Using a Kindle as a study aid to read my own content.

_underscore

Hi There,

I'm planning on buying the £89 kindle.

My primary use would be to use it as a study aid and to read article I have pulled from the web and converted to PDF.

First question, is this possible. Can I create a PDF document and add it to the kindle for reading later? If yes, what are the limitations regarding diagrams/pictures etc? I study computer science so diagrams are important.

Thanks.

Outkast_IRE

_underscore wrote: »

Hi There,

I'm planning on buying the £89 kindle.

My primary use would be to use it as a study aid and to read article I have pulled from the web and converted to PDF.

First question, is this possible. Can I create a PDF document and add it to the kindle for reading later? If yes, what are the limitations regarding diagrams/pictures etc? I study computer science so diagrams are important.

Thanks.

yes theres no zoom function on the kindle so if the diagram is too small you wouldnt be able to enlarge it.

kali291

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

yes theres no zoom function on the kindle so if the diagram is too small you wouldnt be able to enlarge it.

Sorry but have to disagree. Mine zooms See page 10 of user manual on
http://kindle.s3.amazonaws.com/KindleUser%27sGuide.pdf
K

_underscore

Thanks for the feedback.

Also, I have a few ebooks (pdf) that came free with print books. Can I just copy them on and read away or do they need to be in a different format?

Thanks.

kali291

You can just load them, but they will be difficult to read. They are easily converted to either mobi or prc format using free software (either Calibre or Mobipocket Professional), and can then be read like any other proprietary Amazon download.

_underscore

Cool, thanks.

Gonna head into Curry's now and try pick up the basic model.

ThisRegard

kali291 wrote: »

You can just load them, but they will be difficult to read. They are easily converted to either mobi or prc format using free software (either Calibre or Mobipocket Professional), and can then be read like any other proprietary Amazon download.

If they're PDFs there's no need to convert them, they'll read fine on the kindle. Why do you say they'll be difficult to read ?

kali291

Because the kindle treats a pdf as an image. To enlarge the text you have to zoom - and the screen is only filled with, say, the top left corner of the page. You have to read to the end of the first line on the screen and then move the cursor to read the rest of the line. Then move the screen back to where it was for the first half of the second line etc, etc. Kind of difficult to explain, but a real pain to read. If you convert it to mobi, it effectively rescales the whole page, making the document narrower and longer, thus fitting the whole of each line across the width of the screen.Plus, as I said, the software to do this is in the public domain.
K

_underscore

Well, I got the Kindle yesterday in Currys for €109.

I'm chuffed with it so far, hadn't really though about the magazines and newspaper aspect but the subscriptions are cool. Book great also.

I'm just looking into Calibre now to see about creating custom content etc.

Thanks people!

kali291

Enjoy

nedd

Calibre is essential if you want to use your Kindle for anything other than buying books from Amazon.

My advice, is convert your PDF's to mobi, this will make it easier to read.
Also, install Send to Kindle to your browser (i have it on Chrome but i think its on Firefox as well) if you find a web page you want to read later it will send it to your Kindle.

Lastly, set up your email address for the Kindle (this can be done on the Amazon page). This way you can send books or articles to your kindle from your PC without having to connect it up. I email attachments to "myname@kindle.com", turn on the Wifi on my kindle and the content downloads. Its great! Using this with Calibre, you can set Calibre to automatically get News Content from BBC or RTE and email it to you daily.

ThisRegard

I usually send documents to myname@free.kindle.com, that way I'll only receive the docs when connected to wi-fi as opposed to 3G where you risk getting charged for the data.

Wasn't aware of the plugins you mentioned, I'll give them a try. And will resend and convert a pdf I've used to compare the two formats.

nedd

i send to the free email as well, but my kindle only has wifi so I dont get charged either way.

I have my Kindle well over a year at this stage and only discovered the email thing in the last 2 months. it is great.

ThisRegard

Well I used Amazons own conversion functionality by sending the pdf to myself with covert in the subject line and the results weren't great, it wasn't converted to mobi format and it was all over the place compared to the original pdf. Didn't get a chance to try calibre yet to do it.

_underscore

I just installed Calibre last night and it really is great.

I have it running on my windows server and use it to push blogs/news sites to my Kindle every morning at 8.30

I still have to play around with conversions for college notes etc.

One more question you guys might know the answer to:

I've just started the trial subscription to "2600" magazine. It's a quarterly release schedule but the billing is $0.99 per month. Does this mean i'm paying every month even though I don't get content, or only the months it comes out? i.e. is it $11.88 per year or $3.96 per year. It just seems a little strange the way they are charging. Thanks.

The Black Oil

_underscore wrote: »

I have it running on my windows server and use it to push blogs/news sites to my Kindle every morning at 8.30

Care to share a bit more about how you do that? I know news stuff can be scheduled in Calibre, but maybe there's another way.

ThisRegard

You use calibre to mail them, here's how to have your regular machine, no need for a server, to boot up, open calibre, to download and mail whatever to you and shut down again.

http://kindlelove.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/calibre-%E2%80%93-a-kindle%E2%80%99s-best-friend-part-2/

MagicMarker

Personally, while converting PDF to MOBI often works out great, sometimes it doesn't. In which case I find copying the contents of the PDF file into a Word document and then saving that as a HTML file works better, then convert the HTML file to MOBI. There will still be some formatting errors, but not as many and if you really want to you can edit the HTML file in Word, but you can't edit a PDF!

Red Neck Hughie

hi folks, I have a small problem with my kindle - I can load one particular file to it as a pdf (which is not really practical) but can't convert it or even send it as a .doc. No luck via usb either... any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong? Also I can't get the irish indo on the kindle though on the calibre desktop app it's grand. Thanks for reading...

nedd

Red Neck Hughie wrote: »

hi folks, I have a small problem with my kindle - I can load one particular file to it as a pdf (which is not really practical) but can't convert it or even send it as a .doc. No luck via usb either... any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong? Also I can't get the irish indo on the kindle though on the calibre desktop app it's grand. Thanks for reading...

How are you trying to convert it? Using Calibre?

_underscore

Black Oil wrote: »

Care to share a bit more about how you do that? I know news stuff can be scheduled in Calibre, but maybe there's another way.

Hi, sorry for the delay in getting back (forgot about thread).

I'm just using Calibre. It can access blogs the same way it does news.. It's really handy.

Red Neck Hughie

nedd wrote: »

How are you trying to convert it? Using Calibre?

By saving an existing pdf as a .doc then mailing to me@kindle.com. It has worked fine on other files. I've tried mailing the pdf with 'convert' in the subject field too..

techguy

Red Neck Hughie wrote: »

By saving an existing pdf as a .doc then mailing to me@kindle.com. It has worked fine on other files. I've tried mailing the pdf with 'convert' in the subject field too..

You should try using Calibre. I have had better results with it compared to using the Kindle service. The Kindle service seems to just convert them into images or something but calibre converts to text so the pages fit the Kindle perfectly.

nedd

Saving a .pdf as a .doc is not converting it, thats just renaming it. You have to run the pdf file through some conversion application for it to actually be converted.

Use Calibre to do this.