Amazon Kindle

[Lumiere]

You can add ebooks, and numerous other doc formats to a Kindle directly without going via Amazon, there's a standard micro USB cable and attached to a PC it appears as an external drive (3Gb ish). You can copy from it too of course.

That's too complicated, just send it to <yourlogin>@kindle.com or <yourlogin>@free.kindle.com (if you have the 3G version and want to receive documents by WiFi to avoid charges) and they will even convert TXT and RTF to MOBI for you. You can even send them zipped or attach many documents/books to one e-mail.

[TykeMerc]

That's too complicated, just send it to <yourlogin>@kindle.com or <yourlogin>@free.kindle.com (if you have the 3G version and want to receive documents by WiFi to avoid charges) and they will even convert TXT and RTF to MOBI for you. You can even send them zipped or attach many documents/books to one e-mail.

Indeed, that works very well, but the implication of some earlier questions were that some of the data might not necessarily want to go across Amazon's radar.

Whichever way you manage your files the Kindle hardware is certainly my preferred device for reading ebooks

[Clever Hans]

Oddly enough, I was going to ask the panel for a bit of a critique of the Kindle today, having had the device highly recommended to me yesterday by one of my sisters.
I used to read all the time, but latterly have almost given up as I keep forgetting my reading specs etc. and getting tired eyes from small print which causes me to fall asleep before too long.

I got one recently and have since been doing a salesman job on it and annoying my friends.

I used to read a lot of non-techie stuff, but rarely these days.

Since getting the Kindle a couple of months ago I have gone Gutenburg apetulip and read more of the classics in a fortnight than in the past two years.

Having a complete library to hand whereever I am, and reading for a couple of hours without feeling wound up/drained (as I sometimes do after 10 minutes with a netbook/ipad/other) is nothing less than a game changer.

Also, the customer service is pretty awesome - the screen went, I answered a few questions on it over the phone, they sent a replacement out same day.

Highly recommended.

[TykeMerc]

See here for a small util that helps with collections

Firmware Update Kindle Collection Manager for Windows - MobileRead Forums

Thanks for that link, I've downloaded the app and will have a tinker with it over the weekend. It looks promising.

[SueEllen]

I got one recently and have since been doing a salesman job on it and annoying my friends.

You don't need to do a salesman job you just need to show it to them in action.

That's how I brought mine. A mate got one at Xmas. I looked it and pressed two buttons, then two hours later was online buying one.

Unfortunately I brought an Amazon case which has screwed up the battery so it will have to go back this week. (Anyone wanting one they have changed the case design as it's a known fault.)

Annoying as I enjoy reading newspapers and an edited free version of The Economist on it. Plus it's now storing my library of technical PDFs and books.