Read Kindle books on your PC (without an actual Kindle)

There are some interesting news from the world of tech today - Amazon has launched its Kindle for PC software application that lets you download and read Kindle books on a Windows computer running Vista, Windows 7 or XP (SP2). You do not need to have an actual Kindle device! One benefit of this is that you can start reading a highly anticipated brand new book right away and pay less without the leaving the comforts of your home/office/studio. (A Mac version of the software is not available at the moment)

This is the first version of the PC-based application, and it currently does not support blogs, newspapers and magazines. Only books. And this is our point of interest here, since this blog is available on the Kindle. We will keep an eye out for it and let you know if/when a version of the Kindle PC software application that supports blogs comes out.

Since this is free to use and install, we gave it a try. Installation only took a couple of minutes, no need to restart anything. An Amazon.com account is required to login and sync-up the downloads/purchases. We tried downloading and reading (okay, browsing, we don't read that fast) a few books, not because we are big spenders, but because there are quite a few FREE (price: $0.00) e-books available at the Kindle store :)

A delivery mechanism for essays about photography?
Of photography-interest, from the reader's perspective, this is suited only for essay-type photography books, not books with actual photographs and diagrams and tutorials.

From the writer's perspective, we do not know what the requirements are for book-authors, but if any of you out there have written or are planning to write essays or text-based books on photography this could be a delivery medium to consider self-publishing to if you want to distribute your book in a copyright-protected format to the widest audience possible. But that's just an idea, this topic is better suited for photography-business and kindle-publishing websites so we better stop :)

The Actual Device
As far as the actual device, the new international Kindle2 is available for $259. Occasionally they also offer refurbished 1st generation models for $150. Those are currently out of stock. You can get this blog on your Kindle with a free two-week trial. If you continue after the free-trial, Amazon charges a 99c monthly fee.