Use the cable to transfer the file.
Once she verifies that it has a cable, and can accept transfers from a USB hookup to a Windows-based machine, I will consider that an option!
Transferring Files Via USB to the Kindle Fire. That page also mentions some other useful info. The cable is sold separately, though; Amazon expects most of its users to get all their content from Amazon. You’ll have to dig up or buy a micro-USB cable.
I can’t find solid info on PDFs, though. Another support page says you can view them natively, but the page I linked to doesn’t say it’s one of the supported file types. You have the option of converting PDFs to Kindle format, but the pages I read don’t mention any cost for that. But given that it says it will read PDFs and conversion is optional, you can likely load your PDFs on it some way.
And that’s consistent with what I’ve found. I can’t find a straight answer that says “Yes, you can put PDFs on the Fire via USB.”
It supports USB Mass Storage mode – means it shows up as a drive if you plug it in via USB to your computer. You can then copy whatever kind of file you like to it. In addition, Amazon only charges per megabyte if you use 3G to receive your files. If you email them to your @free.kindle.com address, they’ll only be downloaded via WiFi. And since the Kindle Fire doesn’t have 3G but only WiFi, I’m sure that’ll work just fine.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire page states clearly at the bottom that it supports at least Word and PDF files, so if you can get them onto the device, you can read them.
Netflix / Fire: in fact I just noticed a new Netflix app on the Amazon Android Appstore, tried to install it, and was told it was only for the Fire.
There must be a way to sideload stuff onto the Kindle, because otherwise it loses its usefulness as an ereader. Whether you can directly connect it via USB, or by uploading from the PC to the cloud, I can’t say. I have a Nook Color which is similar, and I can directly copy files; it appears as USB storage on my PC. I generally use Calibre for ebook management but I could just copy them using Windows Explorer if I wanted.
Don’t know about the Fire, but you can move .pdfs and .doc files from a computer to a Kindle via USB very easily. That’s how we load the 5 Kindles my Speech team use.
OK, I got it.
It does not come with a cable. However, using the the mini USB from my old Kindle worked fine (and I think it’s a standard mini USB so you should be able to pick one up cheap). It was identical to every other Kindle I’ve owned - plug it in to the USB, it shows up on your desktop as a drive, there’s a few folders there. I copied a PDF to the “Documents” folder and sure enough, it showed up in “Documents” on the Kindle.
I used a full color fancy PDF to see how it worked; there is a slight delay as you turn from on page to another, but not horribly bad.
I’ve only been playing with it for a few minutes, but so far, so good. I like it. Very easy to use. I really like seeing the covers to my books - I always missed that on my old Kindle. Moving from page to page is much faster, as is looking at footnotes or looking up words (on my 2nd generation Kindle, both of these operations were so slow that I rarely used them.)
I’ll have to wait until I have time to sit down and read some before reporting on how it does with just reading books. It’s definitely heavier than my other Kindle, and one thing I really liked about the old one is that I could lay in bed, hold it with one hand, and my thumb rested on the “next page” button so I could read completely one-handed. I don’t think I’ll be able to do that with the Fire, but you can’t do it with books, either, and that never stopped me from reading them.
Any other questions? I’ll try to answer.
I got mine, too. (Early Christmas present, whee.) Putting a PDF on it via USB and then reading it worked flawlessly. It won’t read local HTML, which is a bit annoying, but eh.
It definitely is a heck of a lot heavier than I expected. I plan to get a cover for it that has a hand strap to make holding it easier. Video plays well on it, and I had the Netflix app up and running with zero issues (aside from not being able to access my Instant Queue, what the bloody hell).
I can see this being a huge money pit, but between Netflix, my existing ebook collection, and free games from the store, there’s a lot of accessible content right out of the box.
After one night with it:
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It’s comfortable to read in bed with. You need two hands (one to hold, one to turn pages with) but it’s also a little smaller length x width wise than my 2nd gen Kindle. Verdict: about the same comfort level as the old Kindle.
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Screen: backlit, so not quite as easy on the eyes as the old Kindle. But you can easily turn down the brightness and it didn’t seem too bad to me, though I only read for 30 min or so. Paging is smooth. The screen is BIGGER than my old Kindle, though, holding about 25% more text per page at the text size I like to read at. That’s a HUGE plus to me. One of my main bitches about the old Kindle is I felt like the combo of small screen + the semi-annoying pause when you went to the next page made reading sometimes feel herky-jerky. Verdict: if the backlight doesn’t hurt my eyes during long reading sessions, the Fire wins because of screen size + smooth paging.
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Reading notations and looking up words: As I said above, the old Kindle was painfully slow at this. The Fire wins, hands-down. I can actually read the footnotes now.
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Battery life: this is my one big worry. According to Amazon, this baby will run 8 hours of continuous reading with the wi-fi turned off. That’s not a lot, especially if you’re on vacation, stuck in airports, etc. Even at home, it means plugging it in every day or two. I can live with doing that at home; out of town might be a deal breaker. Then again, I still have my old Kindle and will probably pack that as well whenever I leave town, because I can’t imagine anything more frustrating that being stuck in an airport with nothing to read.
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Other stuff: Haven’t done a lot of web browsing, but the little I did didn’t seem especially faster than my iPad. Given that they made such a big deal about the browser being fast, I’m underwhelmed. Netflix/Amazon Instant streaming works fine, though the sound seems a bit low. I’m guessing they’re assuming you’ll use headphones.
It’s definitely not a full-fledged tablet. It’s optimized for reading & media viewing, which is OK since that’s what tablets do really, really well. The home page has a menu across the top reading “Newsstand Books Music Videos Docs Apps Web” and all functionality fits under one of those sections. Email, for example, is an App.
I bought a copy of Smithsonian last night to see how magazines work, and it’s just a scan of the entire magazine, ads & all. There’s a “Text View” mode where it’s a bit better formatted, but it looks generated, not done by people, and isn’t great. I was hoping for magazines actually formatted for use on the tablet, and this ain’t it.
Won’t read local HTML? Boo.
Still, thanks to you and Athena for the PDF confirmation.
Battery life: Sounds like it’s the same as the Nook Color (8ish hours with wi-fi turned off). The poster who mentioned having a regular Kindle for travelling, good idea - that won’t die on you mid-flight. You might be able to find a place to plug it in in an airport (for example BWI actually had USB charging stations when we travelled last year) but can’t count on it.
FYI, a source for free SF books: Baen Books. Do a search on “Baen CD Library” and you’ll find a number of collections for free online - like the entire Vorkosigan collection by Bujold (except Memory… I guess they, um, forgot that one).
Amazon has some free books, and Barnes and Noble has a new book free every Friday. You can strip the DRM from that to make it readable on other devices, though it’s a gray area legally-speaking (since I don’t distribute books I’ve purchased, I have zero moral qualms about hacking a Kindle book to be readable on the Nook or vice versa).
Another source for cheap books - Amazon has a “Kindle Daily Deal.” I can’t figure out how to find a listing for it on Amazon’s web page (anyone?) but I get them via Facebook - just friend “Amazon Kindle.” I’ve gotten several really interesting books for $.99-$2.99.
I’ll have to check out that Barnes and Noble free book thing. Thanks!
look for “Barnes And Noble Free Fridays”.
For what it’s worth, while I was easily able to convert Kindle books to non-protected epub files, I didn’t have as much luck with Barnes and Noble files.
As I do own a Nook (and can read via the Nook app on my phone / iPod) it hasn’t been a high priority. But I would like to fix this, as the books disappear from my Nook if something happens with the credit card. Like when my old card expired last year, suddenly they were gone or unreadable until I went to B&N’s website and updated the credit card info.
I wonder if the Fire will soon have a Nook app :D. A friend of mine jailbroke her Nook Color to turn it into an Android tablet, basically so she could load the Android Kindle app and read her Amazon books on it.
That was a fantastic review, thanks Athena! I’m looking forward to being well-educated when I get my Fire 
The really funny thing I noticed when faffing about with it last night: my smartphone can actually do more than the Kindle Fire. I’ve got an ebook reader, a PDF reader, I can get a Kindle app, I have a Netflix viewer, I can buy music through Amazon, I can play games on it – everything that the Fire can do, basically, and the smartphone has access to the entire Android market, not just Amazon-approved stuff, and of course there’s 3G, GPS, and of course the phone.
It’s just that what the Fire does do, it does much better by virtue of its larger screen and stronger hardware. And of course there are far more hooks into the Amazon store than would be on a smartphone.