Hi all. I'm about to buy the basic e-ink kindle for my husband who is a book-a-holic. I want to set it up as a surprise for his birthday to give to him on the plane.
Is it just me... or is the cheapest version $69 from Amazon.com and 129CHF (2X the US cost) from Digitec ? It looks like the 99CHF version from Digitec is indefinitely out of stock.
Also, about buying books. I am leaning towards setting up his account on Amazon.com so he has a big English selection, but I know he would like German books as well. Can he do both easily? He probably reads 50/50 both and Portuguese on the rare occasion.
I was also thinking of getting him an NZZ subscription for kindle since it's mostly a words newspaper, but I'm not sure if I can set up a subscription for that with a US Amazon account.
I'm also already thinking about jailbreaking it... but wondering if this would present any problems with an NZZ subscription.
Does anyone have experience with buying books in multiple languages and with newspaper subscriptions? And any tips for managing a combination free/pay book library on a Mac?
I am not quite sure but with the Amazon.com you will have Zoll charges -administration charges etc which in many cases are extremely high. Cheaper usually to order with-in ch.
Possibly not... if they base Zoll on the $69, maybe I could slide by. If they include whatever Amazon charges for shipping, it probably will be expensive. But it's got to be cheaper than paying twice as much to buy here...
Also wondering if I should wait a bit and splurge for the paperwhite version, which I would have to order from the US if I want it to arrive in time for his birthday as it's not out in Schweiz yet...
One other problem with ebooks, is actually buying the books over here. Many e-publishers won't sell certain books if they detect you are overseas from the IP address, as they are not licensed to sell in Switzerland. Even if you use an overseas registered login to the stores.
This does concern me... although that's why I'm interested in Calibre type solutions.
I would just hope it's not so difficult to own one device and buy both German and English books. There are still the real Bibliothek around here for German ones, but if I get a kindle myself later on I would hope I have access to lots of English books that I can't get here or that are ridiculously expensive here.
There's always IP masks, right? I have to do that if I want to watch some news segments online from the States. I get so tired of "This video is not available in your country..."
I bought a kindle keyboard last christmas as a christmas present to myself. I bought it on the Amazon.com website and I was able to select that I live in Switzerland. I got it delivered without any Zoll charges. Not sure if that was a fluke or if it is ok.
My Kindle account was initially an Amazon.com account as default by amazon, however after setting everything up it changed my account to the Amazon.de account. Now if I want to change it to a Amazon.com account I need a USA address.
The Amazon.de kindle store does have 1000's of english books but they do charge more than on the american site.
My kindle came from amazon.com to switzerland, when you order it they take the taxes etc into account so that you don't pay anything when it is delivered. It was also very fast delivery,I think 2-3 days. Originally it was registered with a amazon.de account, but then gave the option to switch to amazon.com or amazon.fr. I changed to amazon.com and buy books from amazon.com and get charged in $ on a swiss creditcard at a swiss address. No problems so far. although to be honest I'd rather have an amazon.co.uk account, but have heard that causes problems if it detects you are buying all your books in switzerland.
I think it is hit or miss with the prices. I recently switched from .com to .de and mostly the prices on the books are the same, and then you can definitely get both English and German books. I think from the .com account, you get international fees if you want to have it delivered directly to your device via whispernet. But I am no expert as I now use my iPad and get my stuff delivered directly there - without problems.
There must be some legal copyright or publishing right issues sometimes. Not all the German books are available on .fr and not all French books on .de ; but all in all, it's not bad, so do some tests between .de and .com and .co.uk - one never knows.
I don't understand the logic of book price policy... if there is one.
You can run VMWare, Parallels, or the free VMBox, and run XP at the same time as Mac OS, in a Virtual Machine (VM). Your Mac stays intact.
I the run ExpatShield on XP on my Mac laptop, in the VM, and that (usually) tells sites like Amazon that you are in the UK, and lets you shop as normal. Haven't tried it for Amazon actually though, I just use it for watching Doctor Who etc on iPlayer.
Another source of English, and of course German ebooks is Zug library. They have several popular titles that you can check out and download for a fixed period using your regular library card number. Perhaps other libraries here do this?
Yes - you cannot ship the $69 version internationally - it has "special offers" (read: ads). The $89 version comes quite speedily and came custom free both times we ordered one.
I have the older Kindle with the keyboard and am happy with it.
- It is possible to jump between an Amazon.com and .de account but it is a bit of a hassle to do it frequently.
- I have not tried to get an NZZ sub but I don't think it would be possible via the US store. I find that reading newspapers and magazines is better on a tablet or via an RSS reader.
- As a workaround solution you can manage your ebook collection with Calibre ( http://calibre-ebook.com/ ) -they have an OSX client. This software can also schedule to download and to email RSS feeds to your Kindle account. I use this to download the web articles from The Economist and it works very well.
- As far as I know there are no alternative firmware hacks for the Kindle and I really don't understand why you would need to. The Kindle will display all .mobi files and Calibre will also convert any other formats that you may download.
- You can also order and download books from websites other than Amazon so I would recommend that you check that route for purchasing alternate language books.
There are a couple of things to consider with the Kindle:
- they don't render PDF files well, this is better suited for a tablet.
- they only have one dictionary on there at once, so when you have multiple languages then you can only use the dictionary in one of the languages.
- the dictionary is only a dictionary and not a translation tool. I was trying to find a way that I could load german books and be able to look up words that I don't know but I was never successful with that.
I have the kindle touch (registered to uk amazon). I have a translation tool on it! It's brilliant when reading in German and needing to look up the odd word or sentence.
I've got an amazon.co.uk account and we buy all our books from here using it and have never had a problem. When I originally bought my kindle I got it delivered to my parents in Scotland but beyond that we've done everything from here.