Why the Kindle Fire HD is so cheap?

(CNN) -- If you take Jeff Bezos' word for it, Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD is "the best tablet at any price."

Bold claim.

And it's an obvious reaction to the reviews of last year's first-generation Kindle Fire, which praised the $199 price but made it clear you're getting the substandard tablet experience you just paid next to nothing for.

This year, Amazon has a new Kindle Fire called the Kindle Fire HD that's a noticeable improvement over the original. But is it the "best tablet at any price"? Nope. If you read the reviews, including mine, you'll quickly learn Bezos seems to have adopted the "reality distortion field" that Steve Jobs was famous for.

Does that mean the Kindle Fire HD is horrible? No. Not at all. In fact, it's still a decent option if you don't want to shell out $500 or more on an iPad. But how is Amazon able to make a good tablet at such a cheap price?

Simple. Like Amazon.com, the Kindle Fire HD is built to find ways to sell you more stuff.

First, and most annoyingly of all, the Kindle Fire HD displays full-color ads on its lock screen. That means every time you switch the device on, you see an ad for stuff like a Kindle e-book, a movie download, music from Amazon's MP3 store and the like. Amazon told me you'll also see a lot of third-party ads for products outside Amazon's ecosystem.

The good news is, if the ads really bother you, you can pay $15 to Amazon after you purchase the device to remove them for good.

But Amazon didn't stop with the ads. When you're using the tablet, you're constantly inundated with suggestions to check out more Amazon products. The most blatant example of this is on the Kindle Fire HD's home screen.

Whenever you hover over an app, movie, song or book, there's a section at the bottom of the screen that suggests other apps, movies, songs or books that you might want to buy. Do you like playing Angry Birds? Buy Cut the Rope! Do you like listening to Nicki Minaj? Check out Katy Perry's latest album!

You get the idea.

It's nearly identical to the way Amazon's website suggests items to you when you're shopping around.

These ads and suggested items are a clever way for Amazon to continue to drive value out of you months and months after you buy the Kindle Fire HD. And it's completely antithetical to your typical tablet experience. Tablets are supposed to be computing devices, helping you browse the Web, check e-mail, manage your calendar and the like. Yes, they make it easy to buy new content, but on devices like the iPad and Google's Nexus 7, you're not constantly pushed to do so.

But Amazon doesn't see it that way. It's just another portal to get you to buy. When you buy a Kindle Fire HD, it doesn't feel like your tablet. It feels like Amazon's.

Is this a dealbreaker? No way.

In fact, I imagine there are plenty of people out there who won't mind looking at ads and suggestions for stuff to buy if it means getting a decent tablet for less than $200. But if I had a choice between a $199 tablet with ads and offers (like the Kindle Fire) and a $199 without ads and offers (like the Nexus 7), I'd go with the latter every time.

Get an e-book in .pdf from .acsm (acsm to pdf)?

I bought an e-book that was delivered in the .acsm format, which requires me to use Adobe Digital Editions to read the book. I’m not fond of installing extra software to just open an e-book, when it could just as well been read in one single PDF reader. The problem is: the file isn’t a .pdf format.

Therefore I tried to find a way to convert the .acsm format to .pdf format. Search results led me to forum threads where so-called experts explain that the .acsm file isn’t the actual book, just a purchase ticket that allows you to download the book. I already had a feeling that the .acsm file size was way too small (1.56kb) to contain all the text of my book. The experts say that the .acsm can be imagined as the ‘key’ and the ADE application as the ‘door’, so the combination of the key + door is the e-book. Thus the only way to open the file is using ADE. This means I am only able to read the book using a desktop computer or laptop that has ADE installed, and not in an e-book reader like Amazon Kindle or Sony e-reader. This is very inconvenient and it bugs me that I’ve paid for a book that I can not carry everywhere like a traditional book because of all the restrictions.

.acsm file (key) + Adobe Digital Editions (door) = your e-book

After installing ADE, I noticed a newly created folder in “My Documents” named “My Digital Editions”. I opened the book by double clicking the .acsm file and noticed that a pdf file of my book was downloaded to that certain folder. I thought I solved the problem so easily, but once I double click the pdf file, my pdf reader happily warns me the following: “This document is encrypted by some unsupported security handler.”

The error "This document is encrypted by some unsupported security handler" in Foxit Reader

Googling up that error message brought me to software to unlock encrypted PDF files, such as “Advanced PDF Password Recovery Pro” and “PDF Password Remover”. I downloaded and installed the trial version of the former. When I run the software to decrypt the .pdf file, a warning message happily pops up saying: “This document was created with ‘eBook Exchange (EBX_HANDLER) 40-bit security v.4′ encryption handler. This protection method is not supported.” Seeing this, I know it’s useless to try out other software as they will probably give me a similar error.

The error "This document was created with 'eBook Exchange (EBX_HANDLER) 40-bit security v.4' encryption handler. This protection method is not supported" in Advanced PDF Password Recovery Pro

After spending some hours to find a way to decrypt files protected with EBX_HANDLER, I finally got to know that we’re dealing with Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is a way for publishers to restrict the way in which you use your downloaded content, primarily with the goal of preventing piracy. Everything went smooth onwards and I eventually removed the DRM from two e-books successfully. I’ll share the steps with you. One more thing that is worth noting is that it is completely legal to remove DRM from a file which you have purchased. You aren’t doing anything wrong unless you’re removing DRM from a file which you don’t own.

Step 1: Install Adobe Flash Player

Download Flash Player from Adobe website
Flash Player is required to run ADE. If it’s installed on your computer already, skip this step.

Adobe website download page for Adobe Flash Player

Step 2: Install Adobe Digital Editions (ADE)

Download Digital Editions from Adobe website
After installation, authorize your copy of ADE. Then double click your .acsm file, wait until it has succesfully downloaded your e-book encrypted pdf file to the “My Digital Editions” in My Documents. Please verify its existence in that folder.

My e-book opened in Adobe Digital Editions

Step 3: Install Python

Download Python 2.7.2
For your convenience, the file in the link above is a Windows .msi installer. Run the wizard and just follow the instructions.

Step 4: Install Pycrypto

Download Pycrypto 2.3
This is the corresponding version of Pycrypto for Python 2.7. Run the .msi installer and just follow the instructions.

Step 5: Download ineptkey.pyw and ineptepdf.pyw

ineptkey.pyw and ineptepdf.pyw are suppressed Python scripts.
Download ineptkey.pyw 5.0
Download ineptpdf.pyw 7.4
Remove the .txt extension. Put them into one directory.

Step 6: Run ineptkey.pyw

Run ineptkey.pyw, it will find the key and write it to hard disk as “adeptkey.der” in the same directory where ineptkey.pyw is.

The key "adeptkey.der" is succesfully retrieved to my folder.

Step 7: Run ineptepdf.pyw

A dialog windows with three parameters will pop up:

• Key file: adeptkey.der (It’s filled automatically if the adeptkey.der file and ineptepub.pyw reside in the same directory. If not, click on the “…” button and select a file.)
• Input file: Click on the “…” button to select your e-book encrypted pdf file. You’ll find it in “My Documents\My Digital Editions”.
• Output file: Click on the “…” and enter a filename.

Clicking ineptepdf.pyw pops a dialog window to decrypt your pdf

Open your newly created DRM-free pdf file with your favorite pdf reader (on whatever device you like)!

The decrypted pdf e-book opened in Foxit Reader!

My tutorial is based on Stream-Recorder‘s guide, mine focuses on .pdf files whereas theirs is meant for .epub files; other than that, I also provided screenshots for a clear guidance. Hope it did help you!

How to Strip DRM from Kindle Books to Read on iPad?

As we know, the Kindle books bought from Amazon usually come with DRM protection. This made the books are not readable on most regular devices, the most remarkable one among the numerous ebook supported devices would be the iPad. As one of the most used devices for daily entertainment, iPad brings us a lot of fun. Even reading is just one of the many amusements, it is an essential entertainment for most people.
For the ones who have both the Kindle and iPad in hand, transfer Kindle books to iPad for better reading experience would be one of the things you should miss. But, how to put those DRM protected Kindle books onto iPad for leisure time reading? For most people, this would be a question worth thinking about. Once you are vexed about how to remove and convert Kindle DRM books for the reading on iPad, then you are at the right page. This article is here to tell you how to get such a task in a free way. Just keep on reading to check the details by yourself now.

Free Solution of How to Convert Kindle DRM Books for iPad

First of all, to enjoy a free book conversion from Kindle books to iPad's most compatible ePub books, we should get the Calibre installed on the computer.

Next, the Calibre only support the regular book conversion without restrictions/protections in normal conditions. So, to make it available to work on the DRM protected Kindle books, we have to draw support from some plugins. Click here to get the plugins which can help to remove DRM from types of ebooks during the conversion in Calibre.
Note: Once unzip the package of the plugins, we can see the specific "read me" text files. Each text file tells how to install the corresponding plugins into Calibre for removing the exact types of DRM protections on different book sources.
Then, plug-in Kindle to the computer which have been installed the Calibre on. Directly locate the purchased Kindle books and drag them to the Calibre which also enhanced with the plugins to strip the DRM protections from the books.
Finally, once the Kindle books are DRM-free, you can then use the Calibre to transcode them into iPad's most compatible ePub books.
OK, once the book conversion is complete, you can then plugin your iPad to get the output ePub books onto your iPad for better reading at leisure time.

How to Load eBooks on the Sony PRS-T2

The Sony PRS-T2 e-Reader just came out a few days ago and we just posted a solid hands on review. In this video we document the steps you need to take to load on free books from the internet or have purchased from other ebook stores.
This latest generation of Sony e-Readers does not work with Adobe Digital Editions, instead you have to use the accompanied Sony Reader for PC software in order to load in EPUB books you have purchased from Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or any other store that sells them in DRM Protected format. Once you download it to your PC, you need to have an Adobe Digital Editions account. When you install the Sony Reader for PC software off of the main drive of your Sony PRS-T2, you can easily copy over protected content. Once you click on File and then Import, you can add the book into your main library. You can use it here to read on your PC or click on the Sync Menu and sync it to your PC. Anything you buy from the Sony eBook Store will be automatically delivered right to your e-reader, including newspaper subscriptions.
The second program we teach you how to use is Calibre. This is a free online program available on the internet and gives you flexible control over your ebook management. You can change cover art, authors name, and book series. One useful feature is being able to fetch ISBN and Book Description information.
Finally, we show you the internal directory structure of the Sony e-Reader via Windows Explorer. If you want to simply drag and drop books into your reader, we show you the most effective way to do it.