After getting my first tweet of a successful conversion (from Victor Vogt ('okieopie'), it seemed it has taken a lot less than 3 days to fix or enable the 'Convert' request for Kindle2 PDFs requested in subject field of an email.
So, to confirm this, I sent 'Droidmaker' (section 1), as it is a tough conversion to do, and it came back almost immediately, CONVERTED, and converted unusually well. This PDF book has photos and multiple columns, with info boxes off to the side of the body. Photos were placed at the top of a page where appropriate rather than dropped anywhere on the page as converters usually do.
(The actual PDF displays accurately on the newly updated Kindle 2's, but since each page is crammed with text, photos and extraneous boxes, the text has to be tiny on a 6" screen ... so it's a good test AND evidence of some intelligent converting. I had tried a couple of months ago using MobiPocket Creator and Calibre, never with particularly good results for this book). By the way, this is a very good book, and it's free from the author currently, normally $35.
Upshot: The conversion request-process has been Enabled! Thanks to Alfonso for communicating with the Engineers and writing up the ticket to get this done.
Update1 - 11/25/09 at 2:48 PM PST (Original post was 3:15 AM this morning.)
A Kindle Specialist named Alfonso took my question today and said he checked with the server people on it and it resulted in his writing up a ticket to have it resolved. He said it'll take about 3 days and in some way we'll be told when it's fixed. Very helpful rep.
In the meantime, the Kindle Support U.S. #, 866-321-8851, is being picked up first by non-Kindle-specialists today, and he hoped we can get back to direct transfer to Kindle people to cut the time spent repeating our questions.
Re the new firmware update reported and followed yesterday, this is a quick note. Both Len Edgerly and I have followed the new instructions to request conversion of a PDF to Kindle format for our Kindle 2's, but both of us received full PDFs back, unconverted.
Here's the quoted section we followed:
' * Option to convert PDF files to Kindle format. If you prefer to have your personal PDF documents converted to the Kindle format (so that they can reflow), type "Convert" in the subject of the e-mail when you submit your personal document to your @kindle.com address. 'I sent the attachments using the word 'Convert' (with capital 'C') in the Subject field of the email and I sent them to both the @kindle.com address and the @free.kindle.com address
[ Excellent. We'd keep the original to check layout and use reflowed text for a copy that we can mark up or annotate, be able to use the inline-dictionary for, and search the Kindle for the content within that PDF. ]
If anyone has had this Convert-request work for them, let us know.
In the meantime I'll try to reach someone at Amazon for clarification. Thanks. I suspect Amazon just forgot to enable the feature on the servers.
NOTE - Finding the "Update Your Kindle" option on the Kindle 2 and DX
Some have not been able to find the Kindle settings to update their Kindles manually for the update (instead of waiting for the automated one which could take weeks to reach your area) -- Be sure to press the Kindle's Menu button and click the 5-way button on 'Settings 'and THEN, press Menu again to get the option to update the firmware (after you have transferred the firmware-update in your Kindle's root- or top-level directory, which is where you'll see the folders for 'documents,' 'music,' etc). Thanks to Malcolm for drawing my attention to the vagueness of the 'root' word.
PDFs viewed on the Kindle 2
My experience with the new PDF reader capability is that it works very well with most of my PDFs -- but any PDFs, such as camera manuals, done with several columns of graphics will need to fit a lot of material in one page and these are then prepared by the vendor in a font size so small that they're not highly readable on a 6" screen, even when in landscape mode. Those are good candidates for conversion to Kindle format, with information searchable quickly and highlighting possible, even if the layout won't look the way it does in the printed manual.
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