Amazon today announced that Kindle for PC is now in public beta. Since I’d been wondering when Amazon would do this (even before rival Barnes & Noble released their readers – on iPhone, Mac and PC, no less), I thought I’d give it a spin.

The download page on Amazon says that Kindle for PC is available for Windows 7, Vista and XP. I look forward to trying this out on a Mac when they release that version (hopefully soon.)

The initial Windows beta release does the basic stuff. After an initial sign-in screen, it associated the PC application with my Amazon account, found my previously purchasd Kindle edition books, and placed them under the Archive section, which is accessible by a button in the app window’s Home screen. Also on the Home screen is a clickable “Shop in Kindle Store” link, that opens a web browser window and takes you to the Amazon web site’s Kindle store to shop for more content.

Operation is intuitive, as I would expect from a Kindle-branded application. I went to the Archive section and moved the book I’m currently reading, William Gibson’s Spook Country, to the Home screen. This initiated a download via Amazon’s Whispersync technology – in my case, a hard-wired Ethernet connection – that took less than two seconds. I could then click on the book on the Home screen and pick up reading where I had left off.

Basic navigation is performed with the arrow keys or with mouse gestures. As with other Kindle readers, there is a Go To menu that allows you to jump to the cover, the table of contents, the beginning of the book, or an arbitrary location. (Amazon divides the contents of Kindle-edition books into numbered chunks called Locations). There is also a menu selection called “Sync to furthest page read” which I’ve not managed to figure out what it actually does – if you know, please tell me in the comments.

One can display annotations in the book but not make them in this initial beta version.

Options for changing the way the book contents are displayed are fairly limited, but this is a beta release. The app allows you to change the size of the display type. There is also a slider that allows you to change the number of words per line. It does this by changing the width of the page that is displayed on-screen. That’s it. Those are the only two ways you can change the display of a Kindle book, at least in this version of the app. I’d like to see more, in particular the ability to display the contents as white text on a black background. Even the iPhone app can do that. Hopefully we’ll see this in the next release.

I’d say this is a good start. Compared to the B&N reader application (full review coming soon), the Kindle for PC application doesn’t have as many display options – it doesn’t do the aforementioned inverse display mode, and it doesn’t display text on two facing pages. But it works reasonably well, and the experience of getting the content to the device and displayed is slick and hassle-free – better than B&N.

The other day, C. and I were at a bookstore.  I picked up a book and showed it to her.

“Oh look,” I said.  “Another thousand-page book.”

She told me she thought I should lay off the thousand-pagers for a while, particularly since I just finished reading one, have just started on another one, and still have a third waiting for me after I finish that one.  “I think you should have a look at the beach reading section,” she added.  “Those are probably more your speed.”

I should probably mention here that I’m currently reading The Confusion, which is the second volume of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.  I bought the first book, Quicksilver, back in 2003 when it came out in hardcover.  I finally finished reading it on Friday.

In my defense, I started reading Quicksilver about two weeks before I was accepted to business school.  I didn’t get very far before I shelved it in response to other demands on my time.  Classes and the recruiting process can do that.  Then the job search.  Then the job.

As I mentioned in my Kindle Reader first impressions post, I considered buying the Kindle editions of the three volumes, so I could read a page or three during the dribs and drabs of time I spend waiting in line for stuff.  But I’m still not convinced that I would remember what was going on the next time I found myself waiting for something.  So I ruled that out.

Five and a half years later… it’s been quite a slog, but worth it in my opinion.  Hence my going straight away to the second volume.  I recommend it if you’re a math/science/history geek like me.

Otherwise, may I suggest you check out my beach reading list.  There are some good reads on there.

Have you read any of the books on the list?  Leave a comment and let me know what you thought of them.