[LINK] The Amazon Kindle e-book

[Scott Howard]

On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Richard Chirgwin <rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au>
wrote:

> You don't buy a book with Kindle. You buy into a license which says,
> among other things:
> - the communications channel belongs to Amazon and can't be used for
> anything other than Amazon content.


Not true.  You can transfer a number of things to the Kindle (including
PDF's/etc), either over the air (for a small charge) or directly from a PC
(free!)

- you can only get books if you buy cellular services from an Amazon
> partner; bye-bye mobile portability.


Not at all true.  There is _no_ charge for the "cellular" service, and no
need to sign up with anyone.  This is built-in functionality, which is
basically hidden from the user.


> - the book can't be lent, transferred, sold, copied, backed up (as far
> as I can tell) and so on.


Partially true.  You can transfer/lend/etc books between Kindles which are
on the same account.  So basically you can give them to others in your
family (for example) but not friends.


> - you can't buy from anywhere other than Amazon
>

As per above, you can transfer any PDF, HTML, or any other number of formats
to them, free.

  Scott.