Dorothy Marley's Journal

I am looking at e-readers, and am intrigued by the new Kindle, both for its smallness and its (relative) cheapness. My main purpose in buying an e-reader is to read fanfic without having to lug my laptop around, so my main concern is the ability to transfer TXT, PDF and HTML files to the device and be able to read them.

As I looked more deeply into the nuts and bolts of the Kindle tranfser process, though, I saw a big snag, and want to ask Kindle users if I'm reading the help files correctly about PDF and HTML files. Here is what the Amazon help files say about the types of files Kindle recognizes when connected by USB:

Here's a list of the directories and the file types recognized by Kindle:

* Documents: Kindle (.AZW, .AZW1). Text (.TXT), Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI, .PRC)
* Audible: Audible (.AA, .AAX)
* Music: MP3 (.MP3)

[Blah blah DRM blah]

Personal Documents

Kindle's Personal Document Service allows you to e-mail the following approved file types to your Kindle's e-mail address:

* Microsoft Word (.DOC)
* HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
* RTF (.RTF)
* JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
* GIF (.GIF)
* PNG (.PNG)
* BMP (.BMP)
* PDF (.PDF): See below for details.
* Microsoft Word (.DOCX) is supported in our experimental category.


Okay. If I am reading this and the section on transferring files by e-mail correctly, I will not be able to transfer PDF or HTML files directly to my Kindle via USB. Instead, I will have to e-mail PDF and HTML files to a special e-mail address, and they will then be sent via wireless to my Kindle.

So, my question for current Kindle users is this: Am I reading this right? Do I have to jump through e-mail hoops and wireless just to send a PDF or HTML file I've saved on my own computer to the Kindle? Really?

This is close to being a serious deal-breaker for me. Nearly all of what I read is saved in TXT format, but more and more authors are offering longer stories in single-file PDFs. If anyone reads PDFs on their Kindle, I'd be interested in your experiences and advice. Including if the wireless process is actually very easy and painless. :)

Important Writing Tip: If you decide to update your stories on an archive (that you kind of forgot you had them on) and need to use a different HTML tag than the one you just laboriously replaced your ancient ASCII asterisks with, make sure you copy the files to the new working folder. That way, when you inevitably screw up the search and replace (as usual) and need to trash the duplicate files and re-copy them from the originals, you won't go back to the original folder and say, "Hey, where are the originals..." and have to spend twenty minutes replacing the old HTML.

(Yes, yes, I have backups. But they were across the room. And I possibly didn't think of using them until I was almost done.)

No, really, I've been using computers for twenty-five years. Honest.

Aaah, the twice-yearly hard drive purge. Nine whole gigabytes in which to stretch out, for a while anyway. I tend to dread doing it, because while my backing up involves sticking a thumb drive in and throwing over the few tiny text files that are new, the Great Hard Drive Purge involves actually moving computer stuff around and disconnecting drives from PCs and hooking them up to Macs and other gargantuan efforts. Which is why I only tend to do it when I'm having to delete yesterday's podcasts to have room for today's.

I realize that 9GB doesn't sound like much, but my entire hard drive is only 80GB, and frankly, if it wasn't for my habit of saving certain podcasts, I'd probably not even be close to filling it up ever. Fan fiction, after all, doesn't take up a lot of space. It took me three years of obsessive story saving to hit 500MB on my Torchwood folder, after all. Though, admittedly, if I saved the HTML instead of just the text, it would likely be about ten times that size. Which is why I save the text. :)

Then again, I have about two terabytes hooked up to the PC, so it's not like I'm practicing hard drive economy anywhere else.

If you buy the same mouse for both your laptops, and for some reason are using both laptops at the same time, try not to wonder why the mouse isn't working every time you pick up the wrong one. At least not after the first three times you do it. Also, possibly be smart enough, after this has happened more than three times, to put stickers or something on one of them.

If you are smart enough to only use one laptop at a time, but have both the trackpad and mouse enabled, make sure that your cat is not sitting on the mouse while you use the trackpad, lest you become convinced that your computer has locked up.