imageSo, gang, what do you think of the new Kindle for PC software—officially usable in more than 100 countries? My impressions from a quick test drive of the beta are here.

If you prefer LCDs over E Ink but think the iPhone screen is too small, will you now switch from your Kindle hardware to your laptop or tablet? Or maybe even buy a bargain-priced portable computer to go a-Kindlin’? How about the color capabilities? And will the new app lead to piracy?

OK, Amazon, scratch one off the to-do list. Now how about the ePub standard for both the software and Kindle hardware?

Google news roundup is here, including a ZDnet link. News release from Amazon, slightly edited, follows. – D.R.

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Amazon.com, Inc. today announced the availability of "Kindle for PC," the free application that lets readers around the world enjoy Kindle books on their personal computers (PC). The U.S. Kindle Store currently offers more than 360,000 books, including New Releases and 101 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, which are typically $9.99 or less. The Kindle Store is the only place to find some of today’s most popular books in digital format. Kindle books can now be read on the Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch and PC. Kindle for PC is now available as a free download to readers in over 100 countries.

Kindle for PC features Amazon’s Whispersync technology that automatically saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. Whether you read Kindle books on a Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the free Kindle applications, you can always have your reading with you and never lose your place. With Kindle for PC, you can read some on your PC, read some on your Kindle, and always pick up right where you left off. Whispersync helped make the Kindle for iPhone application the most popular books app in the Apple App Store.

"Kindle for PC is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX," said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. "Kindle for PC is also a great way for people around the world to access a huge selection from the Kindle Store and read the most popular books of today even if they don’t yet have a Kindle."

With Kindle for PC, readers can take advantage of the following features:

  • Purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
  • Read the beginning of any book for free before they buy
  • Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
  • Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books, textbooks and graphic novels
  • Choose from more than 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
  • Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
  • View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, and iPod touch
  • Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
  • Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)

Microsoft demonstrated Kindle for PC for the first time ever at the Windows 7 launch event last month in New York City. Kindle for PC takes advantage of capabilities in the new Windows 7, including Windows Touch technology. In addition to Windows 7, Kindle for PC is also compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Kindle for PC is available for free download at www.amazon.com/KindleforPC.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial.

Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise
.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Source: Amazon.com, Inc.

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6 COMMENTS

  3. I also wish Amazon would support ePub. This addition doesn’t help me access books from my Library on my Kindle.

    However, this is a good start. Before the release of this software, if you bought books for your Kindle and the Kindle broke, and you didn’t have an iPhone, you were out of luck. Now, you can access your books on your PC, and eventually, a Mac.

    You can access your notes, highlights, and bookmarks, but you can’t create new notes or hightlights, only bookmarks. That’s a little disappointing, but not a deal breaker.

    I haven’t tried the application on a PC that’s not connected to the internet, to see what happens if it can’t sync. I’m assuming your Home books are good, you just can’t access your archive.

    You an change the font, and yes! Color! My own book on the Kindle, Painting the Web (from O’Reilly, if I may be so bold as to plug), now shows images in color. In the case of this book, the Kindle for PC is an improvement.

    This does add a new challenge when publishing for the Kindle: should you use graphics fine-tuned for grayscale? Or just publish in color?

    All in all, this was a good move on Amazon’s part. I’m sorry that folks want more (and more and more), but I’m going to take the step and say well done, Amazon.

  4. Just downloaded, installed, and called up my latest read in about 1 minute. It’s nice (and way overdue).

    One thing that is bothering me: why is the full justification so lame on the Kindle2 itself (for AZW format, it’s great on TPZ) and yet it’s PERFECT on the Kindle for iPhone and Kindle for PC?

    It’s kind of making me want a netbook 🙂

  5. I argue that readers in the short term (rather than us geeks who think long term) should be happy that Amazon does not support epub. Think about it: for the present, Amazon is willing to subsidize their ebooks in order to build the population of prisoners within their walled garden. So readers get cheaper ebooks than paperbound editions, and Sony and other competitors are forced into offering similar low prices. Cheaper books; and if all you want to do is read the latest romance, SF, mystery, or bestseller *one time* and then forget it, a cheap ebook fits the bill, even if it is DRM’d and you won’t be able to read it in 5 or 10 years due to obsolescence and harsh copyright laws.

    But if Amazon went along with Adobe’s DRM for the epub, and if all the publishers united on this one format, and this one vendor of DRM, and ebooks take off, then Amazon actually loses, in a large way. All Amazon could do is cut their margins on the epub editions publishers provided them; down to a penny, maybe. But publishers could hold the line on their ebook wholesale prices. The publishers would be sitting on the throne in this model, they could sell their own books first from their website, before Amazon or B&N or Sony even got a crack at them.

    The ebook universe would split up into CE device makers of commodity hardware, smartphone apps, and the publishers. (And Adobe, the big, big winner under this scenario.)

    Thinking of it this way actually makes me wonder if maybe the Tower of eBabel isn’t the best solution. Maybe we should be supporting more oddball proprietary formats. Sony, you seem to like inventing your own, how about it?

    😉

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