Unfortunately, the Kindle DX with International Roaming was just released, and not only have they not improved the deal offered to Americans traveling abroad, the hardware has remained the same.  The only real difference, it seems, between the old Kindle DX and the new one is that they will operate on different 3G Networks.  The original Kindle DX works on AT&T’s domestic 3G network and the Kindle DX with Global Wireless runs on the Spring 3G network. For people not living in the United States, the Kindle DX with Global Wireless isn’t a bad deal, since as long as you don’t live in the United States, they will not charge roaming charges either in your home country or when you’re roaming.  It seems that basically they are only charging American customers roaming charges, though they’re at the same time requiring everyone who wants a Kindle to buy them from their United States’ online store and supposedly charging more for digital content purchased outside the United States.  It’s all very confusing, and I did send off a question to Kindle customer support asking which Kindle it would make sense for someone like me, who splits his time between the United States and England and has a number of newspaper and magazine subscriptions to use.

Ultimately, though, none of this may really matter.  While I like not having to connect my Kindle to my computer to download content, connecting to a computer does bring with it the advantage of being able to use Calibre e-book management software, an open source iTunes like application that lets you manage your Kindle.  Calibre is unfortunately is not able to synch your Kindle with content you’ve purchased from Amazon.com (i.e. it can’t make sure you have the most up to date Kindle edition of the The Nation or The New York Times).  However, what Calibre can do is download content from the web sites of publications like The Nation and the Times, download the free content available there for the Kindle, and then upload it to your Kindle.  You can also easily manage all of the documents on your Kindle.  Calibre works with all of the popular e-Readers out there, so if you’re not a fan of the Kindle, you can still be a fan of Calibre.  One nice feature of Calibre is that if you keep it running, it will email content to your reader Kindle over the Kindle’s wireless network, or to any other email account that you designate.  Calibre will also convert ebook from one format to another if that’s every something you need to do.

It’s also worth keeping mind that if you don’t want to buy books from the online Kindle store, there are large online repositories of free books that are available in the .mobi format, which is fully compatible with the Kindle.  I like Manybooks.net, but also regularly download content from Project Gutenberg.  In fact, many of the ebooks that Amazon sells in their Kindle store are poorly constructed Kindle editions of text files downloaded from these sites.  After receiving a lot of complaints about this, Amazon started offering their own free version of a lot of public domain books.  Also, if you have a Kindle DX, you can download PDF files of out of copyright books from Google and transfer those to your Kindle via USB.

One thing that annoys me about a lot of the free content that’s out there, is that it doesn’t include a table of contents.  However, it’s relatively easy to create your own Kindle documents, complete with tables of content and your own custom designed cover using the free software provided by MobiPocket, a subsidiary of Amazon.  Amazon doesn’t do much to advertise the fact that books they sell on their MobiPocket site work on the Kindle, nor do they advertise that ebooks you create using MobiPocket Creator can also be sold on Amazon.com as Kindle books.

One thing to avoid is emailing content to your Kindle using Amazon’s wireless service.  Originally, this was a very convenient way of getting content onto your Kindle,  since when the Kindle was first introduced Amazon only charged $.10 per document emailed.  However, Amazon quietly started charging by the megabyte for these emails, and using the wireless email service became a pretty lousy deal (it’s $.99 per megabyte if you have global Kindle and are roaming).   Keep this in mind when deciding whether to tell Calibre to email content to your Kindle using your kindle.com email address.  Since Calibre will format its downloads for your Kindle, you don’t need to go through Amazon’s free conversion service (youname@free.kindle.com).  The only reason to you the free service is for Word documents, which do still require conversion before you can upload them to your Kindle.

Finally, if you don’t want to shell out for a Kindle, Amazon does offer free software that lets you read Kindle content on an iPhone, PC or Mac.  I find the iPhone Kindle app handy not so much for reading, but for searching for new content.  The Kindle store on the Kindle itself is a bit clunky and when on the road will usually use my iPhone to shop the Kindle store.

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