The title of the post pretty much says it all. Amazon.com has (finally) made a PC-compatible version of their Kindle software available for free download (Mac version coming later.) For my fellow Kindle owners, we can now read our books both on our Kindles, as well as our computers. We can pick up reading a book on our computers at the same spot that we left off when we put down the Kindle, since the last page read is automatically saved on both devices. Kindle for PC will also bring over any notes, highlights, and bookmarks made on the Kindle, so those won't need to be duplicated.

For those of us that have Kindles, Kindle for PC just brings the benefits of the Kindle onto our computers. I want the focus of this post to be those who don't own one (yet). One of the things that I love about my Kindle is being able to sample a book for free, to see if I'm going to like it before I worry about purchasing it. If you get Kindle for PC, you can sample a book without having to commit to buying it, and you don't have to spend $260 on a Kindle to get the samples. Also, if you do buy a Kindle book, delivery is instantaneous, no more having to wait in line, no more drive home. A few clicks of your mouse, and you're ready to read.

Of course, another benefit is that you'll all get a lot more free books to beef up your library. As a Kindle owner, I see a lot of free books posted constantly. However, most of those are only available in the Kindle format, which previously could only be read on the Kindle device. Alternative versions were few and far between. Now that the software is available for download to your PC, I can share everything I find. It's a win-win situation. I get attention, however fleeting it may be, and you get free books.

Kindle for PC is still in the Beta stage, with many improvements set to roll out. In the pipeline for future improvements are the ability to create notes and highlights, search for word(s) in any book in your Kindle library, and to zoom and rotate images. Depending on the popularity of this post, I'll let everyone know about improvements as I hear about them.