display. The devices I’ve seen are also light, thin and about the size I’d expect a book’s page to be. I don’t know the stats for a kindle, but the non-whispernet readers tend to have battery lives measured in weeks, prefect for taking a stack of books on holiday and e.g. referring to a couple of guidebooks or phrasebook for a few hours each day.

  Those factors might not be so important to you, but to some they’re easily worth the effort of carrying an extra device around. It’s the same reason that I and many other people still use an mp3 player: my phone can happily play mp3s, but a dedicated player does it much better.

• [Dave Faris]

  It’s easy enough to get non-Amazon books onto your kindle. Send the pdf to an email account you get along with your kindle account and pay a paltry .10 and you’ve got it. In the extremely unlikely event that your Amazon account gets closed (really… how many people have you ever heard that happen to before this story?), there is a way to hook up your kindle directly to your computer with a data cable and download books onto it — though I’ve never done it.

• [PaulR]

  Why would anyone want to buy a stand-alone book reader when a smartphone or a netbook will do the job just fine?

  Um, no.

  1) E-Ink IS different. Find a friend who has a reader. Check it out.
  2) Netbooks’ screens are horizontal. Try flaking out on the couch with one, reading a book.
  3) They weigh about the same, or less, than a book.

  Get a reader which doesn’t have a financial plan based on recouping manufacturing costs and profits from DRMed sales – such as the Kindle. Ideally, find one that uses (relatively) open-source software. I loves me iLiad!

• [Irene Delse]

  I see someone mentioned the iLiad iRex and Sony Reader. Another E-Ink alternative to the Kindle: Bookeen Cybook Gen3, an open platform reader which can read .mobi files, just like the Kindle, but doesn’t bind you to a giant company.

  350 USD on Bookeen’ online store, but also available from Booksonboard and Cyberread.

  http://www.bookeen.com/

  I got one last year and I’m very, very happy with it.

• [PaulR]

  Forgot to add:
  “If you lose your Amazon account, your Kindle loses functionality”

  The title of this article is fair and accurate. The implications are scary; why encourage this kind of behaviour by buying a Kindle?

  Really? Why encourage them?

• [mattharvest]

  Here’s the thing: why does this surprise you? If Apple closed your account, you’d lose the ability to buy new products from the iTunes music store, regardless of the presence of DRM.

  Losing your Amazon account wouldn’t delete anything off your Kindle; it would just preclude using Amazon’s service to put new things on there.

  Separately, have you read why this happened? Apparently on multiple, multiple occasions, this guy repeatedly returned and then refunded large electronics. That’s the same story for almost everyone who has been ‘banned’ in this way. I’m not saying he did anything wrong necessarily, but rather that Amazon did something reasonable by banning someone whose buying pattern matched that of a potential scammer.

• [dainel]

  “I’m considering purchasing the new Amazon Kindle2, but I am quite concerned about the the difficulties faced by many of your customers who has had their accounts suspended. Some of them, like Ian at http://www.mobileread.com/forums, had returned defective products (unrelated to the Kindle) as instructed by Amazon’s owns CS reps, had done nothing wrong, but still had their accounts closed a few months later. It appears that Amazon has a separate department that trawls through the list of customers who had made more than 2 returns in a single year, and closed all their accounts.

  The customer is also told to not open any more new accounts with Amazon, which means that the Kindle becomes an expensive paper weight, as it cannot obtain any new content. Are there other places that sells content for the Kindle? Before I purchase the new Kindle2, I would appreciate if you could point me to their websites so that I can get an idea of what they have to offer.

  What especially worries me is that the books they had already purchased for the Kindle then became inaccessible. It’s as if a customer got into a dispute with the retailer, and the retailer retaliates by going to the customer’s home, taking back everything he has bought, and issue no refunds. I would like some assurance that this would not happen to me.”

  Everybody, send that email to Amazon sales, but put it in your own words (cause if they get the same identical email, it will go straight to the trash). (The example is poorly constructed, it’s better to send paragraphs 1+2 or 1+3, but not all 1+2+3 together).

• [Anonymous]

  No way would I buy an amazon kindle.Amazon has too much control they could cancel your account for any reason without explanation and you are out alot of money for a useless door prop.The best thing to do is not buy an amazon kindle until they change the policy.

• [Anonymous]

  On the Kindle 1 it’s extremely easy to add books to the device. Just put them on a memory card and insert the card into the Kindle. Books from Gutenberg and ManyBooks and even text files are just drag and drop. I read Little Brother on my Kindle and it worked just great.

• [weatherman]

  I own a Kindle as well, and I find this practice of banning users who are Kindle owners totally unacceptable.

  Yes, it’s true that you can get non-Amazon content on the Kindle pretty easily, either using their Whispernet conversion process or using the included USB cable. And the Kindle reads non-DRM’d content that is in one of several formats or has been converted by freely available programs like Calibre. I’ve read far more non-Amazon content on my Kindle than I have Amazon content, but that’s not the point. The point is that if Amazon revoked my account the main reason for me choosing a Kindle in the first place, which is access to mainstream books and the wireless delivery of content, especially periodicals.

  If Amazon shut down my account, I’d be able to find ways around it. Goodness knows there are other ways of getting content. But most of them would force me to become a DMCA violator if not an outright pirate. I should not have to become a criminal to use the device that I purchased.

  Amazon needs to come out with a very clear statement to address this issue. They need to state that they will never shut down the access to the digital content or the Whispernet for any Kindle customer. Period. Otherwise, this issue will continue to haunt them and hurt Kindle sales and the adoption of ebooks in general.

• [Revisorius]

  I think the more interesting story is how so many outlets decided to make this another Kindle-bashing issue a week after it was resolved with the customer. I’d hoped if BB brought it up they would at least clarify that Ian, a self-proclaimed Kindle evangelist throughout, was hardly left with a totally worthless brick as has been reported and repeated ad nauseum.

  My experience in getting non-Kindle books on my Kindle has been completely successful, and I have most of Cory’s books on it right now. In fact, I’d say my download ratio has been 95/5 in favor of non-DRM, non-Kindle downloads.

  Ironically, I came to BB via a subscription through my Kindle before I found out how much better it was via PC, a sentiment that has been shared by many others.

  This brings up another question that I’ve always been curious about: Why is there not a full disclosure of BB’s Kindle connection with every Kindle-related post? In journalism skool I learned that you must acknowledge your connection to something when you write about it, especially if you’re making money from it and despite the fact you’re constantly bashing it. Besides a coy disclaimer from CD in a post that appeared the week the Kindle came out in late 2007 (“Disclosure: If you buy a Kindle and then give them money to read Boing Boing, they send us some of it”), I’ve seen nothing to that effect. And why continue to offer it via Kindle when the prevailing opinion is that the Kindle version completely sucks?

• [Anonymous]

  Putting non-Amazon ebooks on Kindle is trivial.

  The regular mobipocket format works perfectly, and there are free open source tools to handle it. (It’s just HTML in a Palm PDB database.)

  The Kindle mounts via Storage Class USB and you just drag-drop the .mobi/.pdb files into the documents folder. When you disconnect from USB, the Kindle indexes them. You don’t need the wireless connection enabled, there’s no connection to Amazon.

  You could probably buy and use a Kindle without ever logging in to Amazon, in fact. You can buy DRM-free .mobi ebooks from fictionwise.com.

  The Kindle is like the iPod in the days when the iTunes store had DRM: you’re only restricted to a single vendor if you want DRMed content. Which, of course, nobody does…

• [Anonymous]

  I apologize for being harsh, but anyone who buys a Kindle deserves whatever he or she gets. I have little interest in coddling fools, and no sympathy for anyone who even implicitly supports the abomination that is DRM.

  That said, let me bore you once again with the reasons why I hate the Kindler.

  Primarily, this is because I could really use a good electronic book reader. I have hundreds of texts that I’ve downloaded in the form of PDFs, CHMs, DOCs, and just plain TXT. It would be nice to walk around with these and read them on a device the size of a book.

  The Kindle defeats this goal in at least two ways.

  1) It’s ridiculously expensive. Aside from the fact that’s there’s no reason for an adequate text display device to cost more than $100 US, I wouldn’t want to carry a reader that cost more than that. Often the places I’d want to take my electronic texts would be the toilet, the park, the plane, etc. These are all locations where such a device might be easily damaged or lost. With a conventional book, damage or loss is a mere annoyance. With a Kindle, it would become a financial burden.

  2) It would be a pain in the ass to get my books onto a Kindle. Of course, the purpose of this gadget is not to allow me to read my free text, but to force me to pay for whatever metered text Amazon thinks I should be reading. (That’s odd to me, since the very fact that I buy fairly unusual books off Amazon suggests that I have little use for the standard boring fare.) I understand that it’s not impossible for me to transfer some of my text files onto a Kindle, but I have little interest in running through the same hoops hundreds of times for my hundreds of texts. At the very least, I’d have to convert a number of formats.

  I just want someone to come out with a simple book-shaped video screen that displays a wide variety of document formats, accepts USB and/or SD card input, lacks DRM, and sells for no more than $100.

  Clearly, such an advanced product is clearly nothing more than the ravings of delusional science fiction fan.

• [Geektronica]

  It might be a nice device on which to read, but stories like this make me shy away. My DTE books will always be readable unless my house catches fire, and no one can take that away from me for spurious, to-be-determined reasons.

• [kkennedy]

  @16…You can also, with a bit of wrangling, put secure mobipocket books from fictionwise on your kindle.

• [Purly]

  I’ve put non-amazon books on my Kindle.

  I used the Mobi-Pocket Creator: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadSoft/ProductDetailsCreator.asp

  It converts it to a format that the Kindle can read. Then just plug your kindle into your computer via USB and transfer the book over.

• [styrofoam]

  I’ve put a metric ton of stuff on my Kindle, and only purchased a few books. It’s not tough to do.

  Most of my conversion I’ve done without using amazon to do the reformatting (which I assume you’d lose that priv when your account was baleeted) but you still have a functional kindle. You can put text files on it. You can reflow PDFs on it. You can convert .lit files to .pdf and reflow them. If it’s words in a file somewhere, most likely you can get it onto your kindle.

  Not everything that’s on a kindle is DRMd stuff.
  Yes, you lose your ability to buy things from amazon once amazon says you can’t buy stuff from amazon. Anything you’ve bought, you can’t ‘redownload’ from the cloud.

  You WILL have a perfectly serviceable e-book reader that’ll merrilly plug its way through any document you put on it.
  The distasteful DRM is ONLY ON STUFF YOU BUY FROM AMAZON.

  The kindle is awesome, and I admit that part of it is that if I want a book, I can buy it. Amazon has almost everything I’ve wanted to acquire. But I’ve also got a large stash of non-purchased stuff that makes it worth the price of admission.

• [Orca Dream]

  I bought a Kindle 2 a week ago… I absolutely adore it. I hooked the Kindle up to Mac via a USB cord and transferred over 700 book files… Easy Peasy… I have an iphone but reading books on it was not enjoyable and made my eyes tired. The Kindle with the eInk is really like reading a book. It isn’t backlit and is very easy on the eyes. It’s true that it’s nice to have the instant access to new books that come out via Amazon. However, the Kindle is quite a wonderful device – I’d love it even if my Amazon account didn’t work. The iphone came down in price. I’m sure the Kindle will eventually also. All technology is expensive when it’s new. As for the DRM issue, until Amazon changes it, there are ways to remove the DRM and back your files up. The Kindle isn’t perfect (what is?), but it does come close. I have several thousand books (the hardcover sort) at home… It’s wonderful to be able to have copies of some of them on my Kindle. Whenever I travel, I used to have to literally mail a box of books home after dragging them somewhere on a trip (I don’t know what I’ll be in the mood to read and I read fast). With the Kindle, I can take over a 1,000 books with me when I walk out the door. That, for me, is something that makes me very happy…

• [msdoran]

  Wow, there is a lot of Kindle bashing going on here. A lot, and I think people are getting worked up for nothing. I own a Kindle. One of the original ones, and my wife and I love it.

  Now I am not a tecnophobe, I consider myself a very educated consumer. I understand the DRM issue, I also understand that the Sony ebook fans are an adamant bunch. I have a variety of technology devices that I love, the kindle is one of them.

  I am glad though that I have an original kindle. IT has a SC card slot on it, and a replaceable battery. You can download books right off of great websites like manybooks.net onto the SC card, slide it into the kindle 1 and you are good to go. Sadly the Kindle 2 does not have one of those slots, so knowing what I know now I would not buy one. I have not seen a lot of books on the bit torrent website yet, so I am with the free classics for now.

  I like the whispernet, the convenience, and both my wife and I are reading more than we have in all the years we have been together. Just this year alone I have already read about 10 books, including a thick one like The Snowball (warren buffet book).

  I think a lot of people are making a mountain out of a molehill. First of all, we never, really own anything. books mold, pages get brittle, spines crack and break. digital files would not exist without electricity, nothing is really permanent (except things carved into stone, but even that weathers due to erosion).

  Pick your battles people, don’t slam just to slam, if the Kindle is not for you, fine, go with what you like. For others though, if you mostly buy books on Amazon (like I have, for years even before my kindle), and you want to be able to read a book quickly, easily, without bending spines or trying to stand it up and balance it on the salt and pepper holder at a restaurant, or even just sitting in a chair at home, try out the kindle. you may find you love it as much as I do.

• [dculberson]

  I’ve put a lot of stuff on my wife’s Kindle; it’s as easy to do as any other eBook reader. You connect the USB cable and it shows up as a USB mass storage device. Drag and drop or copy using the command line. Disconnect the Kindle, and the new files are in your Kindle’s home page list of books.

  The supported formats are more limited than the competition, though. For regular books, plain text works great. Anon4 detailed how to convert some files to work on the Kindle.

  Nanuq, an eBook reader sporting an eInk display is not comparable to using a PDA or laptop. It’s completely different and much, much, much better. The screen type, size, and orientation, along with the user interface, are far beyond a general purpose device’s abilities. Reading on the Kindle is more comfortable than reading a paper book. Reading on a laptop is more comfortable than being stabbed.

• [Anonymous]

  You sit under an elephants arse, you get shat on.

• [FreakCitySF]

  And it’s super easy to lose your account these days on Amazon. They are cracking down, and the only tech help you get is from someone named “Billy” with a Indian accent. No warnings, tickets, or any other ways to let you know you are about to lose your account. Hit the predefined returns, customer negatives and you lose the ability to sell, buy, download. I was selling early this year, it was a great experience up until a few people just decided not to read the description of the item and left negative feedback. One person complained a sandwich toaster go hot too fast.

• [Anonymous]

  @ #33 waterlilygirl – well said & spot on!

  Don’t you just love all the Kindle bashing from people who’ve never even picked one up?

  I recently had to return my Kindle 2 after mine had a technical glitch – & after a 2 minute phone call with Amazon I had a new Kindle being overnighted to me & there it was, on my doorstep by 10am the next day.

  For every one person with a bad story, like this one, I see HUNDREDS of very happy Kindle users.

• [Clay]

  No one’s talking about the other issue here:

  What’s with Amazon suspending your account for too many returns? I thought you just paid a restocking fee for non-defective merch and that was it? You pay a bit extra to return, AMZ sells it a bit cheaper as open-box, and everything’s balanced. Where does the account suspension come in?

• [mcmikedermott]

  While there are MANY things about the kindle that give me pause (The terms of service document is scary, and when I’ve e-mailed Amazon for clarification I’ve gotten nothing but canned responses that don’t answer the questions) — I have to say that it is very easy to put non-amazon, non-drmed content onto the kindle. They come with a USB cable, and when you connect the kindle to a computer, it just shows up as a flash drive. put any mobipocket formatted books in the ‘documents’ folder on this drive, and they show up on the kindle. Or, places like feedbooks have kindle ‘guides’ that you can load onto your kindle, and then follow links within the document to wirelessly download other books.
  Its a baby and bathwater situation for sure – while the bathwater is pretty stinky, it is a pretty cute baby… :-)