I just got a Kindle $79 (with ads) gifted to me for my birthday. I’ve wanted one for ages. There are a TON of free books out there, but I did not want to sit at my computer to read them. Since it doesn’t work, I can turn off the WiFi and save battery power, and avoid the ads while I’m at it. I’ve heard that some of the deals in the ads are quite good, but since I can’t get the wireless working, I guess I’ll be OK with not seeing them.
I tried several times to get it working, but it’s just stubborn as all hell, and I’m not good with networking at all, so, fail. What will I be missing, if anything, by not getting my WiFi set up on the Kindle? I’m not really interested in buying a lot of books, but I concede that I might want to buy some in the future. Can I buy the books, DL them to my computer, and transfer them via USB?
Have you entered your Network security key? I bought a 3G kindle for mom. But I’ve set up other wi-fi devices and they always have some place to enter the wi-fi key.
You can manually connect kindle to your computer with usb. Buy the book and copy over to the kindle drive. Thats how I have to get library books. Amazon won’t let us use 3G for books we don’t buy.
Thanks for your answers and advice. I bought a book from Amazon as a test, The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft, for $0.99. I probably could have got much or all of it in the public domain, but it’s supposedly a good edition, without the typos, errors, and missing chunks of text found in other editions. Also, it’s something I really wanted, so, all-in-all, a good test subject, great reading material, and an outstanding price. I DL’ed it to my computer, and transferred it to the Kindle flawlessly.
AFAICT, there is no real upside to getting the WiFi set up, if I have no interest in the ‘cloud’, or buying books away from home (I don’t travel). Also, it saves battery power, so that’s a plus.
Maybe in the future, I’ll jailbreak it so I can make/add my own screensavers, new fonts, etc.
I downloaded the WiFi key finder program for future use, but not from Cnet. They had that controversy with the wrapper programs not long ago, and I doubt that’s cleared up yet.
There’s a (free public) program called iExplorer that lets you copy .mobi files (Kindle format books) to your iPad Kindle app. The version I have pops up with an error - but continue anyway and you can copy the files.
So much more convenient than PDF - you can adjust text size, etc. like purchased books.
Odds are you are not putting the correct key into your Kindle. You could try temporarily (!! Very temporarily!!) removing the password from your Wifi to verify if in fact the Kindle will connect at all.
I don’t have wireless at home so if I get stuff from Amazon I do the download and transfer thing. I have last year’s model and it works fine.
I would take it somewhere with a public wifi signal and see if it picks that up. I seem to remember taking mine to work, turning on the wifi and there it was a few seconds later. Insta-books. Good times.
I just got my mom’s Kindle Fire connected. FWIW she was making a common non-techie mistake in that she was trying to use the router’s config screen sign-on password (the one you use with a username). Instead you must use the WEP key (i.e. password) which is usually an 8-10 digit hex number (FF B2 E0 etc.) You can sign on to the previously mentioned config screen to get the WEP key, although in the last few years because WiFi has gone mainstream cable modems usually have it written on a sticker on the back of them.
Also, rather confusingly, wireless first used to be ON by default, then because of security complaints it was turned OFF by default, but now, again, because of its ubiquity it’s generally turned ON from the factory. The point is you have to check to see if it’s turned on on the modem/router device first.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss wireless. It’s a pretty mature technology now, and it is *very *convenient for devices like Kindles & smartphones.
Am I missing something with this program? The WEP key is the core of wireless security and I know it’s hardly ironclad, but is this little app just cracking it? Or is it just for finding it on *another *device that you previously entered it on?
The key is stored on your wireless router. Some models, you can look it up easily by entering the routers address and looking at the admin page. Others make you reset it and hopefully write it down safe somewhere.
Apparently this software can get the key. CNet’s software is usually very reliable. I decided not to install it because my Norton kept flagging it as a trojan. The download page warns that this will happen. Its a false reading. But I decided it wasn’t worth fooling with.
I see Face Intentionally Left Blank found the key lookup software elsewhere. That’s a good idea. I’ll be glad when CNet cleans up those false virus alerts. Scares a lot of people. Heck it scares me and I have relied on & trusted CNet most of my IT career.
All utilities from this site are legitimate and personally as a computer tech I use them all the time with no problems. Yes, most AV software will falsely flag it as virus but just ignore it.
As I understand it, it’s more than the annoyance of a false-positive, the wrapper will install unwanted software, like toolbars, if you’re not careful during the install.
So they’re going to remove the toolbars from open-source DL’s, but not necessarily from others? This is why I look for the home-page of whatever software I want, and DL from their links.
FWIW re Kindle Fire on my home network… had two of them running during the holidays. On one occasion, the connection on both quit working even while the laptops around the house were still connected. Rebooting the modem/router fixed the problem. Simple as that but kind of odd… to me anyway.
WRT to WiFi killing you battery, that’s really not a concern. The only reason you need to be worried about that is if you leave wifi on 24 hours a day. In that case it’ll take your battery from 4-8 weeks down to about 1 week. What I do (and what I suspect a lot of people do) is to just turn wifi on once a day, hit the sync button, and then turn wifi off. I only have wifi on for a minute or two a day. I gave my Kindle it’s first full charge on Christmas day and it’s not even at the halfway point yet.
The ads are extremely unintrusive and are only on the screen when you’re not using it so I take a look at the one that pops up when I’m done reading and the one that’s there when I start reading to see if they’re worth investigating and that’s it.
Also Amazon has quite a few books (probably several thousand, but ISTM not as many as google books) for free on it’s site so if you get wifi working you can ‘purchase’ the free books on the Amazon site and load them that way.
Obviously you’ve figured out that you can indeed do this. However, I believe Amazon will only let you borrow Kindle Owners’ Lending Library books from the Kindle itself. Of course, you also have to be an Amazon Prime member for this to matter. But if you are, the Kindle’s network connection will give you free access to a bunch of books.