How to Convert and Read PDF and ePub on Amazon Kindle 2 with Savory

[Spykar]

Kindle 2 is the new version of popular e-reading device to read electronic books (e-books) from Amazon. Amazon Kindle 2 supports DRM-restricted Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC, PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP (through conversion) file formats. However, support for PDF is through troublesome email-conversion, which ePub support is lacking.

A Kindle 2 user, Jesse Vincent, has developed a software program for Kindle 2, Savory. Savory, which run natively on Kindle, can convert .pdf and .epub files into .mobi format supported by the Kindle 2 ebook reader. Thus, Savory can executes the format conversion on Amazon Kindle device itself. Thus, Kindle 2 owners do not need to manually convert PDFs and ePubs using web-based or desktop tool beforehand, but can straight away download e-books into Kindle 2 though WhisperNet or 3G.

Some limitations of Savory is that Savory only supports Amazon Kindle 2. Amazon Kindle 1 (original or first generation Kindle) is not supported. Beside, the PDF or ePub ebooks have to be DRM-free, and not locked. Savory cannot convert and transcode license or DRM restricted PDF or ePub files to unprotected MobiPocket format.

After installing Savory, Kindle’s browser is configured to allow download of PDF (including picture-perfect capability) and ePub documents. Savory runs a small program that watches the ‘Documents’ directory for any new files with names ending in ‘.epub’ and ‘.pdf’. When found, Savory will run open-source file conversion program called Calibre to convert the documents to MobiPocket format.

Kindle 2 users can install Savory by download and extract savory-image.zip, and then mount Kindle2 to PC with USB and drag savory-image.ext3 into the “system” folder on Kindle2. Beside installing Savory, user should also apply a Kindle Update, update_Savory-0.06.bin, by copying the file to root directory of the Kindle, and then unmount the kindle and go to “Menu” -> “Settings” -> “Menu” and click “Update Your Kindle”.

More information and downloads of Savory can be found at fsck.com.

Source: mydigitallife

[fumble]

When you purchase Adobe ePub or PDF, they will be chock full of yummy DRM. You cannot convert either to anything you can use on a Gen3. As of right now, the only units that can read those would be the Sony PRS-505 and Sony PRS-700. So even if you didn't purchase ePub by mistake, the DRM laden PDF would still have done you no good.