There is good news after all now for those of us who are unlucky enough to live in Maldives. I say unlucky cos Amazon doesn’t sell Kindle to those who live in our country, and I also had to get mine from Ebay from a reseller who I guess was the only seller who provided international shipping. Anyhow I am kind of twiddling my thumbs at work today having nothing much to do. Since I would rather not be caught reading on my Kindle without a care at work, I opted to find out whether there was anyway in which I could read the Kindle books that I had purchased from Amazon on my computer and voila I hit pay dirt when I came across the information that Amazon is now offering Kindle for PC Beta, a free software that allows you to download your Kindle books and read it on your PC. Now how cool is that!

The application is quite simple and with a few cool features. If you are connected to the Internet on your PC, you would be able to view all your purchased Kindle version books under “Archived Items” and download them for reading as well. And the “Shop in Kindle Store” button opens up the Kindle store in your default browser so that you can browse and shop for books to your hearts content. With Amazon releasing Kindle versions of all major bestsellers and even some of those rare out-of-print versions, this is one treasure any e-book lover shouldn’t forgo. And the best thing about Kindle books are that it comes cheap, very cheap compared to the hardcover versions that usually come out during the first release of a bestseller. With each book under 10 US$, with cool book management features you cannot go wrong in trying this out!

As with anything that’s a beta version, I am pretty sure that there must be a couple of bugs lying around within the application. But am sure that given time, the Kindle for PC could become one of the major e-book readers out there, outbidding Microsoft’s MS Reader and Mobipocket Reader from Mobipocket SA.

So happy reading everyone! And until my next review which should be up pretty soon!