Topic: Kindle

[sam]

Sounds like Steam (that's for games). No need for piracy when its that easy. 

[Clive]

I'm hoping Rik might be able to educate me on EDGE and GPRS.   

[Rik]

How much do you want to know, Clive?

[Baz]

my wife just bought one of the new ones,without the keyboard and she loves it.As Clive says its easy to download books as your kindle is auto added to your amazon account when you buy it so any items bought are just stuck on your account.

Myself I like a book but will try this and may get used to it.I found things like flicking through is awkward,say going to a certain page quickly, takes a bit longer.There is a % bar along the bottom no page numbers so having to remember that would cause bother for me, not an ideal bookmark.She now has about a dozen books on,some bought and some free, so skipping from one book to another means you lose where you are at,well I do 

It has a nice appearance the font size is changable if needed,simple to navigate.I dont know if its supposed to do this but I was sat in the garden with it and noticed that the screen did brighten itself up then back to normal when I went back indoors.

nice feature.

[Baz]

ooo as we speak  just arrived in post a case for it.leather which doubles as a stand and comes with phone charger.She ordered them together but the case was an advance order as wasn't available until last week, £9.99....bargain 

All the others were from £25

[GillE]

Do kindles have the facility to skim through a book?  For example, I might be interested in some woodwork patterns in a kindle book but I wouldn't want to have to have to go through all the pages to get to the one I wanted.  Also, could I print off such plans?

[Clive]

How much do you want to know, Clive?

Everything Rik.   

The Kindle will always return to the page you finished on Baz, and you can also bookmark any page you want.  You can also skip to the beginning of the next chapter ad infinitum.  Skimming through a book seems a bit difficult but the page turning facility is quite fast.  I think you can transfer material to your computer via USB and you could then print it out.  It will store any Word or .pdf document too and has built-in dictionaries for reference.  I will play around with it again this evening.   

[Simon]

I'm hoping Rik might be able to educate me on EDGE and GPRS.   

EDGE is basically 2G or GSM (you could say that a similar comparison would be dial up (2G) to Broadband), and GPRS is what detects your location. 

[Clive]

Thanks Simon.  Looking at the coverage map, I can see that EDGE seems to be quite widely available along the coastline of South America.

Gill, Kindle has a Menu button which allows you to search the entire book or go to a specific page.  Because Kindle books are formatted differently to their paper counterparts, and you can read it in various text sizes, there are no page numbers as such.  However, the book is split up into several thousand "locations" which you can go straight to or bookmark.  Much easier than I thought! 

[Simon]

Thanks Simon.  Looking at the coverage map, I can see that EDGE seems to be quite widely available along the coastline of South America.

Presumably, though, you still have to be connected to a network to receive it?

[Rik]

You do, but Amazon don't seem to be very clear on who pays.

[Simon]

I bet they don't!

[Clive]

The network is called "Whispernet" which is free with Kindle.  If Whispernet is unavailable then you have the option of using a private operator for which you have to pay.  Presumably the money gets taken from your Amazon account.  Downloading a book or newspaper takes under 60 seconds using 3G.  One good thing is that it's not downloading data all the time in the same way as an iPhone. Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating!   

[Rik]

I've heard Kindles are best shallow-fried, Clive. 

[Clive]

That would be no problem.  They are just a few millimetres thick.