Comments | kribu: *rolls eyes*

kribu

rolls eyes

Jan 24, 2010 11:27

Why can't Amazon, in its infinite wisdom whenever it suggests things to someone, ever incorporate the location data of the person they're spamming? Advertising Kindle "with global wireless" to me isn't going to do me much good when "global" means "~100 countries", of which Estonia is not one ( Read more... )

work, weather, rant, randomness

Comments 8

septentrion1970 January 24 2010, 12:13:44 UTC

So if you want to upload books on your reader, you must plug it to the computer?

Holiday. Sounds nice. When will you be on holiday?

kribu January 24 2010, 12:26:30 UTC

So if you want to upload books on your reader, you must plug it to the computer?

Yes. Which isn't exactly a huge issue. Besides, unlike with Kindle, it also means Amazon (or whoever) can't randomly and unilaterally delete content from it (like they can, and have done, with Kindle, when they realised they sold George Orwell's books without the proper rights, or something like that).

Holiday... well, I've asked for the last two weeks in February (to start with), but of course, until it happens, I cannot really be certain I'll also get it then.

septentrion1970 January 24 2010, 12:28:46 UTC

Good point about the Kindle. I can't buy an ereader now, but I'll keep that in mind when I do it.

kribu January 24 2010, 12:36:19 UTC

The one point for Kindle is that Amazon has possibly more modern literature in electronic format (for Kindle) than is available for the other readers. And Amazon pretty much only sells e-books in Kindle format, I think, in order to get people to buy Kindle. (I think there are ways around that, at least if you know someone with a Kindle, to be able to buy and then convert the books into another format, but it all seems very complicated.)

On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of classical works available as e-books for free, and plenty of non-Amazon stores have started selling e-books in non-Kindle formats, so it's not a terrible obstacle. I'd assume that as e-Readers in general become more common, e-book availability will become less of an issue, too.

And the Sony certainly works well for reading fic on it (which is truthfully the only thing I've read on it so far - I have several hundred "real" books in the shelves that I've not read yet, so whenever I want to read something else than fanfic, I read those.

dacian_goddess January 24 2010, 14:06:54 UTC

Eight quid for the per-item delivery?! Those must be some nice fumes permeating the Amazon UK HQ.

Good luck with work; boo for it eating up your weekend.

kribu January 24 2010, 14:19:21 UTC

Well, £3 per item + £5 per delivery. So it's a little less horrid if I bought in bulk, but if I only wanted one book...

I was just wanting to buy a book the other day, which Amazon was selling for around £6, and it came to nearly £16 with shipping + VAT for me. Obviously I said "fuck it" and went to bookdepository.co.uk, where the same book was a little bit more expensive, but with free shipping and no extra VAT. Saved me a good £8.

Okay, I get the VAT thing (although it's annoying), but why Amazon thinks shipping to us should cost far more than shipping to Finland or Greece... At least they now acknowledge us as Europe, instead of the fairly recent division between "Western Europe" and "rest of the world" (in which we were obviously "rest of the world").

Thanks. I've got two more paragraphs, then spellcheck and this particular thing will be done.

ayerf January 24 2010, 16:48:08 UTC

*covets shiny ereader*

I don't know what sort I'll end up getting. I know I don't like the idea that Amazon knows what I have and can delete it at whim with no say from me. But then there's the size of the Amazon catalogue and my lack of bookshelf space... but any ereader could help with that lack.

Only -20°C?! That still sounds freezing to me, wimpy UK resident that I am.

Oww! I hope your back, hips and right knee behave.

Fingers crossed for holiday and plot bunny attack!

kribu January 24 2010, 21:00:41 UTC

The Kindles look awfully nice and I'm quite sure they're wonderful to use, but the whole ... tied to Amazon in more ways than one (and them having the ability to remove things you have bought from your device) just doesn't appeal to me.

It's getting warmer actually - only -15°C now, and next week ought to be warmer again. No thaw in sight though.

I really should try and get out tomorrow. I worked both days over the weekend... I dare say I have a right to take half a day off tomorrow. If the weather's OK. I'm just too achy all over to take much more of this.