God, I love my Kindle. A friend got me one for Xmas and it’s like having a research lab in your pocket. I adore the idea of having lots of books with me at all times. In two months, I’ve ‘bought’ tons of free books and sampled lots of first chapter samples and classics. If they come out with a color one, I’d get that in a heartbeat----and give my old one to a friend. If you turn the Wi Fi and 3G off it lasts for weeks.
I have a Kindle, but I wasn’t watching my husband registering, setting it up, etc.
So I have some VERY basic ‘duh’ questions. (because a friend of mine bought a Kindle at a store and brought it home and seems stumped as how to proceed. She’s asking me - ME - for advice.:rolleyes:
Can you walk me through the setup process, speaking very slowly as to a slow child?
Like: can you tell me exactly what her next step is? Plug it into her laptop and go to Amazon kindle page and…? Does she need to set up an Amazon account first?
We’re looking into getting my 10 year old daughter one for her birthday. What’s the difference between ad-supported and no ads? Ads, obviously, but are the ads intrusive?
You must have an Amazon account with a credit card on file in order to download (pay for) books. Can’t help with her version of Kindle, as mine is a 3G version.
The ads are on the screen saver page. The kindle will revert to the screen saver after something like 5 minutes of no activity. You essentially never see them.
You need to set up an Amazon account first, and then you go to the Kindle store, and on the left there will be a “Manage my Kindle” link, with instructions on registering your Kindle, setting up a payment method, etc. There’s other support info there, too.
Once your Kindle is registered, you can buy/download books either from the Kindle itself, which has a Kindle store browser built in, or on the Amazon website. When you buy an e-book, you can choose to have it delivered automatically to your Kindle and/or any other devices that have the Kindle reader app installed (computer, smartphone, etc.) using a pull-down menu. Amazon stores all your Kindle content (books, magazines, etc.) and you can access it on the Manage my Kindle page any time.
Another nice feature is the ability to download for free the first chapter or so of most Kindle books you’re considering buying.
There is also a user’s manual right on the Kindle.
For that matter, Kindle editions I bought for my tablet were available on my smart phone when I downloaded the Kindle app. So I can read them in a larger format when I wish or on my phone when I find myself waiting around for something. The files aren’t large so pulling a book up takes little time.
I want to say a word about durability. I’ve had my Kindle for about 8 months. I use it every day, and almost every day my cat steps on it (usually directly on the screen, while I’m reading.) The screen is completely free of scratches in spite of this abuse. My cat has also been known to sleep on the Kindle.
If you decide to buy a case for your Kindle, I recommend Etsy.
I would get the one with ads. They’re not intrusive and even if they do bother you, you can always go to Amazon and pay the cost difference to get rid of them later.
And because sometimes the ads are offers that are ONLY available through the Kindle offers, some people who paid full price voluntarily sign up for them. Sure the majority of ads are for random shit sold through Amazon, but there are periodic book related offers (25 award winners, $1 each, was the most recent one I used) and sometimes Amazon coupons ($5 off any $20 purchase, that sort of thing).
It’s not a Kindle, but I bought a Nook Simple Touch (God, what a stupid name) late summer/early autumn last year; I think it uses the same display as the touchscreen e-Ink Kindle. It’s … cute, but it turns out I never use the thing. It’s utterly worthless for PDFs, so anything not in an e-reader format is out; the text isn’t as sharp or as clean as I thought it would be, something like 160 dpi; and the screen’s really dark with low contrast. It’s meant to resemble printed text more closely than, say, my iPhone, but in lighting conditions where I’d be perfectly comfortable reading a physical book the Nook forces me to break out a book light. (In fact, I pretty much have to use a book light any time I read on the Nook.)
On top of that the typography tends to be rather poor. Depending on how the book is formatted, you may get justification without hyphenation, which sticklers like me may find unpleasant. I seem to recall that the Kindle forces justification without hyphenation; if true that’d be a deal breaker for me. YMMV. The spacing and margins can also be pretty weird.
A huge quantity of books in the public domain are available in e-reader formats, but the quality of the ePub conversions vary widely. Project Gutenberg books are badly formatted in my experience, as are the free versions of public domain books in the B&N store.
That said: it’s light and keeps a charge forever; some people adore it. But I quickly found myself going back to doing all my reading on my phone and my iPad, so I don’t think I’d recommend it over an LCD device with a good, crisp screen.
If my house caught on fire the first thing I would grab is my kindle…and then run screaming like George Costanza out the foor…
I’m with the Octopus. Twice the fire alarm has gone off in my building and my Kindle was one of the three things I grabbed (the other two were my purse and guinea pig).
The Kindle Touch has a hard time natively displaying PDFs, but you can email a pdf to the Amazon-provided designated dropbox email with the word “convert” in the title and it will convert it to kindle format including the photos. I have done this with knitting patterns where the images have to go in the right place compared to the text or its useless – and it converted perfectly.
Now see, if you’d keep your Kindle and your guinea pig in your purse, you’d only have to grab one thing.
Knocking clowns and old ladies out of the way?
Used to be, when you went to conferences, they would give you gifts that included a notebook in a pleather zip case. Turns out, those cases are the perfect size for a kindle. I had two of them stuck in a closet, took out the notebooks, stuck a piece of velcro on the back of the Kindles and voila! A case that keeps out dust, has hard edges in case of a drop, and a tough, durable, water-resistant cover. It’s also more like holding a book when reading.
Not the same product but I love my Kindle Fire.
I bought a case for my Kindle that quickly folds into an “easel” so that I can prop the book on the table in front of me. I like to read a book while I’m eating in a restaurant, and the Kindle + the cover has completely solved the years of aggravation I went through trying to keep a thick paperback open while I ate.
Check out your local public library! If you can find a website for your library, you MAY be able to “borrow” books on your Kindle!
Kindle has more newspapers and magazines available than other readers, in my experience. I had a Sony reader, and wound up buying the $79 Kindle with ads, so I could get a newspaper and magazines. I LOVE the Reader’s Digest on my Kindle!
Keep in mind, the reason why the Kindle and other readers use so little power is that they are NOT backlit. If you plan on reading at night (for instance, if you are the passenger on a long road trip), you’re going to need a light source. The “expensive” Kindle covers usually include a light. Or you can get a clip on light for ten bucks or so.
I love my Kindle!
~VOW