Anyone have a Kindle?

[Raphael Misson]

I have about 20 17th century books in .pdf format that are not getting read because printing thousands of pages out seems wasteful and time-consuming. So I was eying the Kindle at Amazon... I found a free program that apparently converts .pdfs into Kindle friendly format, but I am wondering how well this works. Those books are hard enough to read already without additional problems with .pdf conversion. (Who the heck makes a paperless reading device that specifically doesn't support .pdfs? I ask you...)

Any thoughts on the thing would be appreciated.

[Matusalem]

Any thoughts on the thing would be appreciated.

Sell some...name the price.

[Raphael Misson]

As someone who loves arcane ideas, all I can say is... Eh?

[Matusalem]

As someone who loves arcane ideas, all I can say is... Eh?

Yes, sorry for the confusion. I was *hoping* you would sort of elaborate on what kind of collection of 17th century books you have. I'been trying to snarf some for meself without spending a fortune. So far I only have 18th century books, some of which are falling apart at the binding.

I hate .pdf because it's too slow. All you need is a program that converts .pdf to .jpg, like photoshop does , and you're all set....but you have to do the conversion yourself. The fact that Kindle does not support .pdf files does not solve your problem. I would not get the device until it does support .pdf files.

[Raphael Misson]

All the .pdfs I have are on surgery and surgeons from the 17th. If you want to get hold of books from that period in .pdf format, you need to get into some of the 17th and 18th century databases. Unfortunately, these are so expensive that only universities have them from my experience. Fortunately, most universities will let you access them for free. The two I've come across are:

Early English Books On-Line - which allows downloading of .pdfs, .tifs and even text files (although the .tifs must be downloaded page by freaking page)

Thompson-Gale Eighteenth Century Collections Online - which from my one experience does not allow downloading of anything; only printing and viewing in a sort of .pdf form at a licensed (ie. university) computer. Your experience may vary as I only had the one event at a fairly unfriendly university. (EEBO seems more widely available.)

There is also the:

British Collection English Short Title Catalogue - of which I have no experience as it is only at universities that are either too far to go to reasonably or wouldn't let me play on their computers. (Thus it is not at all widely available from my experience.)

[blackjohn]

I "know" a guy in Aachen who owns a Kindle. As I recall from reading his posts on the subject, the pdf translation works ok, but I was left with the impression that I wouldn't be too happy with the results if I owned one. At least, not happy enough with the results to justify the cost.