How to get Amazon’s Kindle for free
OK, I admit the headline is tad misleading – though it’s not a lie. Amazon isn’t giving away free Kindle e-book readers away, sorry, but they did announce today the ability to download the Kindle application (app) for your PC for free – and download hundreds of thousands of free books, too.
Amazon today announced the availability of its Kindle for PC , beta software that lets you read Kindle books on your personal computer – with no Kindle device required.
But if you have a Kindle (US $259), you might like a neat feature that automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices (thanks to its Whispersync technology). You can also create bookmarks and view the annotations you created on your Kindle.
On this downloadable app you can search and browse through more than 450,000 books, including more than 100 current New York Times best-sellers (at $9.99 apiece), many of which give you free samples such as the first chapter, to decide if you want to buy. There are also countless free books from the public domain.
Unfortunately, Kindle newspapers, magazines and blogs are not currently available for Kindle for PC
System Requirements are a Windows-based PC (Windows XP, Vista or 7), powered by a 500MHz Intel or AMD processor or faster. A minimum of 128MB of system memory is required, as is 100MB of hard drive space and a screen resolution of 800×600 or greater.
Amazon says it’s working on a few upcoming features for the Kindle for PC including Mac support, search, zoom and rotate, and the ability to create notes and annotations.
Announced today? Maybe it’s a repeate article?
This beta was announced around Nov. 10 last year, per my blog entry from that time, http://bit.ly/kwk4pc … It’s a good product, though I’m still waiting for creation of annotations and the search function 4 months later. I guess they’ve been busy :-)
Amazon tells me it’s new for Canadians, but yes, I know the Kindle for PC software has been around for a while (though it’s still in beta).
Marc
Marc,
Thanks. I didn’t realize I was visiting a Canadian site :-) Normally, they end in .ca and I get a clue.
You’ll like it, despite the two features I’m still waiting for.
It’s great to see the books in color when there are illustrations that use that. I have a beautiful Samsung netbook screen (matte) but even when I dim the white background it’s not 20% as comfortable as an e-ink reader for reading sequential, long-session stuff like … a book :-)
BUT very nice for about 1/2 hour at a time anyway.
Mileage/vary and all that.
I love that it’s available like that, even to people without Kindles.
Marc, since I was last here, I hope you’ve seen that they’ve updated that Kindle for PC app and now we can read with the backlighting dimmed and even choose sepia as a background (as well as white on black).
There’s also a good, free dictionary you can use with it (Amazon didn’t provide that yet) which will work with other Windows programs. Info at http://bit.ly/kwordweb .