Also, the fucker does not even accept PDF. Better to get the latest version of the Sony reader, which is a bit pricier, but has a better screen (e-ink, paper level resolution), and accepts pdf.

There's also Bookeen's Cybook. If I could afford to, I'd get that just to support the order NAEB is putting together: [link]

In addition to the the DRM issue, there are the terms of service:

The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service.

There's a world of creepiness in there.

Neil Gaiman got a chance to play with one and claims you can add PDFs:

Interestingly, they're not yet really pushing some of the things that sold me on it (how easy it is to put your own content onto it, for example, whether Documents or PDFs or downloaded Dr Who novels).

I think you have to send the PDF to Amazon and they send it to your device.

I look at the Cybook and drool too.

actually - reading reviews looked like there was software from google that let you read PDF. Most of the readers use proprietary software - ( so none of them are really worth the money). and since Sony decided the reader was sexier than me, (ad: sexier than a librarian) I didn't really look at it. and it looks like it can do audio content too.

(I've seen the Sony reader. You've got nothing to worry about.)

From the Amazon about your amazonkindle docs (uh, a PDF):

Formats natively supported are: .AZW, .PRC, .MOBI, .MP3, .AA and .TXT.

From what I read around you have to have Amazon convert the PDF for you, but perhaps you could copy and paste it into a TXT yourself.

I have found a work-around for my pdf files using the MobiPocket Creator.

( quote is from one reviewer - I saw several that were similar last night) so, not PDF, but work arounds are possible. but since I have never done it, I don't know how practical that is.

And someone was saying you have to email your documents to your kindle's email...and Amazon charges ten cents an email.

Powells website (where I am a guest blogger next week, incidentally) has a nice Q&A feature. I liked this bit from Jeff Parker, in response to the question "Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?":

Every summer when I'm in Russia I go on a Dostoyevsky Walk, a little tour cooked up by my friend James Boobar. The creepiest part is at the end of the tour, where we trespass our way up the stairwell of this old apartment building to the top where sits the supposed door of the pawnbroker (there is controversy as to whether this would be exactly the door Dostoyevsky imagined). There's all this conflicting cheerleader graffiti up there, in twenty or so different languages, saying things like, "Don't do it, Raskolnikov" and "KIIl the bitch!" It's the only time in my life I ever felt a real slippage between an imagined fictional world and an actual place. It's creepy.

Has anybody here made a literary pilgrimage? I don't know that I have really. I guess going to Shakespeare and Co., and Cafe Deux Magots in Paris were pilgrimages. Whenever I go to Kayo Books in SF I'm conscious that I'm in Sam Spade's neighborhood (as well as McTeague's).