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Amazon Kindle pdf management?

speakerwizard

speakerwizard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Hi guys, I bought a relative a kindle and now have the job of loading it up etc, I have 2 questions really as i have not worked with pdf's much.
1) what is a good application or method of changing pdf meta-data etc, and
2) Is there a good PDF (and maybe other e-book formats) management software or even sync software for mac? thanks
 
With the new software update, the Kindle can read .pdf files natively. Annoyingly, it can't (or at least I haven't figured it out) zoom, so, depending on your source document, you can wind up with some very small print.

The easiest thing to do, from any computer, is email the .pdf file to the Kindle address on your "manage your Kindle page" on Amazon.com. You (or your relative) will have to authorize your "from" email address.
 
sishaw said:
With the new software update, the Kindle can read .pdf files natively. Annoyingly, it can't (or at least I haven't figured it out) zoom, so, depending on your source document, you can wind up with some very small print.

The easiest thing to do, from any computer, is email the .pdf file to the Kindle address on your "manage your Kindle page" on Amazon.com. You (or your relative) will have to authorize your "from" email address.
Click to expand...

The kindle does not have Zoom, the pdf support is lame.
 
sishaw said:
The easiest thing to do, from any computer, is email the .pdf file to the Kindle address on your "manage your Kindle page" on Amazon.com. You (or your relative) will have to authorize your "from" email address.
Click to expand...

If a cable is handy, drag and drop is probably a good way to go.

If you use a program like Papers on the Mac side, it might also be helpful (if you're talking about journal articles, here...).
 
SteveSparks said:
The kindle does not have Zoom, the pdf support is lame.
Click to expand...

Yep, you're right. I've been holding out hope that there was some magic combination of button presses I haven't discovered, but the lack of zoom is a real problem if your original document has small or dense print.

I think for the Kindle, given the kind of really basic user interface it has, the best thing would be some kind of toggled step zoom. For example, one press of the button would zoom 25%, another press would zoom 50%. The the 4-way switch could be used to navigate the document.
 
mkrishnan said:
If a cable is handy, drag and drop is probably a good way to go.

If you use a program like Papers on the Mac side, it might also be helpful (if you're talking about journal articles, here...).
Click to expand...

Well, it's all a matter of personal preference. I have the cable, but I find emailing easier. Some people might like using the cable.
 
sishaw said:
Well, it's all a matter of personal preference. I have the cable, but I find emailing easier. Some people might like using the cable.
Click to expand...

I can understand that... I have a cable for my iPhone, but when I want pictures on the web, I usually e-mail them to my Photobucket account. 😱

Now, if you e-mail a document that's already in PDF format to the Amazon address, you do have to pay ($0.15 per megabyte; I don't know what the UK rate is -- this suggests it's $0.99USD in all other markets, but I'm not sure if that's meant to indicate countries where the Kindle is not officially supported, or...), right?
 
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Kindle PDF Support Pretty Good

I just messed around with my kindle 2 and a recent set of pdf docs. I find that the support is pretty good. There are zoom options and options to move the orientation of the screen. The best feature I've seen is moving the text to actual size and reading with the 5 way button. The page scrolling is pretty intuitive and the size of the text is great.
 
mac.by.jake said:
I just messed around with my kindle 2 and a recent set of pdf docs. I find that the support is pretty good. There are zoom options and options to move the orientation of the screen. The best feature I've seen is moving the text to actual size and reading with the 5 way button. The page scrolling is pretty intuitive and the size of the text is great.
Click to expand...

To be clear, some (or all, rather) of those features got added in the newest 2.5 update that came out in June; the previous posts in this thread all refer to the previous firmware, which did not have any pan/zoom features. Sounds like the 2.5 options are a great improvement.
 
speakerwizard said:
Hi guys, I bought a relative a kindle and now have the job of loading it up etc, I have 2 questions really as i have not worked with pdf's much.
1) what is a good application or method of changing pdf meta-data etc, and
2) Is there a good PDF (and maybe other e-book formats) management software or even sync software for mac? thanks
Click to expand...

Download Calibre and use that to convert the PDF's to a more friendly format. Also allows you to move books to and from the Kindle or most other e-readers and tablets including the iPad.
 
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