Pure Technolust - Kindle Voyager

[Griffin NoName]

I already own a Kindle Touch which I've had for 2 years. Shortly after I bought it they brought out the paper white and I lusted after it but managed to resist. But I've given in and just bought the new Kindle Voyage which I have been trying out for a couple of days now. Was it worth buying given I already have the Touch. YES! I love it. (and I do use my kindle every day after all).

The paper white and the adjustable light are great. Much easier on the eyes, and my eyesight is deteriorating, whether through age or illness I don't know.

I'm not so enthusiastic about the new page backwards and forwards pressure poiints at the sides - so far I automatically just keep touching the screen for that, and actually that seems more responsive. But they are useful for times when pressing on the screen keeps selecting something instead of going to the next page as wanted. But  there again, my old Touch never made that mistake, so perhaps they have built in the mistake to justify the new pressure points.

I haven't really got the hang of the new Collections design despite reading several articles and the user guide. I have got everything linked into Collections and Cloud etc. (had to do this manually as no Import Collections option which I don't understand as all the articles said there was) but I don't quite get whatever they've done to the front list page of items/collections. It doesn't seem to display these in the way the Touch did, and I am totally confused.

I get The Guardian on the Kindle, and it is not dealing with that in the same way as the Touch, and so far I am confused about what it is actually doing. (refering to where/how it displays the new issue and how it archives the last weeks copies).

I think my main criticism is that the Touch's functionality was very easy and intuitive and the Voyage is very confusing. Hoping I will get the hang of it once I've been using it for longer, otherwise I think I am going to get quite annoyed by it. The old Touch functions haven't changed, so that's ok, it's the new features they've added that are a struggle.

But overall, I am pleased with it. The actual reading is so much easier on my eyes, and that, after all, is what I use it for.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

The collections are something Kindles have had for many years now.  It's basically grouping your books by categories you select-- since there is no automatic add to any of these manually-created categories?  (you add new books one at a time) ((assuming the category is brand-new.. see below))

They can be anything you desire:  

  cooking with tofu, ancient Egyptian mummy stories, not for children's books, political novels, facts about the Loch Ness, books to put me to sleep



I've been using the collections as a nice way to force Kindle to group all titles in the order of publication (within a collection) and by author's last name first, then first name.  

In short?  I have a collection for each author I own (plus a few general catch-alls), and within that, I group the books according to the best reading order (usually by publication date, but not always).  

I have named each collection LastName, FirstName MI

Thus, they sort correctly according to the Library Rules I learned.  (laffin)  Most are fiction, naturally.

The nice thing about that?  Everything is stored in the cloud-- if your device suddenly develops a mind of it's own, and starts traveling to Try To Take Over The World?  Your replacement device, once activated, can download the previously created collection(s) from the cloud, and should (if all goes according to plan) automatically place the correct books into the correct categories. (Assuming you have done that at least once, and have allowed that device to sync at least once.)

Amazon finally put this code into their Android Kindle app a couple of years ago or so.  I had built my first one, 3 or 4 years back, on my now aging Kindle DX.  

Of course, the Android app uses a color graphic interface, with the book covers as largish icons-- there's ways to defeat that too, if that isn't to your liking, but it works well enough for me.

I do like browsing my collection-- not unlike roving over an actual dead-tree bookshelf...

[Griffin NoName]

I don't want my books organised in that way. I just assign them to the "to be read" category or the "books archive" category when read.

The thing I am struggling with is the difference between the new and the old Kindle. I don't know how to make the new Kindle behave like the old one.

The old one, I could take a book that was read out of the "to be read" category so it no longer shows up there, when put  in the "archive" cat. Can't do that on the new Kindle, if you delete from a category the book disappears from the device completely, which I do not want it to do.

Another thing is driving me nuts. The old Kindle, displaying items just showed the top level categories from which I could drill down. The new Kindle displays absiolutely everything on the Kindle. The only way I can make it like the old one is to display categories.

That would be ok except my main use every day is to read the latest copy og  the Guardian. That downloads but only shows up in all items. On the old Kindle it showed as an extra item on the top level screen with the categories. In the new Kindle it is put in the Periodicals category.

But the even bigger problem is that the old Kindle used to downlaod the new newspaper, take yesterdays and put in preiodicals archive automatically, so it no longer showed at the top level., and delete the oldest of eight archived copies. In other words my Kindle did all the work of maintaining periodicals properly.

I really don't understand how to make the new Kindle behave sensibly at all.

I am finding it so cumbersome that I am thinking of returning it as useless and hoping I'll get my money back.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Give Amazon UK a call.  With some effort, you can locate their phone number-- I cannot do that here, as you must log in to see numbers in the .COM site, so I presume the .UK site is like that too.

In any case-- talk to them about your issues.  They might be able to help.

Regardless-- you always have 30 days to return.