Amazon's Kindle

[Roland Deschain]

^ That's ridiculous. £300 just for one article? How on earth is the average student meant to be able to afford that, or most people, come to think of it? It's a licence to print money, effectively, and something that desperately needs to be weeded out from the halls of academia for good.

[Griffin NoName]

It wasn't actually £300+ for the article, it was £300+ for 1 day's subscription to the journal......... in order to read one article............



I wouldn't have paid that even when I was working and had a good income.

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So, I finally opened my Kindle package and found a Kindle inside.

I fitted one of those screen shields, couldn't get the air out at the corners, irritating. (I think I'm not strong enough  ).

Have had a look around. Charged it up -very quick.

Frustrating that you can't set the wi-fi to the network and retain it as I run mine not broadcasting its name (only so I am not visible to all the other people livinng around me, unless they deliberately look for me.......... ie. I know it makes no difference security wise). Anyway, I have 3G on the Kindle so there's not a problem, just wi-fi is faster for downloads, if I do them on the Kindle rather than the PC.

As far as I can see, one only needs the Kindle email address for sending documents to the Kindle from somewhere other than one's own PC? (or whatever one has the Kindle pplugged into). ?

I haven't got the "touch" aspect working very well. I am having trouble getting it to do what I want, where I want, when I want. Ridiculous. My two yr old grandaughter can work their iPad. Feel ancient and incompetent. Using the stylus is good though.

Have not yet done anything other than look around, and set my personal settings.

[Bluenose]

I wouldn't worry about the download speed issue.  E-books are pretty small and I have found downloading them via the WiFi hotspot on my cell phone (ie through 3g) subjectively to be just as fast as when I'm at home using my normal Internet connection.

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

The Kindle e-mail addy should match the one you use for Amazon, I seem to recall--- basically you "log in" using your Kindle to your Amazon account, just like you would on a pc.

There's another place to choose an e-mail addy too-- this one is what Amazon uses to communicate certain types of EBook conversions-- I only used that a tiny bit initially, as I soon discovered I could convert EBooks much easier using Calibre instead, and side-load them via the USB cable.   Faster, better, cheaper:  Amazon charges you a slight fee everytime you convert.

There's one more e-mail addy, but I forget what that one's actually for-- I ended up creating a brandy-new one specifically for my Kindle stuff-- that way all the Amazon Kindle ads/notices/etc come directly to that addy, keeping my usual business/shopping e-mail addy relatively clutter-free.

[Griffin NoName]

.............I have found downloading them via the WiFi hotspot on my cell phone (ie through 3g) subjectively to be just as fast as when I'm at home using my normal Internet connection.

says more about speed of yr home internet connection... seriously tho' - thanks for tip. Saves me bothering to time it.

BoB, totally confused about emails.

This from Amazon Kindle account settings:

Approved Personal Document E-mail List
To prevent spam, your Kindle will only receive files from the following e-mail addresses you have authorized. Learn more
E-mail address     - <currently my login to amazon email address>

Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings
You can e-mail personal documents to the following Kindle(s) using the e-mail addresses shown. Learn more
Name                                  E-mail Address
<mykindle_name>               <myname@Kindle.com>

Does this mean, I use <currently my login to amazon email address> to send docs to <myname@Kindle.com> which will arrive on my Kindle?
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Annoying, the Kindle support page, user guide etc, all say can connect to hidden wi-fi networks by typing in the name - well you can't - I can connect providing it is not hidden, but the moment I hide it, it won't connect............. what annoys me is that it says you can...... I know I don't need to connect so this is academic....I just don't like mis-information.

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

Forget the "authorized mail to kindle address".  There is really no need for you to remember or use that-- use Calibre to convert-to-Mobi (Kindle) and side-load them via the USB cable.   If you use the email?  It will cost you $0.10/book (unless they've upped the pricetag).   It's only to let Amazon "convert" a book format that is not Mobi/Kindle for you automatically. 

As for the hidden network?  I have no idea why it won't work-- I leave mine broadcasting the name, as any sniffer can easily get that info anyway.   I do use the highest level of encryption my modem supports, though.

If you're content to use the 3G (cellular), then forget about it; since you didn't get a Kindle Fire, you likely won't need or notice the high speed WiFi stuff.

Another thing:  you can greatly improve your Kindle's battery life, by disabling both the WiFi and the 3G radios-- it's in the menu/settings somewhere.  You only need to enable it to download new book purchases.   If you're side-loading via the USB cable (from your PC), you don't even need it then.

Leaving it off, does remove the automatic sync option, but who cares if you don't have 2 or more devices?   You don't, so auto-sync is not a feature you'll use.   

One final think you'll loose if you leave the radios off:  automatic backup of your notes, bookmarks & other commentary you may make on a book.  This is no big deal, really, as the Kindles are quite robust devices (not prone to crashes or drop-outs, unlike many of the newer Android tablets) so it's very unlikely you'll care about that, either.

That being said?  Once every couple of days, you could turn on your radio, and tell it to sync-- it'll backup to Amazon your bookmarks, notes, etc, and your current reading position too.  Then if the e-Fairies steal your Kindle, you can get back to where you were...

... meh.

One more thing:   Categories. 

This is the feature that Amazon put on the kindle readers that let you create groups of books using any criteria you like, and you may add/remove any or all your books to any or all of your different categories.  When I was still reading on the traditional Kindle all the time, I had hundreds of categories.

Basically one per author, wherein I would add all that author's books-- I also had several misc to cover single-book authors... I have more than 400 books on my original Kindle, and I had to find a way to keep order.

I discovered a trick to the category thing:  All of mine start with a > symbol, followed by a space, then the last name, comma, first name (or the letter A followed by MISC, etc).

This makes the Kindle sort these first, if I sort by title.  Then, within each category, if I open it, I only see what books it "contains", sorted however I like (usually by title also).

If your mind works in alphabetic order when dealing with lists, as mine does (too many years of sorting-by-alpha to stop now) then this will appeal to your since of order. 

Obviously, you can do whatever you like with categories, including ignoring them for now.

[Griffin NoName]

As for the hidden network?  I have no idea why it won't work-- I leave mine broadcasting the name, as any sniffer can easily get that info anyway.   I do use the highest level of encryption my modem supports, though.

Yes, so do I (WPA). I only have the wi-fi hidden so neigbours can't see me. Obviously if they sniff they'll find me, but how many neighbours know how? I just like to maintain a discrete presence 

Another thing:  you can greatly improve your Kindle's battery life, by disabling both the WiFi and the 3G radios--

Assume you mean - wireless off/on setting. Yes have found that. It's off for now.

I discovered a trick to the category thing:  All of mine start with a > symbol, followed by a space, then the last name, comma, first name (or the letter A followed by MISC, etc).

This makes the Kindle sort these first, if I sort by title.  Then, within each category, if I open it, I only see what books it "contains",

I get the > space being sorted first, but if all start with > space then I don't understand.

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

I get the > space being sorted first, but if all start with > space then I don't understand.

Play with categories, and then sort by book title, and it will become clear:  if all your category names start with "> " then these will always sort first, ahead of all the individual books themselves, which won't show up until after all your category entries.

It's an old filing trick in programming: use a special character to "float" certain types of entries to the first or last position in an automated sort routine.

[Sibling DavidH]

I prefix some directory names with underscore _ to bring them to the top of the list in Widow Exploder.  It works on my phone, too.

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

There you go-- my usual Windoze fix is an exclamation mark "!" but underscore is equally effective.

I settled on the > mark for the Kindle, as it did not sort out the ! mark as expected.  The alphabet as used by Kindles is not ASCII coded, or else the sort program is not using ASCII codes.

[Griffin NoName]

I've always used a space (#20), any character before "A" (#41) works.

Why does the Kindle have to use a different number system? And eBook coding? I do wish there was standardisation across the whole electronic machine industry - I've always beefed on about it.

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

I dunno why Kindle's sort engine does what it does-- but I have tried a variety of special characters to force-sort items to the top (or bottom) of the sort stack.

They are doing something weird in there, for sure-- and it ain't ASCII-- not even the "sort alphabetically, but ignore capitalization" method.

Yes, I've written hundreds of sort engines over the years, and have added all sorts of different tweaks to get it to sort exactly how I wanted it to-- my usual method was to force all letters into all caps (in a semp buffer) and sort that, then push the new index back onto the original text strings.  I've also used the strip out all spaces, punctuation and numbers method as well. 

But clearly the Kindle is doing something odd, here, and as it's a locked-down OS, I could not find anyone who knew (or could say) what it was.

[Griffin NoName]

Yeh, I have a history in "sorts". I maintained the Cobol "Sort" compiler (in machine code - hex) for about five years (amongst other things). Think the upper case trick is pretty well universal.

So far, I do like the Kindle, but it seems a bit clunky. Have to get used to the menus being so limited :

Of course, all I've tried to read on it is the user guide (and i got bored).

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

What?  You did not like the Mexican Novel about a kid named Manual? 

Over all, I think the limited menus is a positive thing-- no needlessly complicated stuff to bother with.

OTOH?  I do wish Amazon had opened up the folder structure such that we could replace the stock screen saver junk with our own pics.   Oh well, you cannot have everything.

[Griffin NoName]

I like the screen saver on my Kindle.

I did not post about my amusing experience when I was trying to squeeze bubbles out of the screen shield. It was the first thing I did (put on the screen shield) after taking the Kindle out of the box. Anyway, I was scraping away with the little cardboard thingy they give you, and must have accidently switched the on/off switch on. Suddenly the Kindle sprang to life, but I did not immediately realise, so went on scraping. Of course, every time I hit a part of the screen that had a function, the kindle carried out that function. It was like a run away train. It got in the most awful tangle. When I realised what was happening I had to guess how to use it as instead of being at the beginning of the user guide, it was on some random page deeper into the system. So by trial and error, pushing at random bits of screen, I eventually worked out enough about it to operate it.