Today Amazon announced that Kindle for PC is available for download. Because I had previously reviewed the Kindle 2 I decided to check out the PC software and see how it works out.
Features
- Get the best reading experience available on your PC. No Kindle required
- Access your Kindle books even if you don’t have your Kindle with you
- Automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices with Whispersync
- Create bookmarks and view the annotations you created on your Kindle
Reading books on a computer is often difficult because of different limitations. These limitations can range from text size being too small, not being able to save your place, or keep your books organized. The Kindle for PC software tried to help with those things by giving users more options.
Ever since I reviewed the Kindle and then sent it back to Amazon I wondered how I would get access to the books I had purchased and downloaded. Until now that was not possible. Now I am excited to say that those purchases are not lost.
As you read on a Kindle or on a PC the devices will stay in sync so that when you open a book it always opens to your last read page.
Bookmarks can be very useful when reading. With Kindle for PC adding these are really easy.
Design
Because the Kindle for PC software is nothing more than a souped up document reader it initially looks a lot like other document readers. The very sparse design is good because it does not get in the way of its primary function (which is reading books).
The very first screen you will see is the Home page. This page shows you all the books you are currently reading. Below each book is a small line that indicates how far you have read in the book.
Home |
When you select a book you are immediately taken into the book. If you have not read anything yet, then you are taken to the first page. If you have already started reading you are taken to the last page you read.
Book |
From this same screen you have several options that may help reading. By clicking the last button in the toolbar you can choose the size of the text and also how many words are shown on a line. I can see how choosing the text size would be nice, but I am not sure why you would need a separate selector for words per line. Normally this is accomplished by stretching out the window. In addition, shrinking the window causes the text to compress and ignores the words per line setting.
Font Size |
Book large font |
Book wide |
This screen is also where you can set and view bookmarks. By clicking on the bookmark button the software folds the top right corner of the page and lists the bookmark in the bookmark and notes list. It is possible to set multiple bookmarks, and as far as I could tell there is no limit.
Bookmark |
Bookmark and Notes |
I could not figure out how to create notes. According to the Future Improvements screen this is a feature that is coming later. So for now you can only create notes on an actual Kindle.
Conclusion
If you have a Kindle I really think this software is a must have. It extends the usefulness of the device by allowing you to continue to read your books when you don’t have your Kindle. On the other hand, if you don’t have a Kindle this software is fairly useless. The best thing about the software is that it is free for everyone. So even if you don’t have a Kindle, but you want to by some books you can take advantage of this. Then when you get a Kindle the books will automatically sync for you.
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