App of the Week - Kindle for Windows 8

  • Article

For many of you holidays are ending. You come down from the mountains, back from the beautiful beaches, away from the big cities to get back to yet another semester of exiting courses, projects and exams. We’re all in it together! Coming back doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed to get away again… by reading novels about adventures, crimes or even love stories. That’s why this week’s app is Kindle for Windows 8.

To be frank, I was a little bit skeptic at first to be reading of my computer but I gave it a try and I really liked it. Let me tell you why.

First the catalog is huge. You can download books in many languages for most often a fraction of the price of a physical book (but there are exceptions!), you get it delivered instantly and it really is easy. A nice thing is also that the catalog has many free (yes FREE, as in “you don’t have to pay for it) books. Those are often old classics that doesn’t have copyrights anymore. You can for example read Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice and many other for free.

The other great thing is that the Windows 8 app works great with all other Kindle apps on other devices. You can start reading on your computer and then when you leave home pick up your reading on your Windows Phone and finally continue on your tablet with your progress synced automatically. You do not have to worry where you left off. You don’t need page markers anymore ;-P

It has most of the features you might expect from a book reader. You can change layout, mark pages, write notes, highlight words and see your progress in the book. On the Windows 8 side, you can pin your favorite books on your start screen to access them easier. You can also snap the text to the side of your screen if you really are into multitasking or want to make a search while you are reading. If you enjoy the book you are reading you can also easily share it with a friend via the charms bar.

What I miss from is the ability to look up words directly in the application. I hope that is on the development roadmap. And I also would like a more realistic page turn in 3D… JUST KIDDING that is awful ;-)

I really encourage you to give it a try. As I said, I first didn’t believe I would enjoy reading on my computer but I found myself many times reading a few pages at school or at hope when I had my laptop open and then continued on my Windows Phone.

If you are looking for a nice book to read I will even share with you the very first book I read completely as an eBook. It is “Zero Day” by Mark Russinovich. It is a novel about a global cyber-attack that a security analyst tries to stop. If you like espionage, computers, viruses… you will love this book. It happens to be written by a Microsoft employee that is an authority in the computer security field. Hope you will enjoy it! (There is even a second book, “Trojan Horse” that came out recently)