Gadgeteer reader Sandee Cohen writes in with some potentially good news for Amazon Kindle Keyboard owners:

Julie,

You might want to write this up as a post.

I got a Kindle Keyboard model Christmas 2010. ByNovember 2011, some of the letters on the keyboard had started to fade. (I play a lot of word games that require typing on the keyboard.)   By the end of January 2012 the “I” “O” and “A” were completely blank. And it was very hard to read the “S”.

I wrote to Kindle-feedback@amazon.com and told them how disappointed I was with the situation.   Almost immediately I got an email back telling me to contact Amazon by phone. (They have a cool way of entering your phone number on their web site and then your phone rings and Amazon is on the line.)   After explaining the situation, the fellow told me that “your machine is out of warranty, but we make an exception for this issue.”   I take that to mean that this is a known problem with the Kindle Keyboard versions. And although Amazon doesn’t sell the keyboard models anymore, they do have ones available to exchange for damaged ones.

The new machine arrived and indeed the letters on the keyboard are raised from the plastic and look like they will last much longer.   I think this information should be made more public so those who are struggling with faded letters can get a new machine.

Perhaps you will use the Gadgeteer to publicize it.

Best,
Sandee Cohen

Note: Images can be clicked to view a larger size.

I asked Sandee to send me some close up images of her old Amazon Kindle Keyboard reader and the replacement she just received.

Old Amazon Kindle Keyboard	New Amazon Kindle Keyboard

In the image on the Left, you’ll notice the I, O and L keys are worn pretty badly. Sandee commented that they look much worse in real life than they do in these macro shots.

It’s good to know that Amazon will replace this older model eBook reader even when it’s out of warranty. That’s great service!

Thanks to Sandee for sending in this info. Hopefully it helps someone else.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Amazon, Kindle

Does your Kindle Keyboard have fading letters? Amazon might send you a free replacement originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 4, 2012 at 1:00 pm.

In my article Amazon Kindle 3G-The Perfect Travel Companion, I talked about how useful I found my 3G Kindle while travelling overseas.  One of the comments left on that article pointed to a blog that said that Vietnam was one of the only places that the author couldn’t get any 3G signal.  This confused the heck out of me, as I had full coverage (and also full web access) from North to South for the 3 weeks I was over there. What was going on?

US Kindle 3 3G Coverage

I went to Amazon.com to look at the 3G coverage map. Huh? No 3G coverage in Vietnam? Had I slurped back too much Pho, or had the sun addled my brain, or was it just like an episode of Dallas and it was all a dream?

Then I remembered there’s actually two versions of the 3G Kindle , a US one that is only available in the US and uses an ATT sim card and also an International model that uses a Vodafone sim card.  Now, Australia being NOT being part of the US meant I had an international model. So I went to Amazon.co.uk and check the Vodaphone 3G coverage map there.

Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage

So you can see while the US (ATT) Kindle 3 offers ZERO 3G coverage in Vietnam, the International version (Voda) gives almost full 3G coverage. The same applies for Cambodia.

US Kindle 3 3G Coverage

Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage

Tasmania US v Intl 3G Coverage

For interest sake I then had a look at Australian coverage.  I live in Tasmania, that little island just underneath Victoria, but couldn’t get my screenshot to include in the map above, so I added separately. (We hate being left off the map of Australia ).  You can see  that there’s dramatically different coverage between the International and the US Kindle 3 3G . Looking at the maps above, in reality I’d be much better off with a US Kindle 3 3G than the International model. Vodafone has notoriously bad coverage in Australia, and it’s a bit ironic that a US Kindle would give me better coverage than an “International” version.  But of course if I had a US model, I’d have NO coverage while in Vietnam.

A quick comparison of the maps shows some obvious areas where coverage is different, Morocco (I), Namibia(I), Cote D’Ivoire(I), Belarus(I), Malawi(I),Ecuador(U), Tanzania(U) and Bolivia(U) amongst others, and the degree of difference in coverage varies.

I’m guessing that this “anomoly”  has to do with the partners that the respective Telcos have in the different countries. The long and short, if you’re intending to use your Kindle while travelling, it’s worth checking out if the US or International will give you the best coverage in the countries that you’re going to visit. Be aware though that it’s not possible to get a US Kindle 3G directly from Amazon internationally and conversely an International Kindle 3G in the US, but there are ways of doing it.

Happy travelling

Filed in categories: Articles, eBook Readers and Gear, Travel Gear

Tagged: 3G, Kindle, Travel gear

Amazon Kindle 3 3G International Coverage – US vs International model originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 3, 2012 at 11:00 am.

Amazon introduced their first Kindle device back in 2007 when the dedicated eBook reader population was made up almost exclusively by Sony’s Reader line of products. The eReader population has grown to include more brands than I can count and in the last 5 years, we’ve seen the technology in this category evolve from e-Ink devices to readers with color LCDs. After several popular e-Ink Kindles, Amazon’s first color device is the Kindle Fire. Although it may look and act like a tablet, Amazon does not want you to compare the Fire to an iPad or dedicated Android tablet. They say the Fire is just a content consumption device for books, magazines, music and video.  Of course telling people not to compare their device to other tablets, will cause them to do the opposite. I’m going to take a look at this already very popular device and let you know what I think.

Note: Click the images in this review to see a larger view.

Hardware Specifications

Processor: 1Ghz Texas Instruments OMAP 4 dual-core processor
Operating System: Android
Display: 7″ multi-touch 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors
On-device Storage: 8GB internal (approximately 6GB available for user content)
Battery Life: Up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as web browsing and downloading content
Charge Time: Fully charges in approximately 4 hours via included U.S. power adapter. Also supports charging from your computer via USB
Connectivity: Wifi 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or enterprise networks with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks
USB Port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector)
Audio: 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers
Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8
Size (in inches): 7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″ (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm)
Weight: 14.6 ounces (413 grams)

Included in the Box

Kindle Fire
U.S. power adapter (supports 100-240V)
Quick Start Guide

Let me start out by showing you how the compares to the iPad 2 as far as device size. For me personally, a 10 inch display like the iPad’s is the sweet spot when it comes to web browsing and magazine reading. The smaller 7 inch display of the Fire is definitely great for portability, but it feels cramped when I’m using it for web browsing and viewing magazines. That said, I find the screen size of the Fire to be just fine for reading books, watching full screen video and playing games.

The Kindle Fire has a very spartan design. It’s available only in Black and you’ll find no flashy chrome trim, LED status lights or menu buttons on this device. Actually it has only one button… a tiny power button located on the bottom edge.

The front of the device has the display with a narrow bezel around all the edges.

The display is crisp and clear, with colors that are bright and vibrant. It’s not Samsung brilliant, but it’s still very nice. The image above does not do it justice. It’s very difficult to photography glossy color LCDs like the Fire.

The back of the Fire is made of a soft rubber like material that attracts smudges and grease.

Along the top edge are two speakers. Don’t expect to be able to hear audio in noisy environments. Even at max volume, it’s not very loud. In a small room, it works fine though.

On the bottom edge you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack, micro USB connector for charging and the power button. That’s it. No dedicated volume buttons, microphone and no camera. These omissions definitely restrict the Fire from being considered a full fledged tablet since you’ll be unable to use it for Skype calls and other video chat type applications. The omissions do not end with the microphone and camera though. The Fire also does not include a flash memory card slot for file expansion and it lacks Bluetooth connectivity as well. The lack of Bluetooth means you will not be able to connect a wireless Bluetooth keyboard or headphones. The lack of a flash card slot isn’t a deal breaker since Amazon gives you free file storage in the cloud for all their content and the built in 8GB of memory (6GB available for user content) enables you to store 80 apps, 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books directly on the device.

In hand the Fire feels really solid. It feels like a slab of Lucite with no flexing, creaking or cracking. It’s comfortable to hold in your hand because the edges are rounded and the back has a slight grip to it.

User Interface

The Kindle Fire is powered by the Android operating system, with a highly modified front end.

The home screen uses a familiar bookshelf motif that consists of multiple shelves. The top shelf is a carrousel / cover flow style stack of icons of the latest accessed apps, books, music, videos and webpages. You can flip through the icons by dragging your finger across the stack. I don’t really like flipping through the icons because frequently I’ll tap an icon and nothing will happen or it will flip to the next icon in sequence and launch that one instead. You can add your own icons to the bottom shelf, which is designated to hold your favorite apps, books and magazines. If you add more than 4 favorites, a new shelf will be created to add more. Then the whole home screen will scroll up and down.

At the top of the screen is a search box that will allow you to search the content on your device. As you type a book title or app name, you’ll see a list of matching items that filters as you continue to type the search criteria. The search feature will not drill down into books though. It will only allow you to find items based on titles, authors and artists.

Below the search box is a navigation bar that takes you to the 7 areas on the device: Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps and Web.

Like other Android devices, you can view your notifications by swiping down from the top left corner of the display. To access the volume slider and other hardware settings, you tap the little gear icon in the upper right corner.

You will also notice a Home icon and back arrow at the bottom of the display. This is a menu that isn’t static on the screen. You usually have to tap the screen to have it appear. I really prefer a dedicated home button (and volume buttons) of some sort on my devices.

Reading Books

Here we see the book area. You can view your library by cover art grid view…

Or display it as a list which shows the title and author. In list view it also shows a percentage of how much you’ve read for each book.

It would be great if there was a way to file books in named folders, but the only way to organize the book list is by author name, recently read or by title.

Notice the Device / Cloud button at the top of the display. You’ll find these buttons on the Books, Magazines and Apps pages. When you’re on the device tab, you’ll see the books, magazines and apps that have been installed directly on your device in the 8GB of built-in memory. The cloud on the other hand, is an online storage space for you to securely store and access all of your own personal content, from your own personal movies, mp3′s, documents, etc. You can access your “Cloud Drive” on Amazon from almost any device that can access the internet.

Your amazon account includes 5GB of free cloud storage. For $20 per year more, you get 20GB of storage space, plus unlimited space for your mp3 music files. If you need even more memory, there are additional paid plans.

Of course you can access Amazon’s store to browse and purchase books. You’ll need a WiFi connection though as the Fire does not include built in 3G connectivity like other Kindle devices.

I like the interface for the store a lot. It’s simple and easy to navigate. I always found the store on older (non-touch) Kindle’s to be a little tedious to use.

I love that you can download a free sample of a book that you’re interested in buying. The samples show up in your library with the rest of your books.

I found the book reading experience on the Kindle Fire to be enjoyable. I’m already very comfortable reading on devices with a color LCD as I do almost all my reading on an iPhone. I always switch the background to black and the letters to grey, but you can also have a white or sepia background.

When you’re reading there are no distractions on the screen. Just words.

To see the clock, you have to tap the center of the screen. Turning pages is accomplished by tapping the left or right side of the screen. You can select words or phrases for a definition. You’re also able to highlight and make annotations.

You can then view your notes and highlights for each book by clicking the menu button at the bottom of the display.

Reading Magazines

Reading magazines on a 7″ display isn’t a wonderful experience in my opinion because you can’t easily read the magazine pages as intended due to the screen size.

The Fire’s magazine reading interface does offer a solution to that problem by allowing you to toggle into a Text Mode. If you look at the image above on the Left, that’s the normal magazine page. In order to comfortably read the small text, I have to zoom in. But if I toggle to Text mode as seen above on the Right, the article text is reformatted in more of a book style. Pictures are still shown and you can even search text. However, you can’t annotate, highlight or bookmark pages in magazines.

FYI: turning the Fire into landscape view makes things worse. It shows 2 magazine pages side by side with even tinier text.

Listening to Music

The music player on the Fire isn’t overly fancy. It has the necessary features to get the job done. Just remember, that the max audio output from the built-in speakers is pretty low and the Fire does not have dedicated volume buttons. The music player has a volume slider right on the screen though.

You can use the music player to stream music stored in your cloud drive. But of course, you’ll need to have a wifi connection to do so.

Watching Video

The Fire comes with a free month of Amazon Prime service. Amazon Prime gives you free 2 day shipping on tons of products and unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows at no additional cost along with newer movies and TV shows that can be rented or purchased. For example, right now you can rent The Help for $1.99 for 48hrs. Or buy episodes of The Vampire Diaries for $1.99.

I did cartwheels (ok, not really…) when I saw that the original Star Trek episodes were available for free. I watched the very first episode, which I had somehow managed to have never seen. The episode streamed perfectly with no hiccups, pausing or stuttering.

It’s important to note that the Prime Instant Videos are streaming only. So you’ll need a Wifi connection to enjoy them. However, rented movies and purchased TV shows can be downloaded so that you can view them even when you’re offline.

Apps

The Kindle Fire is powered by Android, but you will not be able to access the standard app market with this device. You’ll only be able to use Amazon’s own appstore, which is a bit of a bummer considering that Amazon’s appstore does not include all the apps that the app market has to offer.

Don’t get me wrong, Amazon offers a very good selection of apps and even offers a paid app for free each day. But I hate not having it all. I’m greedy. One example of an app that I’d like to install on the Fire which is not included in Amazon’s appstore is the official Gmail app.

The good news is that there’s an email app included on the Fire. I set it up to connect to my Gmail account. Yay right? Well… not really. The app is ok for reading and responding to messages.

In portrait mode you can thumb type.

Or kinda touch type on a very cramped keyboard when in landscape orientation. But here’s the bad news… you can’t connect to your gmail/google contacts. What is up with that? Grrrr…

Good news again… you can use the Fire’s web browser to access your Gmail and your contacts.

Web Browsing

Browsing my favorite sites on the Fire is an ok experience. It’s not nearly as comfortable as browsing on the iPad due to the screen size though. You can browse in tabbed mode as shown above.

Or full screen mode, which gives you a few extra lines per screen.

In landscape mode, it’s much easier to read the text, but you have to scroll more often.

Browsing on a small screen can also cause frustrations when tapping links when they are small and next to each other. A lot of times you’ll need to zoom in so that you can tap accurately. I don’t know how many times I tried to tap something and would end up tapping an adjacent link and then have to press the back button.

Book marks can be viewed by thumbnail or list.

One of the touted gee whiz features of the Fire is this new web page loading technology called Amazon Silk. According to Amazon, it’s supposed to be a revolutionary Cloud-Accelerated “Split Browser” that dramatically improves web page loading times. Unfortunately, I really haven’t noticed it being any quicker than surfing on my iPad. If anything, it actually feels SLOWER to me. I wanted to do some speed test with my favorite Speedtest app, but guess what? It’s not in the Amazon market and my attempts to sideload it failed.

Another weirdness I noticed is that some flash based sites like CNN’s video pages, prompted me to install the latest Flashplayer and thought the Fire was an OSX device. Of course trying to install it didn’t work.

I had the same issue with Hulu.com. Android fans always brag about being able to load flash enabled sites but it feels hit or miss to me. I never really notice the lack of flash on my iPad because I don’t visit many (any?) flash enabled sites.

Performance

Changing from screen to screen, app to app, loading books, magazines, etc, all feels snappy. The Kindle Fire has a dual core processor, so it’s not laggy by any means. The only lag I can really complain about is with the web browser. I’m not the only one complaining, so I’m hoping and expect Amazon will improve the tech behind Amazon Silk.

Battery Life

No complaints here at all. Battery life is great. I can get days and days of use out of the Fire before needing to charge. Granted, I don’t watch many videos or surf for long periods of time using this device.

Conclusion

The Kindle Fire is already a wildly popular device because of its sub $200 price tag and Amazon’s brand reputation. The reasons why I like the Fire are its price, compact size, nice display, snappy performance and good battery life. The reasons why I don’t like this device are the lack of 3G, Bluetooth, dedicated volume and menu buttons, laggy web browser and no access to Google’s app market or core apps (Gmail, Calendar, etc.). I understand that this is Amazon’s first “tablet” device, so I’m cutting them some slack and am hoping that that future models will address at least some of these deficiencies.

I don’t consider the Amazon Kindle Fire to be a real tablet.  But it will be many people’s first taste of Android and using a tablet style device. I think this device is causing ripples in the tablet market which will benefit all of us. Even an iPad fan like myself.

Filed in categories: Android related, eBook Readers and Gear, Featured Items, Reviews, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Android, ereader, Kindle, Tablet

Amazon Kindle Fire Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 31, 2012 at 11:10 am.

I love my Kindle, and I love the Amazon ecosystem for the purchase and reading of novels but did you know that  you can extend  the functionality of your Kindle way beyond that?

The Kindles supports more than just Amazon’s .AZW book format (basically a .MOBI with Digital Rights Management-DRM).  From the web site the Kindle supports:  Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

So maps, pictures, articles and other useful stuff can be loaded onto your Kindle. Amazon promotes this and gives you up to 5GB for storage of personal documents. Anything archived here can be downloaded to supported devices or applications just like your Amazon books. When I’m travelling I like to keep copies of important documents like itineraries,travel insurance documents and medical documents on my Kindle.  That way they’re always with me and won’t get crumpled, lost or wet .

This is a short article to quickly cover the most common ways of getting your own documents onto your Amazon Kindle (note: I am not going to discuss DRM)

Please click on any of the pictures to enlarge the screenshots.

Direct File System

By plugging your Kindle into your PC or Mac, you can get access to the Kindle as an additional drive. This way you can just drag and drop supported files onto your Kindle.

Documents can be placed directly into the root of the document directory or can put into subdirectories. Similarly, audio files can be manually placed into the music directory or audible books into the audible directory.  Note that putting them into sub-directories does not put them into collections.

Useful if you’ve got you Kindle handy and just want the native file put onto your Kindle or if you have multiple documents to transfer. Just as a side point in the example above you’ll see two files with the same name but a different extension.  The .AZW is the ebook itself and the .MBP is your “progress” file for that ebook.

Advantages:

• No Wifi required
• Fast transfer
• Can transfer music and audible books

Disadvantages:

• Need PC/Mac and micro-USB cable and Kindle
• No conversion available
• Not archived in your Amazon Personal Documents storage

Personal Documents  Kindle Email

Amazon supplies you with two email address that allow you to send documents to your Kindle.

@kindle.com – your personal document will be received via either wifi or 3g. Sending via 3g on the Whispernet is chargeable, so you need to be careful how you connect by default ( as I found out from borrowing a friends Kindle 2 to test to see if I liked the Kindle and managed to rack up a $60 bill )

@free.kindle.com – will only send via wifi. Even if the 3g is your default connection it’s only the next time you connect via wifi  that the document will be downloaded (for free).

Where this is additionally useful is if you have multiple users and devices on a single account. In my example above I can send a personal document to one, two or all three of the Kindles attached to my account just by adding their email address. For security you nominate what email addresses are allowed to send documents to your Kindle addresses otherwise I’m sure by now Kindle spam would be a reality

If you send a document and put “Convert” in the subject line of the email, then Amazon will attempt to convert from your format to AZW format.  By converting to .AZW, you can then manipulate like a normal book: change font size and typeface, spacing, style, etc. The accuracy of the converstion depends on format and layout of the source document. You will receive an email when your document is ready for delivery and also a notification on your Kindle when the document is available.

Advantages:

• Does not require Kindle
• Can be initiated from multiple platforms as long as you have an email client
• Can be sent to individual user for multiple user accounts
• Can do conversions to .azw
• Archived in your Amazon Personal Documents Storage
• Can retrieve over 3g

Disadvantages:

• Author becomes email address.
• Can incur Whispernet charges inadvertently
• Document must be less than 50MB
• Email must have less than 25 documents
• Email must go to less than 15 recipients

Amazon Send to Kindle application

Amazon recently released their Send to Kindle app for PC.  Once installed, you then have two ways of sending documents to your Kindle.  You can either right click on a document in Windows Explorer and choose Send to Kindle, or you can use the Print function in almost any Windows application to convert your source to a PDF. You can choose whether to send it via Wifi or Whispernet. You can select whether to archive your document or not. Again receiving a document may incur a 3g Whispernet fee.

Advantages:

• Does not require Kindle
• You can rename the title and author
• Any source can be converted to PDF via Print option
• You get the option to archive in your Amazon Documents Archive
• Can retrieve over 3g

Calibre

Calibre is more than just a means to be able to send documents to your Kindle, it’s a complete e-book manager.  I’m not going to review the full functionality of Calibre here as that’s a subject by itself.  Calibre can be used to convert from pretty much any e-book format to another.  If you click on the picture above you’ll see that I’ve got two documents in my library.  By plugging your Kindle in, you can see that the green tick next to “Locked On” means that that document is already on my Kindle.  By highlighting a document and hitting “Send to Kindle” you can transfer documents from your library to your Kindle.  If you have a lot of documents you can easily see what is and isn’t already loaded on your Kindle.

Advantages:

• Fully featured ebook/document management (and more)
• Support for Windows, OSX, Linux and a portable (thumbdrive) version
• Multiple conversion options
• You can rename/modify any information about the document

Disadvantages:

• Not archived in your Amazon personal documents
• Need PC/Mac, micro-USB cable and Kindle

So there’s multiple ways to get personal documents onto your Kindle, each with it’s own advantages and disadvantages both in terms of procedure, operation and complexity.  One of the big differentiators is if you need the document to be saved into Amazon’s Personal Document storage either for sharing, archiving or for on/off-line access. Personally I use a mixture of all the methods mentioned above depending on my circumstances of what sort of document I need to send, what source format it’s in, what destination format I want it in, where I am and what sort of  ”resources” are available to me. One other thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t have a security code on your Kindle then if you lose it or it’s stolen then anyone can access your personal documents so be careful what you do put on

Filed in categories: Articles, eBook Readers and Gear

Tagged: Kindle

How To: Getting Personal Documents on Your Kindle originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 19, 2012 at 11:00 am.

Send a lot of personal documents to your Kindle but sick of mucking around with emails to get them there?  Amazon has just released the free Send to Kindle for PC  application. Using Windows Explorer, right click on any supported file format (.doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf,.jpeg, .jpg, .gif, .png, .gmp, .pdf) , and Send to Kindle will send your document to your Kindle Personal Documents ready to be downloaded to your Kindle device and supported Kindle reading application. You can also “Send to Kindle” from any Microsoft application that can Print and documents will be delivered in PDF format.

The application gives you the option to send to select Kindles if you’ve set your account up that way; however, it appears that there’s no convert option.  Be warned though, if you download this document to your Kindle using 3G (if you have the option), standard Whispernet charges will apply.

Available soon for Mac as well.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: ebook, Kindle

Send to Kindle for PC – Personal documents just got easier originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 13, 2012 at 12:00 pm.

An e-reader should be pretty simple to review, one like the Kindle Touch that has only two buttons even more so. Amazon‘s ebook reader has one primary task: displaying the pages of the reader’s books.  Sure, there are other features of importance like availability of content, size and weight, and overall usability issues. But in a world where we expect our mobile phones to do everything from telling us where we are and how to get where we want to go, to capturing high-definition video, playing 3D games, maintaining contact with multiple remote servers, and even making the occasional phone call, an e-reader is downright simplistic.

For something so simple, this review has taken me well over a month to write and has been a bit of a struggle. Part of that time was spent reading a few books on the device. I’m sure Julie (Editor-in-Chief of The Gadgeteer) thinks I chose Moby Dick and War and Peace, but that was hardly the case.  (They were actually John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Stephen Hunter’s  Dead Zero and Stephen King’s 11/22/63).

When faced with a challenging writing assignment, I try to have some fun along the way. I’ve sprinkled in a few quotes from some authors and other well-known folks here and there to give a hint about the following section. And while I’m you sure you’ll agree that the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt was directly related to her frustration with the lack of a quality light for the Kindle Touch, I may have twisted the context of some of the other quotes just a wee bit.

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” – Dante Alighieri

So, fair warning to those of you looking for a concise, specification-filled review of the Kindle Touch; you’re probably going to be disappointed, if not disgusted. A quick search will find plenty of those types of articles available on the web, some quite good and probably more informative and worthy of your time than what you’ll read here. As I begin this review I’m not sure if I like or would recommend the Kindle Touch. This is going to be a case of I’ll know what I think about the Touch after I read what I’ve written (my apologies to William Faulkner).

Without hesitation though, I highly recommend to anyone that enjoys reading to give one of the popular e-readers a try. They’re all relatively inexpensive and will enhance your reading experience. So much so you might rediscover that reading a good story might just be better than Facebook updates about someone’s kid graduating from preschool, or almost any YouTube videos. Well, except for the videos of people trying to swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon…

While reading those first three books on the Touch, I became frustrated enough to consider returning the Kindle to Amazon…once by using a brick as the delivery method. The great display, Whispersync, and my preference for doing business with Amazon kept me grasping for ways to get past some of its flaws. Mind you, there’s no killer problem with the Kindle Touch, but I have had to workaround, fix, and learn to live with some problems.

I have always enjoyed reading, but being naturally and profoundly lazy there was a period when I chose the ease of a remote control or the challenge of slaying dragons on a computer screen. Traditional books can be cumbersome. Even paperbacks can be hard to slip into a pocket, and carrying several on a trip can get heavy.  There’s also the issue of bookmarks, ripped pages, spills, pizza stains, and fighting with bindings while trying to read one-handed.

A couple of years back my wife gave me a Kindle 2 for my birthday. It was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received, and she enjoyed it too. The Kindle made it easy for me to get back into reading and gave her periods of much-needed relief from my constant babble. I have read over 120 books on that Kindle, mostly trash/bestseller type stuff (please don’t equate the number of books I’ve read with any form of higher intelligence on my part, as my wife and friends, and soon you readers, have more than enough evidence to the contrary).

I have carried my Kindle on several long trips and many short ones, everywhere from Moscow to the pickup line at my sons’ schools (and the bathroom too). The Kindle makes reading easy and portable. I prefer it by a wide margin to paper-bound books. The E Ink screen is easy on the eyes and works well with just about any light source from that of a tiny LED book-light to direct sunlight.

“Books are uniquely portable magic” – Stephen King

An e-reader should be the wand that triggers the magic – a tool that brings forth the pages of a book without getting in the way of the words. While smartphones, tablets, and computers can be used for reading, they tend to treat books like the written warning at the end of a prescription drug commercial. These devices generally have greater weight (or tiny displays in the case of smartphones), highly reflective backlit screens, cutesy page-turning animations, and cackling flocks of unfriendly fowl.  Reading on one of them is something you do as a last resort when you can’t connect to the internet, and you’ve slaughtered enough pigs to make even the most apoplectic bird content.

I didn’t upgrade to the Kindle 3 because I didn’t want to spend $200 on what I believed to be a minor upgrade. I was wrong. When it comes to e-readers it’s all about the screen, and the Kindle 3’s display was markedly better than mine. I figured I’d wait for the 4^th generation expecting the type of technological leap we’ve seen in computers.

The Kindle Touch currently has three siblings at Amazon. There’s the Kindle (starts at $79) a non-touch, non-keyboard e-reader that utilizes page-turning buttons and a “D-Pad”. The Kindle Keyboard 3G (starts at $139) which is really the Kindle 3 re-branded (it appears this model is only going to be offered until supplies run out). My test subject, the Kindle Touch, completes the non-tablet ebook reader family at Amazon, though they do offer the Kindle Fire, which is a 7” tablet with an full-color LED-display and ebook-reading capabilities.

Amazon is still fairly new to the consumer device design marketplace. The Kindle was their first branded device, and while the early Kindles were well-built, the physical controls and user-interface were a bit simplistic, and even rough, in parts. I was hoping that the Kindle 4 would bring an improved display, more comfortable form factor, refinement of the user-interface, better sharing and borrowing features, and a light that drew power from the device itself.

 “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be satisfied.” – Leo Tolstoy

Perhaps I was hoping for too much, and now I’m a bit disappointed in the Kindle Touch. I considered moving to the basic Kindle (non-touch-screen version), but the reports (Tom’s Hardware) of it having an inferior screen kept me with the Touch.

Author’s Note 1/4/2012: I recently purchased a Kindle (non-touch) and spent about an hour comparing text on the two with a magnifying glass. I don’t have a microscope at my disposal, but under a 10x magnifying glass I couldn’t see any difference whatsoever between the two devices on the same letters in the same words with the same font, and sizing chosen. The reviewers at Tom’s aren’t the type to sensationalize so I can only assume they got a bad device, or perhaps weren’t comparing pages that had both received a full refresh. At this time, I have to believe the screens are of the same quality and type.

“As soon go kindle fire with snow,
as seek to quench the fire of love with words.” – William Shakespeare

So, what’s to love about the Kindle Touch? Several things actually…but above all else it’s the fantastic E Ink screen. To differentiate the Kindle from the others, Amazon continues to provide and improve its best-of-breed “Whispersync” cloud service, and the new super-Index tool called X-Ray can be useful, or at least interesting, when reading non-fiction.

Nothing else would matter if the Kindle’s display wasn’t great. E Ink screens have really improved since the first two generations of the Kindle (which is substantially the same as the screen used in the previous model). The contrast, high reflectivity of the text, and slightly off-white background really cause the words to “pop” off the screen. It is the most comfortable, eye strain-free way of reading that I’ve experienced on an electronic device. Unlike its LED-screen based relatives the Kindle screen does not wash out even in the full-on Florida sun. It actually becomes a better reading medium than traditional books when you consider that readers can tailor just about every characteristic (typeface, font size, line, word and margin spacing) of how the words appear on the page.

The Kindle Touch and its major competitors from Sony, Barnes & Noble and Kobo all use screen technology developed by E Ink Corporation. For those of you unfamiliar with E Ink, it employs a magnetic-like process (particles attracted to either positive or negative electrodes) to draw the correct particles to an area of the screen, creating the desired characters/images. These highly-reflective particles make it possible to view the image in many types of lighting. The look is very similar to that of print on paper. The process requires only a small amount of power when first displaying the page, allowing E Ink devices to use smaller, lighter batteries that can go weeks or months without requiring a recharge.

“Size matters not” – Yoda

I’ve got to disagree with the little green guy on this one at least when it comes to e-readers. Size does matter in a couple of ways. The actual screen size of the Kindle (6-inch diagonally) is comparable to the size of many paperback books. That’s fine for general reading, but for those of you who are more interested in magazines, newspapers, or textbooks (unless you’re willing to give up the graphical element of those publications), you may want to consider a larger-formatted reader like the Kindle DX (9.7-inch E Ink monochrome screen) or one of the full-size tablets that come with color LED displays.

But for pleasure reading, you really want as much screen and as little anything else as possible. Or so I thought. The Kindle Touch is three-quarters of an inch shorter (6.8-inches versus 7.5-inches), slightly narrower (4.7-inches versus 4.8-inches) and about an ounce lighter (7.5 ounces WiFi/7.8 ounces 3G/WiFi versus 8.5 ounces/8.7 ounces) than its predecessor. The reduction is primarily due to Amazon’s decision to do away with the physical keyboard, moving it on-screen. The Touch is slightly thicker (.4-inches versus .34-inches) than the Kindle 3 and its non-touch sister model, most likely to allow for the touch-screen paraphernalia.

“You’re holding it wrong.” – Steve Jobs

When I first saw how small my new Kindle Touch was I was delighted right up until I tried to hold it with one hand and read. There is barely an inch of bezel on the top and bottom and six-tenths of an inch on each side. I found it difficult to hold the Touch and not have my thumb or its shadow covering part of the screen. Because it’s a touch-screen with no physical buttons for page-changes, your thumb or one of your fingers has to be close enough to easily reach the screen.

This was never a problem with the older Kindles as they had physical keyboards and buttons on the side bezel. You naturally held them by the side of the keyboard and extended your thumb up to hit the change page button. With the newer non-keyboard models, the best one-handed grip comes from putting your hand along the bottom corner of the Kindle and then extending your thumb along the slim bezel.

Well, the Kindle’s bezel may be slim but my thumb is not. As I tried shifting my grip I was quickly and annoyingly reminded that the power button, which used to be a slide switch located at the top of the device in earlier models, was now positioned on the bottom edge and requires just a light touch to wake or sleep the device.

The proper Kindle Touch grip appears to be to a modified pinch on either of the bottom corners with your thumb laying on the bezel along the side of the screen. That wasn’t all that bad until I added my Belkin “eBook Light for Kindle” to the top of the device. The 2.75-ounce clip-on light at the top of the device made the whole thing feel off-balanced. Coupled with the device’s thinness it became uncomfortable to hold. Amazon did attempt to make the Kindle easier to grip by applying paint with a rubbery-like feel to the back, but for me it isn’t enough.

Fat thumb and thin bezels don't mix well.

I tried to correct the problem by wrapping a couple of wide rubber bands lengthwise around the Kindle to give it a bit more grip along the bezel. This didn’t really do much more than convince my wife that the decline in my cognitive skills was accelerating. I considered Velcro, and even constructing a prosthetic finger. Eventually, as with all DIY projects, I grabbed the duct tape…this time, though, it was to attach the Kindle to a brick and return it via “air mail” to Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos.

I then realized that it’s a great deal more pleasant reading in my den than a jail cell and decided to search the greatest catalog of “hazarai” (assorted junk for you non-Yiddish speakers) in history, eBay, for a solution. I found a very inexpensive leather case with a cover that wraps around the back. The case gives me something to hold on to, and has made holding the Kindle Touch with one hand much more pleasant.

While I was searching for a solution or at least examples of how others grasped their Touch, I noticed that almost every picture of someone holding a Kindle on the Amazon website featured a female model with slim fingers. Somehow, I don’t think that’s an accident. If you can completely cover a quarter with your thumb you may want to try holding a Touch with your favorite light attached before taking one home.

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Speaking of cases and lights, the Kindle 3 and now the Kindle Touch, both have contacts on the back for the purpose of powering a book light with the internal battery. Amazon has released a case with such a light but its $60 price tag is bordering on ridiculous when you consider that the Kindle Touch pricing starts at $100. Perhaps a third party will develop a clip-on light that utilizes those contacts, relieving us of the weight and replacement bother associated with batteries.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” – Edwin Rolfe

Despite the Kindle Touch being lightweight, thin, and constructed mainly of plastic, it has a very solid feel. There’s no discernible flex or creaks when you handle the device.  The Touch’s look is best described as minimalistic, featuring two dark shades of gray. This was a nice choice by Amazon as there’s nothing about the device to distract or reflect light back at the reader.

The screen is inset by about an eighth of an inch below the bezel. The riser up to the bezel can cast a small shadow and is black, making it a bit difficult to see the small font they used on the black status bar at the top of the screen. While you can adjust the size and many aspects of the fonts in the books themselves, the status bar has no such options.

Micro USB, headphone and power button are located on the Kindle's bottom edge.

The Kindle has two ports, a micro USB port for charging and file transfer, and a 3.5mm stereo audio jack grouped together with the power button on the bottom edge of the device. The back of the Kindle features grill holes for twin speakers, and between them sit the aforementioned power contacts. The only physical button other than the power switch is made up of four parallel horizontal lines and is centered just below the screen. Pressing this button returns the reader to the Kindle’s home screen.

What's in the box...

The Kindle Touch is shipped in a box designed to safely deliver the Kindle at a low cost. Inside you’ll find the device, a small instruction card, and a standard micro USB to USB charging cable, but no charger. I believe this was a bit too miserly on Amazon’s part and they make that worse by not mentioning the omission anywhere on their website.

The Kindle Touch is Amazon’s first attempt at applying a touch screen to the Kindle operating system, and it shows. There are several inconsistencies where the same gesture causes different results, and other instances where the reader needs to use a different gesture to accomplish the same task. I hope Amazon recognizes the importance of a consistent user interface and is working towards better incorporating touch into the Kindle operating system.

While touch screens are a necessity when you’re using a tablet and they’ve made smartphones far easier to use, there’s nothing about the touch interface on an e-reader that makes them significantly better than the alternative. Navigating the Kindle’s peripheral functions, like looking up the definition of a word, browsing in the Amazon store, and using the web browser is easier with the touch screen. Typing is certainly better than on the new Kindle (non-touch), but when it comes to that primary function of displaying pages of text, the touch screen is superfluous.

At some point in the future, I expect that to change as publishers begin to take advantage of the touch capabilities within the books themselves. I just can’t wait for the day when each page of my book contains a slew of contextual links granting me important options like the ability to purchase an “actual” replica of Harry Potter’s wand. Actually, I’m sure that incorporating links to peripheral information like diagrams, pictures, or even small apps will add to the value of some types of books, but isn’t that more in the realm of a tablet?

The Kindle uses IR (infrared) touch-screen technology which means there are a number of intersecting light beams over the display (this is probably the reason for the inset screen). This allows for touch (and sometimes near-touch) detection by anything, not just a bare finger like the capacitive touch screens found on most tablets. The downside to this is that almost anything can and will turn pages and sometimes flip through several of them. More than once I’ve had to back-track through several pages after something inadvertently contacted the screen. I don’t recall ever having that problem with physical page buttons. On the upside, it’s now possible to change pages easily with your nose, gloved hand, or the straw from your drink (take that tablets!).

 “A common mistake that people make when trying to design
something completely foolproof is to
underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” – Douglas Adams

The older Kindles and the Kindle (non-touch) model utilize page-turning buttons on the sides of the screen. Generally both sides had page forward buttons and there was a smaller page back button on the left-hand side of the device. This allowed the reader to hold the device with either hand and still turn pages. In order to accomplish the same functionality on a touch screen, Amazon developed their “EasyReach” interface.

As you can see from the picture above, the screen is divided into three segments: a large section for paging forward, a slim section along most of the left-hand side for paging back, and a section along the top for calling up the status bar and a contextual menu. Paging forward and back may also be accomplished with the now-familiar swipe in the appropriate direction. When holding the Kindle with my right hand, I touch to go forward, and use my thumb to do a short swipe to move back. On the left side, I just touch close to the margin to go back and reach with my thumb about an inch or so to page ahead.

The most serious interface flaw I encountered is the lack of visual feedback when you touch a screen element. Unlike computers and tablets where pressing a button with a mouse or a finger has the object change state in some way, there’s no similar indication on the Touch. Except on the home screen where touching an option causes the selection to highlight, and user interface consistency connoisseurs to cringe.

There are a few other incongruities throughout the interface and they can be a little bothersome, but the majority of the time Kindle Touch users will be reading books and the EasyReach system for changing pages works quite nicely.

“Much ado about nothing.” – William Shakespeare

Bill and I agree that way too much is made about page changing speed on E-Readers. This measurement is used both to show the improvement in e-readers from generation to generation and as a competitive claim among the various manufacturers. Even the most unhurried e-reader is much faster than physically turning the page of a book. So, while I guess the Kindle Touch is faster at changing pages than my old Kindle 2, I never felt like I was waiting on the older device.

While not as meaningless, Amazon has come up with a method of limiting the page refresh effect when a page change takes place. In prior versions each page change was met with the page quickly going completely black before displaying the new text. The latest generation allows readers to choose between that redraw occurring every page turn or every five page turns. I’ve never found the effect to be bothersome because it happens so fast, but for those that are, things are getting better.

“A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that
you can take it to bed with you.” – Daniel J. Boorstin

Dan, the wonderful thing about a Kindle Touch is that you can bring roughly 3,000 books to bed with you, or on an airplane, a bus, the beach, or the bathroom. When you finish those you can wirelessly connect to a bookstore and have access to millions more. You can also borrow them from libraries and share them for limited periods with your friends. Oh, and should you forget your Kindle Touch, you can access all of those books through any device with an internet connection including computers, cell phones, and tablets. Amazon is one of the largest providers of cloud services in the world and they provide Kindle owners with free storage and delivery of books purchased through Amazon. Once you have purchased a book it will stay in your online library for as long as you like. You can also store up to 5GB of your own personal documents on Amazon’s servers at no additional cost.

Amazon also offers a variety of newspapers, magazines, and blogs via subscription that are delivered to your device on a regular basis..

Delivery is either through WiFi, which is built into all Kindles, or 3G service if you purchase the 3G model. The 3G service is included and unlimited for book transfers and browsing the Amazon store, but no longer allows for unlimited web browsing with the Kindle’s built-in browser. The browser handles mobile sites reasonably well, draws real usability benefits from the touch screen, and deserves to be removed from the “experimental” section it has been buried in since debuting on the Kindle 2.

While there are two versions of the Kindle Touch WiFi and 3G/WiFi, there are four prices. If you’re willing to let Amazon send you advertisements and special offers, the price of the Kindle Touch WiFi is $99. If you’d prefer not to get the ads it will cost you $139. The 3G/WiFi model costs $149 or $189.

I’d recommend purchasing the version with the ads. They do not intrude on reading in any way since they appear as a screensaver or as a small banner at the very bottom of the home screen.. Some of the offers are quite good and if you tire of them you can pay the difference and remove the ads permanently. While you can subscribe to the special offers if you have paid for an ad-free version, it doesn’t appear that Amazon will provide you with a $40 refund.

“Mozart’s music is like an X-ray of your soul -
it shows what is there, and what isn’t.” – Isaac Stern

Amazon’s new X-Ray feature enables the reader to quickly see every reference to a character (historical or fictional), phrase or idea within the book, how often and where those elements exist in the book, and then pull information from Wikipedia or Amazon’s Shelfari service. While I didn’t find a lot of use for this feature with the fiction I read, I can see where it could serve as a valuable aid in reading non-fiction and in fact-checking some of the more “inventive” biographies and books on history.

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.
Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway

The Kindle Touch features a couple of audio services. You can use the device as a music player, although the limited memory (4GB) isn’t going to convince anyone to give up their iPod anytime soon. However, for those who like to read with their ears, Amazon owns audiobook retailer, audible.com. You can purchase and have your audiobooks delivered to your Kindle via Whispersync, but only when connected via WiFi. The audio player isn’t bad and the internal speakers are more than passable, although I’m sure most will want to listen with headphones.

The Kindle Touch also comes with a text-to-speech program. When the publisher approves it, you can have the Kindle Touch read the book to you. This isn’t an audiobook; it’s a computerized voice that mispronounces and generally stumbles through the text in your choice of a male or female monotone. Why the publishers ever thought this would hurt their audiobook sales is a mystery to me. You can get a few chuckles out of the capability by having it try to read some science fiction. A Kindle trying to interpret Klingon can either be hilarious or make you want to fall on your D’k tahg (dagger).

“All sorts of computer errors are now turning up.
You’d be surprised to know the number of doctors
who claim they are treating pregnant men.” – Isaac Asimov

My early experience with the Touch was soured by what appears to have been a corrupted system file. I initially loaded three or four books on to the device using a nice e-book management packaged called Calibre to transfer one while retrieving two others from my archive on Amazon. Everything became sluggish, page turns were irregular, and the device ignored some commands. Finally, while trying to open a book, I got an error message stating that the “app could not load”. The Touch then crashed and rebooted, and not long after did the same thing again.

I called Amazon and as has been my experience with them for the past 15 years, the customer service was very good. After a brief attempt at troubleshooting the problem, the rep offered me a full refund or an exchange. I chose the exchange and a new device was shipped for next-day delivery.

Since the device was broken I figured I might as well spend some time trying to figure out and fix the issue. This comes under the age-old male theory of, “If something won’t work, force it; if it breaks it needed fixing anyway.” I connected the Kindle to my PC and began rooting around in the various directories (kids, don’t try this at home especially with your parent’s Kindle unless you intend on getting a place of your own in the very near future). Being far too lazy to actually go through each file and figure out what it does, I decided to delete all the content I had installed.

When that didn’t correct the issue I made the determination that everything had to go (kids, see above warning). I then watched as the device did a complete restart. I have a feeling the Kindle then realized what might come next and formatted its memory and re-created its system files. Whatever the reason, the device has worked extremely well since. I returned the replacement unopened and have been using my Kindle Touch without a recurrence or any other issues.

The Kindle Touch is also capable of loading some game apps distributed through the Amazon store. I’ve never tried them and if that’s important to you I’d suggest looking at the Kindle Fire or another tablet.

“A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.” – Martin Henry Fischer

After several rough weeks I’ve grown to like (not love) my Kindle Touch. I like the quality of the display over the older Kindle, I like and dislike the new smaller size, I’m ambivalent about the touch functionality, and I’m happy that Amazon continues to provide a vast selection of e-books and the Whispersync service. Being able to borrow e-books from many libraries and share books (at Publisher discretion) with others is also a nice feature.

There are some interface issues that I hope Amazon will iron out. I am also looking forward to the next generation of Kindles in hopes that they’ll incorporate some form of lighting, perhaps the illuminated optical film recently announced by FLEx Lighting II, LLC. At this time I would recommend the Kindle Touch with special offers for anyone who wants to try out an e-reader, or who has been using the Kindle 1^st or 2^nd generation devices. If you already have a Kindle 3 and can live with the slightly larger size, there’s really not an overwhelming reason to upgrade.

“The end of labor is to gain leisure.” – Aristotle

I’m done for now…gonna go put my feet up and read for a bit.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Featured Items, Reviews

Tagged: Amazon, Kindle

Amazon Kindle Touch Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 2, 2012 at 11:54 am.

Sakroots is the name for a line of accessories from The Sak handbag company.  Shown here is the Artist Circle E-Reader Case for Kindle, Kindle Touch, and the Nook Simple Touch.  These fabric cases are made of coated canvas, trimmed with polyurethane, and lined with polyester.  The case closes with a zipper, and all hardware is goldtone.  You’ll find organization pockets inside for cards or folded papers.  It’s available in the four prints shown above, and it sells for $34 in stores.  You can also purchase it online at a special web pricing of only $24.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Cases and covers, Kindle, nook

Sakroots Artist Circle E-Reader Case originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm.

Not long ago, Amazon made it possible for you to borrow books from participating libraries, and now they’ve introduced the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.  To participate, you must be an Amazon Prime member, and it appears you must own an actual Kindle.  There are 5000 titles available now, including 100 current and former New York Times best sellers.  You can borrow up to 1 book a month and keep it as long as you’d like.  The lending library link, above, has details for borrowing books.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: borrowing books, eBook reader, Kindle

Amazon Introduces the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 3, 2011 at 7:23 am.

Love the new Amazon Kindle lines but just can’t justify upgrading to the latest version because your old version still does the job perfectly well?  Now you can trade your old Kindle (or other e-reader that that matter) using the Amazon trade-in program.  Just enter the model and condition of your old faithful friend and receive a gift card ranging from $17.75 to $135 to put towards a new best friend .

Personally there’s no way I’m trading any of my Kindle 3s (especially my 3g given the ( supposed) lack of 3g web browsing on the new Touch), and if I did want to upgrade one of my family members would be the recipient of a “new” e-reader.

What do you think of the trade-in values ? Is this enough to make you upgrade ???

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle

Bring out your dead – Amazon Kindle Trade-in originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 21, 2011 at 10:00 am.

While the Amazon Kindle family is still growing with new models, it looks like Amazon hasn’t forgotten or stopped developing for those who have or prefer the Kindle 3 ( Keyboard ). Firmware 3.3 updates the K3 to match some of the features of the newly (to be) released siblings.

Primarily :

• Download your archived Personal Documents
• Whispersync for Personal Documents
• AmazonLocal deals on Kindles with Special Offers
• Voice Guide Shortcut.

While none of these functions are something that I’d use, nice to see updates still coming out for this “older” unit.

It should come down over the air, or you can go to the Software Page and manually update.

More information at Amazon’s Kindle Keyboard Software Update Page

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle

Kindle 3 (Keyboard) not gone or forgotten – Firmware Update originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 17, 2011 at 8:00 am.

An Amazon Special Offer to convert your new Kindle ” with Special Offers” to “without Special Offers” has just been released. Whether there’s been too much confusion among new buyers of Amazon’s new budget ereader about what they were actually purchasing or for some other reason there’s now a way to remove those “annoying” ads without having to resort to hacks.

To deactivate:
Login to Your Account/Manage Your Kindle / Manage Your Devices In the Subscribe column, click Edit next to your K4  then follow the instructions on the screen.

The charge to do this is $30, the “discount” receive for initially purchasing  a unit with advertising. There doesn’t seem to be a way however to turn the Special Offers back on or to change a “without Special Offer” Kindle to enable the advertisements ( and get a $30 credit ) .

This is only supported on the new Kindle (K4)  and not on the Kindle Keyboards (K3)

I received a Special Offer K3 as a warranty replacement even though they’re not supposed to be supplied outside of the US.  Though it’s my son’s and not mine I actually don’t find the ads that intrusive and it looks like there are some good offers available.  I’m yet to see if the offers will work outside the US however.

Did you save money and purchase a Kindle with Special Offers  (either K3 or K4 ) ?  Have you saved money using the Special Offers ? Do the ads  bother you ? Will you be deactivating ?

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle

Amazon Special Offer – Kindle 4 with Special Offer without Special Offer ?!? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 7, 2011 at 10:00 am.

Last week Amazon went a little crazy and announced 4 new devices all on the same day. The Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G and the Kindle Fire. The first 3 devices are e-book readers and the Fire is a tablet. That is a lot of devices and of course we plan to review all of them because that’s just what we do We have to wait a little while for the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire devices to become available, but we’re happy to give you the scoop on the $79 Kindle today. For this review, I’m enlisting the help of our own e-book reader expert Janet. She’s been fan of Sony eReaders for a long time until she dumped them for the iPad. She’s never used a Kindle before, so it will be interesting to see what she thinks of the most popular e-book reading device on the market. For me, I’ve purchased all the Kindle devices in the past (except for the DX), but didn’t continue to use them once I reviewed them. I find that I use my phone as an e-book reader most often. This new smaller Kindle might make me change that… Let’s find out.

My comments are in Black and Janet’s are in Blue italics.

I’m very excited to do my first co-review.  Thanks for letting me help, Julie!

Note: Click the images in this review to see a larger view.

Package Contents

Kindle wireless e-reader
USB 2.0 cable
Quick Start Guide

Hardware Specs

Display: 6″ diagonal E Ink display 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 16-level gray scale
On-device Storage: Up to 1,400 books or 2GB internal (approximately 1.25GB available for user content)
Cloud Storage: Free cloud storage for all Amazon content
Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion
Wi-Fi Connectivity: 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication or Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS); does not connect to WPA and WPA2 secured networks using 802.1X authentication methods; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks
USB Port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector)
Battery Life: A single charge lasts up to one month with wireless off based upon a half-hour of daily reading time. Keep wireless always on and it lasts for up to 3 weeks
Charge Time: Fully charges in approximately 3 hours via the included USB 2.0 cable connected to a computer
Size (in inches): 6.5″ x 4.5″ x 0.34″ (166 mm x 114 mm x 8.7 mm)
Weight: 5.98 ounces (170 grams)

Here’s a family photo of the original Kindle, Kindle 2, Kindle 3G (which Amazon now calls the Kindle Keyboard) and the latest Kindle that we’re looking at today. It’s fun to see the evolution of these devices. The original was really ugly wasn’t it? One thing to note is that since the Kindle was introduced back in 2007, the display has stayed at 6 inches diagonal (not counting the DX of course) through all the new versions.

That first one was a bit wedge-shaped, wasn’t it?  I like the 6″ screen.  It makes the reader about the size of a paperback book and keeps it light.

Here we see the latest Kindle next to the previous Kindle Keyboard. All of Amazon’s new Kindles lack a physical keyboard now. That might be a deal breaker for some of you… I rarely use one as I don’t tend to add annotations or do a lot of searching in the Amazon store on the device itself. But more about the keyboard in a bit. First let’s take a tour of the whole device.

When I first took the Kindle out of the box I was really surprised at how much smaller and lighter it was over the previous model. It’s almost pocketable if you happen to have big pockets

And it fits nicely in a purse!  It’s so small, it’s a bit hard to hold.  I can’t decide where to put my hands.  I ordered the lighted case for it, which I think will make it easier to get a grip on.

It’s only available in one color, which is grey. The bezel looks like it is made of aluminum, but this hasn’t been confirmed.

This latest Kindle uses the same e-ink screen technology as the previous Kindle, so there’s nothing new there. I find it to be very crisp and clear and it’s easy to read in most lighting conditions. It’s great for very bright environments like outdoors on a sunny day, as well as slightly dim light indoors. Basically, wherever you can comfortably read a regular physical book, you’ll be able to read on the Kindle. How do you think the Kindle’s e-ink screen compares to Sony eReaders?

Amazon’s specs for this reader says it has the Pearl screen.  That’s the same screen that was used in the last Sony Reader I reviewed, the PRS-650.  I love this screen, because it is so sharp and easy on the eyes.  The page refreshes very quickly, and I haven’t seen the slightest hint of shadowing on this screen.

The back is the same color as the front bezel, but it’s made of plastic with a thin rubberized coating that helps you grip the device. You’ll notice two metal contacts along the bottom edge that appear to be used for some sort of charging dock that we’ve yet to see.

I’m thinking those contacts are for the lighted Kindle case, but I can’t be sure until my case gets here in mid-November.  The new lighted case requires no batteries; it pulls power for the light from the Kindle itself.

Oh, I bet you’re right!

There are several buttons below the e-ink display that help you navigate through the on-screen menus. From left to right, there’s a back button, on-screen keyboard button, 5-way navigation button, menu button and home button. All the buttons are raised and have very good tactile feedback.

On the Left side (and right side) of the reader, you’ll find two narrow buttons that allow you to page forwards and backwards through books. For me, these buttons feel almost too small. I find it a little awkward to hold the device in one hand and press the paging buttons with my thumb on that same hand. I usually just rest the Kindle in my lap as I read and hold it by one of the upper corners with one hand and use the other hand to press the page buttons.

They feel a little awkward to me, too.  I always want to push in on them, but you have to push them to the back to make them work.  The thing I find confusing about them is their size.  Both sides have one big button on the bottom and one smaller button at the top.  I think the big button on the right side should advance you one page and the big button on the left should take you back one page.  Amazon thinks differently, because both big buttons advance a page and both small go back one page.  

It would be nice if there was a way to remap two of the buttons below the display to page forwards and back. Then you could more easily hold the Kindle in one hand and use your thumb to press the buttons.

One thing I noticed is that the Kindle doesn’t have the little slots on the Left side for special cases that don’t require elastic bands. I’m slightly disappointed in that fact, but I guess it’s not a big deal.

Kindle is changing the style of their cases.  You can imagine I spent a long time pouring over their official cases before I decided on the lighted case.  I noticed that both styles – lighted and unlighted – now hold the Kindle in a “shell”.  You snap the Kindle into the shell, and it covers the back and wraps up around the Kindle’s sides.  Closer inspection of the lighted case does show two metal contacts that should connect with the contacts on the back of the Kindle.

Of course we’ll start seeing a bunch of cases that use elastic bands too…

I don’t like the elastic band cases.  I like to see my gadget’s face.

On the bottom edge you’ll find the micro USB port for charging / copying content from a computer, the charging status LED and the power button.

Speaking of USB charging, I wish Amazon had included the AC power adapter, but I guess you can’t have everything at these prices…

The Kindle is comfortable to hold and carry because it’s so lightweight. It’s made well and feels solid, but since it’s so light, at first I felt like I could snap it in half just by looking at it cross eyed.  After using it for a few days though, I’m sure that it can withstand everyday abuse without any problems. It passed the good old Gadgeteer squeeze and flex test with no problems.

The Sony readers didn’t seem heavy to me at the time I was using them, but they did all have metal bodies.  The Kindle feels so light I thought I’d throw it over my head when I picked it up!  Even though it’s mostly plastic, it is very sturdy.

You probably have noticed that our Kindles are showing ads in some pictures, but not in others.  The shots without ads are Julie’s Kindle.  She opted for the slightly more expensive version ($109) without “Special Offers”.  After four generations of Sony readers costing $250-$350, I was ready for a discount.  I bought the discounted version($79) with “Special Offers.”  The “Special Offers” are simply ads; agreeing to them earns you a a 27% discount off the Kindle’s purchase price.  The ads replace the screensavers that are normally artist pictures or book covers, or the like.  They also display in a banner at the bottom of the home screen, as shown in the picture above.  You click on them and they take you to learn more about the offer.  They never show up within the books.

I find the ads very easy to ignore.  For the review, I have made an effort to notice the ads.  So far I’ve seen mostly ads for Amazon products and services – 50% off the power adapter and extra charging cable, an Amazon credit card with rewards and a $50 gift card, books for $1.  I also have seen an ad for pet supplies, so I assume they check my Amazon purchasing records to gauge my interests.  They also have an app called Amazon AdMash you can download to the Kindle if you’d like to vote on the appearance of possible future ads.

My question to you is – are ALL the screensavers ads? Do you never see a non-ad? If that’s the case, I’m glad I opted to pay a bit more. I have come to enjoy the screensaver images and often wonder what the next one will be when I put my Kindle in idle mode. I also noticed that you can login to your Amazon account and adjust the types of pictures you want to see more or less of – Nature, Architecture, etc. Too bad you can’t add your own images though…

Yes, all the screensavers I’ve seen are ads; the same ad shows up in the banner when you turn the Kindle on, too.  I just went to see if I could adjust the type of ads I see, but my only option is to turn off the special offers.  If I do that, I’ll be charged $30 plus tax.  I guess my Kindle would have screensavers like yours if I decide to do that.

That’s nice that you have the option to switch to no ads if you desire and don’t mind paying for that option.

This Kindle doesn’t include the free 3G access to the Kindle store, but you can still shop and purchase books anywhere you can connect to WiFi.  Connecting to my home network was easy; I simply selected my network from the list it found and entered my password. I was a bit worried about how it would connect to networks in public places.  My experience with those networks on other devices is that I choose the network, then I have to go to the browser and accept their terms of service.  This Kindle does have an “experimental” browser, but I was still afraid it would be difficult to connect.  It turns out to be a snap.  I took it along on a family visit and was able to connect to their network as easily as my own.  I took it to Starbucks Sunday morning, and found that I only had to select the network and I was connected.  I didn’t even have to use the browser to accept terms.  The Kindle even remembered my home network and reconnected me when I got home from Starbucks.  I was just looking at the info on Amazon, and it may be that you only connect to AT&T public hotspots so effortlessly, though.

That’s great. So far I’ve not tried any of my Kindles on another wifi network other than the one I have at home.

It looks different than the online version, but you’ll have full access to the content in the Kindle store.

Most of the time I look for new books via my laptop or desktop. It’s amazing how fast the Kindle downloads new content. As soon as I click the buy or download sample link, it’s on the device within a few seconds.

I find the on-screen keyboard a pain to use.  You use the 5-way navigation buttons and the page forward and back buttons to move around on the keyboard.  You have to select each letter then close the keyboard before you can navigate down and select the button to search the store. 

You can actually press the on-screen return button to search the text you’ve entered instead of closing the keyboard and selecting the search store button. I’m not a big fan of on-screen keyboards either, but this one isn’t too terrible for occasional short searches. I’m pretty fast at entering text with it due to years of using similar on-screen keyboards for other devices.

The search is “intelligent” and starts showing you a list of possibilities based on the text you’ve entered. You can close the keyboard as soon as you see what you’re looking for and move up to select it from the list.  There was a bit of a delay, but it populated this list without me having to hit the return key.  The keyboard is pretty quick and responsive, but it’s a pain for me because I just can’t keep myself from tapping on the screen to select a letter.  The last two Sony readers I owned had touch screens, as does my iPad.

Just like the online store, you can read about the book or even download a sample chapter to read before buying.  Purchasing is easy.  Press the Buy button and your book starts downloading.  You can also download previously purchased books to the Kindle.  Every book I’ve downloaded has taken far less than a minute.

My favorite feature is the ability to download a sample chapter. I always do that before I buy anything because I’m pretty picky when it comes to books. It takes a great author to grab my attention.

The books look great on the Pearl screen.  Letters are sharp and easy to read.  A status bar at the bottom shows you how far you’ve progressed in the book.  At any point, you can press the Menu button to read a book description, search the book, add a bookmark, or view your notes and highlights.

Also, when you press the Menu button while reading a book, you’ll see the time of day and the page number at the bottom of the display.

I love this feature!  I tend to lose track of time when I read, and I can’t risk forgetting to pick up Rachel from school!

If you don’t like the font face or size, you can change it.  You can choose from three typefaces and eight font sizes.  You can adjust the amount of white space on the page using the line spacing and words per line options.  You can also read in vertical or horizontal orientation, and choose the position of the control buttons for each.

You can jump to the book information page from the home screen, too.  Move the cursor to the book, then press the right arrow on the 5-way navigation button.

This is also the screen that allows you to move your books to Collections (aka folders).

The Kindle has a multitude of dictionaries available to you.  Mine defaulted to using The New Oxford American Dictionary.  Look up a word by moving to the beginning of it with the navigation buttons.  If the dictionary has a definition, it pops up a small window displaying the information.  You can click to see the full definition.  I’ve found the dictionary sometimes shows you strange definitions.  For example, I stopped on the word “speed” and I was shown the definition for Alfven wave.  It often showed me definitions as I navigated down the linked table of contents, too, but it would jump me to the desired location when I clicked the linked entries.  

You can also choose to add a note or a highlight by navigating to the word in the above manner. 

You can download multiple dictionaries from your Kindle account, open one like a normal book, and search through it.  My Kindle arrived with two dictionaries on it, and there were 5-6 other dictionaries available for download in my archived items.  I had not purchased these dictionaries separately, so I assume they come with the Kindle.

They did come with the Kindle… I had them too. Several alternate languages, right? I ended up deleting them since I’ll never need them…

I plan to delete those other dictionaries, too.  I can’t even tell what language some of them are for!  I held on to them just in case I needed them for the review.

Settings lets you do a variety of things, from connecting to a network, to finding the email needed to send your own materials to your Kindle, to backing up your annotations.  You can even turn on “Popular Highlights” and “Public Notes”, if you want to see what other people had to say about the book you’re reading.  You can even share notes about books using your social network accounts.  Here’s where you can change the default dictionary the Kindle uses to look up words as you read, too.

I’m not sharing what I’m reading because people would make fun of me One of my friends at work still thinks I’m looney for saying that the Harry Potter series is my favorite book(s) ever. Come on J.K. Rowling, pleaseeeeeeee write something else soon.

I don’t care what other people have to say about books.  If I like them or if I hate them, that’s what matters!  (Although I think everyone should love Dean Koontz as much as I do!)  

As mentioned above, the Kindle does have an “experimental” browser.  It’s a pain to enter long URLs, and I haven’t found a way to store favorites.  It’s slow, but it does work if you need to look up something and you have no other way to connect to the internet.  You launch the browser from the book list menu (press the menu button to see it).

I think I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than use the Kindle’s browser. It’s way too painful. But speaking of experimental features… It’s important to note that this Kindle can not read books to you. It’s not only that the feature isn’t in the experimental menu, but this Kindle doesn’t have a headphone jack. That’s a bummer for those of you that like to use the text to speech feature or even play background MP3s while you read.

I was actually glad that there were no audio functions.  I’ve never used the text-to-speech feature, and I never wanted music on my readers.  I never liked paying even a few cents for the audio functions.  The volume buttons on the Sony readers were always some place easily bumped, and I swear that somehow drained the battery faster.

I never use them either but I’m guessing some people thinking about upgrading from a previous Kindle model might miss that feature if they were used to it.

The browser doesn’t always display the pages perfectly, though.  I couldn’t make this dark box go away, and I couldn’t read through it.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to search for a book in the book list.  You can sort the books by title or author.  You can also sort them by collections, which you can create and populate on the reader.  Yes, creating collections requires a lot of clicking on that on-screen keyboard.

Searching for a book on your Kindle is easy. Just click the Menu button on the home screen and then select Search. You’ll have to use the horrible keyboard to type in the name of the book though It will also show other books that have the same words located somewhere in them. So if you’re just looking for a particular title, you need to be specific.

Hmm, I just searched for Dance With Dragons as you described.  The only search result was the book “A Dance With Dragons”, but clicking on it opens up a list of locations within the book where it found that phrase, or dance, or dragons.  It didn’t just open up the book for me to read, although I guess I could open one of the search results and navigate to the beginning.

Ok, I’m sorry, you’re right. It works but not as expected…

You can search all your books to find every instance of a word, and the same option allows you to launch a search in the dictionary, the Kindle store, or online.  Too bad it doesn’t let you find a book this way.

The Kindle really shines when it comes to battery life. Unlike reading on a tablet or a smartphone, it seems like the Kindle’s battery takes ages and ages to drain. Actually Amazon says it will run for 1 month on a charge. That’s with wireless turned off and 30 minutes of reading per day. It also never gets hot while you’re using it.

I decided to test out the battery.  I received the book on September 29th, charged it up, and started using it about 7:00 pm that night.  I’ve left the WiFi on continually.  I leave the Kindle in standby when I’m not using it, and I’ve read and played around with it to learn the features for at least an hour a day.  My battery icon shows about a 2/3′s charge still remaining.  That’s not bad!

When will smartphone batteries last this long?

Amazon recently announced that you can now check out library books and read them on your Kindle.  I tested that out and found it works great.  You go to your library’s website (on your computer), search for the Kindle books, and go through the Overdrive checkout procedure.  You then click on the “Get for Kindle” button; you’ll go to Amazon where you’ll choose which Kindle device you want the book downloaded to.  The book was automatically downloaded to my Kindle.  It looks like any other book on my device; it’s not marked as a library book in any way, and I can make highlights and notes in the book.  (I can back up my notes using an option in the Menu.)  The book will be automatically returned on its due date, or I can go to Amazon’s online “manage my Kindle” option to return it early.

One other feature worth mentioning is how the Kindle handles embedded images.  You use the navigation button to move the cursor to the image, then click to select.  The image will enlarge to fill the screen.  Click again to return to the book page.

Speaking of embedded images, the Kindle can view PDF files. Using the special email address that each Kindle receives, I sent a PDF to my reader and a few minutes later, I was able to view the PDF by zooming in and out. Viewing PDFs on a 6″ screen isn’t that fun, but it’s doable.

This is my first experience with any Kindle reader, and I find that I enjoy reading on the e-Ink screen again.  Reading on a backlit screen, like my iPad, doesn’t bother my eyes at all.  I can and do read for hours on that bright screen.  However, I find that I don’t read as many books when I use my iPad exclusively.  I guess there’s just too many other things I can do on the iPad.  Trust me, I won’t find myself tempted to go surfing on the experimental browser, so I’m sure I’ll be reading more books with my Kindle. I just hope my lighted cover gets here sooner than the expected date.

I think this new Kindle is a great little e-book reader. The $79 price tag makes it a no-brainer for anyone wanting to try one. If you already have Kindle Keyboard though, I wouldn’t be overly gungho to upgrade if it were me as they both have the same display and features. This is especially true if you happen to do a lot of searches and annotations and prefer the physical keyboard.

Will I continue to use this Kindle to read e-books or will I go back to my normal habit of using my smartphone? I actually think I might start using both. I’ll use my smartphone and the Kindle app when I’m not home and the Kindle when I am home. We’ll see if that works for me…

One down, 2 more Amazon devices to go

Update:  Because I’m such a dedicated reviewer, I decided I’d “upgrade” my Kindle to the non-ad version.  It was very easy to do.  I went to Amazon’s Manage my Devices function and agreed to the $30 charge, to be paid with 1-Click, just like purchasing a book.  I then had to turn on my Kindle, waited a couple of seconds then got a message that my Kindle had been converted to the non-ad version.  I now have no ad banner at the bottom of my library pages, and I have non-ad screensavers.  Quick and easy!

I also tried returning my library book early.  I just went to the Amazon Manage my Kindle function again, and used the option to return the book early.  I got an email at the account I use for Amazon telling me the book had been returned, and it no longer showed up in my book list on the Kindle.  

Update on 10/19/11:  Because I truly had learned to tune out the black flashes, I didn’t notice until today that the Kindle doesn’t do the flash-to-black for every page turn.  As Erin asked in comment 18 and Bryan explained in comment 21, the Kindle is like the Nook.  It simply changes the text for 5 page changes, then it flashes to black for one page change.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Amazon, ebook, ereader, Kindle

Amazon Kindle e-Reader Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 6, 2011 at 11:00 am.

So, the Amazon “Kindle Fire” tablet is now reality and I believe it will be a big seller. At $199 it is within shouting distance of that “no brainer” gadget purchase price. Best of all, for us consumers, Amazon is forcing the rest of the tablet market to prove their value and “reason for being”.

That doesn’t mean that Motorola, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Vizio, Samsung and whoever else is making an Android tablet this week is going to be out of business. Oh, and unless Apple hires Leo Apotheker (former CEO of Hewlett-Packard), I very much doubt the iPad is going to be killed off anytime soon.

There is an “if” though, because I’m writing about a device I’ve only seen in demo videos. Problems have been known to become apparent when a million users fire up a new device or service. But, for the sake of this article I’m going to assume that the demos are real, the people that used the demo units are being honest and that Amazon is sticking with their practice of not releasing products until they are ready. Besides, if Amazon doesn’t deliver it will make for an even better article come mid-November.

First let’s talk about the timing of Amazon’s release. It’s about as good as it could get. The product is available for presale now, on the cusp of the fourth quarter, it will be released over a month before Christmas and most importantly, may be available several months before Apple is expected to announce its new iPad model(s).

In designing the Kindle Fire Amazon looked at their target market and only included hardware necessary to support that offering. The device features:

1. 1 Ghz Dual Core Processor
2. 7″ multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors
3. Battery Life – 7.5 hours of video or 8 hours of book reading (WiFi Off)
4. Weight 14.6 ounces (413 grams)
5. Charges from wall adapter OR computer USB port
6. Free cloud storage for all Amazon content.
7. One-month Prime Subscription
8. 8GB RAM
9. Amazon Silk web browser (http://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/introducing-amazon-silk/)

So, Amazon has developed a device that when coupled with their extensive online content library is clearly aimed at the consumer/home market both in price and capabilities. I doubt we’ll be reading stories about the Kindle Fire being used as a Point-of-Sale system or for navigating commercial aircraft.

However, the Kindle Fire has more than enough processing power to provide for smooth video playback, fast app launches and a responsive user interface. The display is bright, has a higher pixel density than the iPad 2, and (hallelujah!) an anti-reflective screen.

If the battery life lives up to the claims it’s more than acceptable for consumer use and being able to charge the device from either the wall or a standard USB port makes it less likely you’ll have to carry, or hunt for a high-amperage charger when needed. Basically, you’ll be able to charge it with the same charger or cable you’re using for a number of other devices in your home or car.

The Kindle Fire comes with 8GB of storage space and no slot for extra memory. I believe that is going to be sufficient when you consider Amazon is also including free storage on their cloud system. To give you an idea I looked at memory usage on my iPad where I have over 350 apps installed and they only take up about 3GB of space. For further comparison I checked my T-Mobile G2 phone and found that 150 apps there resided in less than 700MB of memory.

This should leave sufficient room for the device to hold several hours of video, books and a lot of music, and provided there’s a WiFi signal available content can be removed from the device and new downloaded from your online library. Once you have purchased content from Amazon it is always available. I suspect that Amazon will charge for non-Amazon content that is uploaded to their service much as they do with their existing MP3 library service (the first 5GB of non-Amazon content is free and 20GB of storage costs $20/year with higher limits available.).

What may also aid in the Kindle Fire being a game-changer is their new “Silk” browser. Amazon is attempting to split the workload of the browser between their “EC2” cloud service and the device. They’ll be caching pages in their cloud service as well as making intelligent guesses (based on data gathered from all of their users) at what links you’re likely to follow and pre-downloading them to the device. They’ll also be optimizing (shrinking) graphics and other content so that it is only the quality and size necessary to look good on the Kindle Fire’s display. Companies like AOL, Opera, Skyfire and a few others have tried similar, albeit less complex, schemes in the past. If Amazon can succeed in speeding up the browsing experience it would become another significant differentiator between them and the competition.

Amazon’s choices of what features they didn’t include in the Kindle Fire are almost as important as the features they did. Amazon’s new tablet reportedly does not include:

1. GPS or Accelerometer (G-Sensor)
2. Bluetooth Radio
3. 3G/4G Radio
4. No Microphone
5. No Cameras
6. No Memory Expansion Slot
7. No HDMI/mini HDMI port

All of these missing features were shaved to reduce cost, size/weight and battery usage. The only item on the list that surprises me is the Bluetooth radio as it would allow people to connect their wireless headphones and external speakers. Perhaps one can be added via the device’s mini-USB port, but that smacks of the same connectivity unfriendliness as the iPad Camera Connection kit for the iPad. Dante’ should have included “dongle usage and storage” as one of the “Circles of Hell” .

Some will complain about the lack of a 3G/4G option, but I don’t believe Amazon wanted to include a feature that would require their customers to contract with a third-party company. The cost of providing an all-inclusive 3G package like they offer on the existing 3G Kindle readers would have been too pricey. Customers don’t like metered service, contracts and, in general, mobile carriers. Even the best of the carriers is ranked pretty low on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.

I’m sure AT&T’s backpedaling on the iPad 3G’s $30/month unlimited package (it’s now $25/month for 2GB) shortly after the iPad 3G was launched also had struck a nerve. It wouldn’t take many movie downloads to more than equal the price of the device in data charges. That may lead to unhappy customers.

On a side note, I’d suggest that anyone absolutely needing 3G/4G service for their Kindle Fire consider purchasing one of the standalone mobile hotspots. For roughly the same cost you could have 4G service (if available) and use it with a variety of devices. There are also some phones offered by the carriers that allow tethering as part of their data plan (My T-Mobile G2 phone is one of them).

The rest of the items are superfluous to the Kindle Fire’s intended use. The Amazon’s development team was not intent on replacing your computer, car navigation system, smartphone or point and shoot camera. The Kindle Fire is a relatively inexpensive device that is meant to fulfill the desire to watch TV shows, movies, play games, read books, newspapers and magazines, listen to music, browse the web and check things like email and personal calendars. My guess is that list covers about 85% of the use most tablets see today and a far higher-percentage of the use predicted for the hundreds of millions of people that haven’t yet purchased a tablet.

Certainly there are going to be people that want a device that has one or more of the features that Amazon did not include. Amazon is gambling that a lot of consumers are going to decide against paying $200 more for some of the fuller featured Android tablets or $300 – $450 extra for a WiFi iPad/3G iPad with GPS capability.

Presently, there’s only one successful tablet maker, Apple and the iPad. I’m looking forward to seeing how Apple reacts to the Kindle Fire. Their response is going to tell us a lot about Apple’s market strategy moving forward. Do they want to be a sales leader in the tablet marketplace or are they content to be the manufacturer of a highly regarded, high-margin luxury model? Steve Jobs once stated that the Macintosh’s market share was greater than that of Porsche, BMW or Mercedes and being the BMW or Mercedes of the computer market wasn’t a bad thing. We’ll soon get to see if that’s still the Apple strategy or if they’re willing to compete based on price in the tablet marketplace. With their locked-in content libraries (iTunes and the Apple App Store) proving to be a significant profit center for Apple the pressure to drop price or produce lower-end iPads might be very tempting.

While Apple is planning its next move the other Tablet makers need to decide in which segment of the market they want to compete. Google (and its licensees like Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Samsung and even Sony) trails both Amazon and Apple badly in availability of streaming video and other saleable content.

Even if Google can improve its content offerings it would be hard for their partner tablet manufacturers to reduce their margins of the units when they will be sharing their profits from the sale of content with Google or even Amazon’s own Android market offerings.

I expect we’ll see some of these guys pull the plug on their current offerings and others re-work their devices to go after the other potentially large tablet segment, productivity machines. Samsung, Asus, and Acer have always been adept at producing lower-cost versions of products. None has ever shown itself to be a market pioneer or provider of entertainment content. This may lead to some of them jumping ship from Android to Windows 8 and its desktop integration, but that’s over a year away and in a marketplace where the lifecycle of a device can be less than two months (HP TouchPad), a year is a long, long time.

Sony’s choices will also be interesting to watch. While their e-readers have been technically competent they haven’t really challenged Amazon or Barnes & Noble in that marketplace. They have two tablets and, of course, their own library of video and music content. In the past they have licensed that to vendors like Apple and Amazon. I doubt they’re going to pull that content from Apple or Amazon, two significant revenue sources; however tablets like the Kindle Fire do pose a threat to their portable gaming devices, and even to their PlayStation 3 consoles.

My guess, Sony will also focus their tablet offerings to compete in the productivity segment and perhaps work a revenue sharing deal with Amazon for content distribution through their PlayStation devices.

For those old-timers out there like me, I expect that the Kindle Fire could have the same impact on the tablet market as the Commodore 64 had on the personal computer industry back in 1982. Commodore’s CEO Jack Tramiel used to proudly claim that he made, “Computers for the masses, not the (upper) classes.

So, we may end up with the two of the highest rated companies for customer satisfaction in their respective markets going toe to toe (Apple is the highest rated Personal Computer Manufacturer and Amazon holds the top spot among online retailers according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index).

For those that enjoy watching the machinations, sparring and outright wars in the high technology industry this should be a great show.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Acer, Amazon, Apple, asus, Commodore, iPad, Jack Tramiel, Kindle, Samsung, Sony, Tablet

Kindle Fire – A Tablet for the Masses? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 2, 2011 at 11:00 am.

So I’m sitting on the Reunification Express on my way to Hue from Hanoi in Vietnam.  It’s a 13 hour trip and I need something to while away the time.  This is the third overseas trip I’ve done with my Kindle and figured why not write a quick review of how useful the Amazon Kindle 3G is as a travel companion.

Note 18/1/2011: - We’ve just established that only the UK/International Kindle 3G has any coverage in Vietnam see comments below 

Everyone knows how good it is as an ereader.  The capability to carry multiple books certainly helps relieve those boring plane flights and waits in Airport terminals. In many destinations it’s very hard or expensive to find books and taking books with you isn’t realistic because of the size and weight that this would curtail.

I always used to pack at least a Lonely Planet Guide and often a Frommers as well, these are now readily  available as ebooks and are much easier to carry on the Kindle and leave much more room and less weight in your travel bag. The ability to quickly search and find information quickly is invaluable.

One of the most asked questions I’ve seen on Kindle forums is “Is it worth the extra money to get the 3G version ?” Well I suppose  it’s really a case of YMMV, primarily based on how and where you use.  Now Amazon sells the 3G mainly as a means to instantly download a book wherever you are without needing WiFi but I must admit I don’t see myself sitting on a beach and getting the urge that bad to obtain a book that I must have straight away. For the connected traveller however it’s the “experimental” browser coupled with the 3G that’s the real bonus.

Lets be honest, the browser is slow to  refresh,  only monochrome and it’s very slow to navigate, but for a quick email, a check of Facebook or to keep up with a text based forum it’s pretty good and works just fine. Push it a little bit harder with a more graphic intensive site and it’s not unusable but can be slow to load or refresh graphics. Here’s a picture of  the-gadgeteer site. Apologies for the quality but I’m now in a dark Vietnamese Hotel Room  You can see the zoom section ( with the magnifier ) that you can move around with the cursor, as I say not unusable but not the most efficient way of viewing a web site. 

Now here’s the kewl part, Amazon’s 3G covers a multitude of countries and best of all….. it’s free ! Just be aware that in some countries you will only get the Amazon Store and Wikipedia ( I can’t actually find a full list of access by country ) and not full web access.

You don’t have to be tethered to finding a Wifi hotspot or accumulate big International Data fees. A lot of your basic stuff can be done right on your Kindle.

So here’s some of my hints how to make this free service work for you while overseas.

1. Don’t have 3G turned on all the time.  Only enable it when you’re going to attached to the Internet.  One of the great things about the Kindle is its long battery life.  3G sucks the battery life big time.

2. Use mobile versions of websites.  It’ll display quicker, better and be quicker  to navigate. There are some exceptions though. If I want to just view Facebook then I can use the mobile version but if I want to update my status the cursor won’t find the status input bar. I need to use the full Facebook site.

3. Now Australian telecommunication companies International Roaming fees are horrendous.  A single SMS send back to Australia is three times the normal cost. I have set up an account with an Australian VOIP provider.  Using the service I can use the mobile version of their website on the Kindle  to send SMS at a fraction of the cost back home, in fact I use these guys to sent SMS even at home as they’re so cheap. The service is set up to display my Australian mobile number as the sender so people know its from me and there’s no charge while roaming to receive an SMS back to my mobile.

4. Similarly my VOIP provider allows me to do Webcallback. By using their site I can put in my current hotel phone number, the person I want to calls number and the provider will connect the two all at their much lower cost (especially compared with hotel rates ).

5. Use it to keep up to date with currency exchanges via  www.xe.com

6. Here in Vietnam some ISPs block Facebook.  I’m guessing it’s political but can’t find the exact reason and I’m not sure why it only seems to be some.  Because the Kindle 3G uses Amazon’s proxies access isn’t an issue. Facebook away. I must admit I’m not a big Facebook user but it allows me to put the odd post up so family and friends know where I am and that I’m all right. This should also work in other blocked countries.

7. Store documents like your itinerary, travel insurance, medical notes in either PDF or Mobi format on you Kindle so it’s always available and not subject to paper creasing, ripping or accidental disposal. Being on the Kindle means no connectivity required.

8. Subscribe to a “cloud” service like Evernote or Springpad to keep online copies of documentation accessible via you Kindle.

So is 3G worth the extra money ?  To me it’s a resounding YES!! It allows me anywhere, anytime internet access to quickly check emails, Facebook and all my regular forums. It keeps me up to date with all the latest news from home via newspapers online and stay in contact with the loved ones. It helps fill in those hours waiting or travelling . Sure it’s slow and clunky, but it does the job.  I know I’ve saved more money in a single trip than the extra dollars for the 3G.

Oh and did I mention that 3G access is free all over the world ?

The downsides ? Page loads, screen refresh and navigation is cumbersome. The keyboard is also the same. Its painful to type too much and its handling of numbers (two input methods ) and especially punctuation is atrocious. But let’s not forget that this is meant to be an ebook reader. The experimental browser is really just the cream on the top

Hopefully these hints help someone out there and if you’ve got any more hints please post them.

(Oh and in the interest of full disclosure this article WASN’T written on my Kindle.  The keyboard just isn’t good enough for an article of this length. This was written on my other travel companion,  my Galaxy Tab 7″ using Swype)

(Oh and apology for any spelling, grammatical or other mistakes. Let me tell you, I’m glad we went with the “soft sleepers’ on the train because I’d hate to think what the “hard sleepers” are like !!!  Not a lot of good sleep.  :) )

( Final Oh, I promise. I’ve just edited and amended this article from my 3G Kindle using the WordPress mobile web page in bed, in a hotel in Hoi Anh. For some reason every room I’ve had this trip seems to be a WiFi deadspot )

Available from Amazon for $189

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews, Travel Gear

Tagged: ebook, Kindle, Travel

Amazon Kindle 3G – The Perfect Travel Companion originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 11, 2011 at 11:05 am.

The forthcoming Amazon tablet is now officially leaked thanks to MG Siegler’s (TechCrunch) hand’s-on look at the device. It’s going to be a 7-inch color touch-screen with no physical buttons running Android…well, sort of. Amazon has elected to use a version of Android prior to 2.2 (Most new Android-based tablets are running 3.2 or the soon to be release 4.x) as the base and then created an entirely new interface completely integrated with Amazon’s own apps like Kindle Reader, MP3 Cloud Player, Amazon Instant Videos, Amazon’s Store, Amazon Appstore, etc.  From what I’ve read none of the Google-supplied Apps will be on the device. Whether the browser supplied on the device will run Adobe’s Flash content remains to be seen. If you want more technical details take a hop over to Mr. Siegler’s article.

It appears that Amazon is creating a device much like Apple’s iPad, with three key differences; size, price and, most importantly, content provider.

The new Amazon Kindle will be substantially smaller than the iPad and while we don’t have the actual weight yet it will most likely be considerably lighter. That’s wonderful for portability and for reading books and listening to music, but may not be that great when it comes to watching videos.

Amazon is reportedly going to sell the tablet for around $250 and include a no-additional-charge subscription to Amazon Prime service (It’s unclear if there will be a renewal fee or not). Prime normally costs $79 a year and grants subscribers no-charge 2-day shipping on many items and a “Netflix-like” library of instant-watch content.  While the Prime instant watch library isn’t huge it has been growing and with the Netflix/Starz breakup could end up being close in the number of titles available.

The third key difference between the new Amazon tablet and actually the whole family of iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad) is also their closest similarity. When the iPad was launched it was labeled as a “content consumption device”, more specifically an Apple provided content consumption device. While possible, Apple makes it difficult to load outside content on its devices much preferring you buy your music, videos, games, apps and books all through Apple-branded stores provided on the device.  All of these Apple stores produce revenue for Apple. Apple went so far as to forbid Amazon and others from having links to their own stores in apps running on iOS devices.

Amazon is going down the same path, but at a lower price and throw-in a fair amount of video content at no additional charge to boot. It will be interesting to see if the Amazon Appstore will allow for the distribution of the Barnes & Noble Nook reader with its store built-in (Presently it’s only available through the Google Market which will not be included in the Android Kindle tablet.)

This is why I wouldn’t call what Amazon is releasing just another Android tablet. It has little to do with Android, screen size, CPU speeds and all the other techno stuff that the other tablet manufacturers seem to be playing up. It’s also decidedly not directed at the devices like the slightly smaller Samsung Note that are directed more at productivity. In many ways the new Kindle tablet more closely resembles a large iPad Touch, or a game console for adults. It will be sold at a low price, perhaps at or below cost and then create multiple locked-in revenue streams for Amazon.  Amazon is not competing with the iPad they’re competing with what many call the Apple eco-system.

But wait…there’s more! (And you thought Billy Mays was gone), Amazon has not only created a real competitor for Apple, but has taken a nice shot at going after Amazon’s other large rival, Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart? Yes, Wal-Mart. Amazon still makes the vast majority of its revenue by selling and shipping products to customers. Their chief competition has always been the “Walton family’s businesses”. People still prefer to buy from retail stores because they don’t have to deal with the time or cost of delivery.

Remember the first benefit to an Amazon Prime subscription?  Yep, Amazon may end up with millions of people with access to a prominently featured Amazon Store App as well as no-additional charge 2-day shipping. Couple that with Amazon’s ability to avoid charging sales tax in a great many states and they may take  sales away from their very large, brick and mortar competitor.  A percentage point or two increase in sales in a market that size is big, big money.

So, while the technology fans are going to talk about a fork in Android development and the ramifications of fragmentation I believe this is far bigger than a technical issue. Amazon is  going to be the first tablet to truly go after what Apple created and at the same time potentially reap some rewards in their core business as well.

Is this an iPad killer? No, I don’t believe so. I do think that over time we’ll see Apple’s market share shrink, but as Steve Jobs once said about the Macintosh, “Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?” Absolutely nothing, Steve, and it now appears we’re going to have Amazon attempting to play the role of  Toyota.

I am excited about the new Kindle, but I’m hoping they don’t stop developing the pure reader devices. I like tablets, but when it comes to reading books (a small percentage of the content marketplace) I really appreciate the much-easier-on-the-eyes e-ink displays.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, eBook Readers and Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, News

Tagged: Amazon, Android, Apple, iPad, Kindle

Amazon’s New Kindle Tablet – An iPad for the Rest of Us? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 4, 2011 at 10:00 am.

Amazon recently registered the domain names Kindlescribe.com and Kindlescribes.com.  This adds to their KindleAir and KindleSocialNetwork domain names they registered earlier this month.   We’ve all heard the rumours about a tablet based device but what else does Amazon have planned ? An ebook writer ? A light weight aluminum e-reader ?   A competitor to Facebook ?

Hope it’s nothing too nice as I only just ordered  Kindle number 4 this week.   Thoughts, guesses, speculations fellow Gadgeteers ????

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle

Amazon Registers Domains – Re Kindle the Rumours originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 25, 2011 at 10:00 am.

Over the past few years Amazon has created Kindle reading software for just about every electronic device in existence. Today, they announced they were taking the Kindle to the cloud with their HTML5 based reader.  Now anyone running Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari on Windows or Mac OSX or Apple’s Mobile Safari on the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone can forgo having to download an app and just go to www.amazon.com/cloudreader to access their personal libraries. Support for Internet Explorer, Firefox and many other mobile browsers is in the works as well. The new version of the reader was seen as a response to Apple Computer, Inc. forcing Amazon, and others, to remove access to their online bookstore from Apps distributed through the Apple App Store.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: ebook, Kindle

Amazon Sends Kindle to the Cloud originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 10, 2011 at 8:55 pm.

Aussie ( potential )  e-readers rejoice. No longer will you have to muck around with exchange rates and overseas freight ( albeit very fast 3-4 day turnaround from the US ) to obtain your Amazon Kindle.

Both Dick Smith Electronics and Big W are showing the Kindle and accessories available on their websites. Both sites show  it available for pre-order at the moment with shipping on the 29th of August.  Looks like they’ll be available instore as well and with DSE if there’s a problem you can return it to your local store.

Even with the Aussie Dollar high at the moment , looks like you’ll pay a small premium but many will be willing to wear it for the peace of mind of local purchase and support.

Wifi only $159AU  3G $219AU  (with free shipping if ordered online)

( Looks like there’ll be another brother or sister for my existing 2 Kindles very soon  )

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: australia, ereader, Kindle

Amazon Kindle locally available in Australia – woohoo! originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 7, 2011 at 8:40 pm.

Are you looking for a stylish cover to protect your 3rd generation Kindle eReader? OCTOVO recently sent me their Vintage Leather Book Cover and it’s a keeper.

Note: The images in this review can be clicked for a larger view.

This cover is made from 100% natural vegetable tanned leather that has been distressed to look like it has been worn and used for years. It has scratches and scuffs, but is still smooth to the touch, with neat even stitches are sewn around the edges to give it some contrast.

As you can see in the image above, there’s an elastic band to hold the cover closed. The cover does stay flat on its own though, which is a big plus.

The cover opens easily and again, it lays flat on its own. There’s a Black leather flap pocket on the left cover where you can tuck important papers. The interior is lined with soft microfiber.

The Kindle is held in place with 4 elastic straps. I’d rather the cover use the special slots on the left side of the Kindle, but I suppose that would increase the price.

The elastic straps do not block any of the Kindle’s switches or ports.

The cover folds easily underneath the Kindle, allowing you to comfortably hold it in one hand.

Since the Kindle is already very thin, this cover doesn’t add much bulk. That said, the cover is rigid and thick, allowing it to provide a good deal of protection. The edges extend slightly farther than the body of the Kindle, so all sides are protected in case of a drop.

I really like the OCTOVO Kindle 3rd gen Vintage Leather Book Cover. It’s made well, protects well, looks great and is easy to use. My only complaint is that it’s pretty pricey given the fact that you can buy a Kindle 3 for $114, which is only $39 more than this cover. I still really like the look and feel of it though, so if you don’t mind the price, this is a very nice cover and will definitely outlast your Kindle.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Kindle

OCTOVO Kindle 3rd gen Vintage Leather Book Cover Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 17, 2011 at 4:30 pm.

The just|mobile Slide

Holding your iPad up during use takes many forms. If you’re at your desk, a full sized stand can be used. But if you’re on the go, and working from random places with your phone, other materials, maybe eating or collaborating and want to have the device at a consistent angle without having to hold it, what do you do? The award-winning team at tools has come up with an elegant solution, being manufactured and sold by just|mobile: the Slide iPad stand.

At first glance, it’s just a strange slab of aluminum with a hook on one end and a loop on the other. At 3.5″ x 4.5″, it’s not an imposing device, either. But placed within that loop is a rubber cylinder that changes this simple piece into an infinitely adjustable holder for your iPad, iPhone, Kindle, or about any single-surfaced device. The secret is in the cylinder.

The just|mobile Slide - ready to work

To use it, you place the cylinder on the slide, where it fits snugly against the hook part. Soft rubber pads on the bottom protect furniture from scratches. Roll the cylinder up slightly, and place your tablet between the lip and the rubber roller, and release both. The slight weight of the tablet will hold the roller against the slide, and keep everything as you left it.

just|mobile Slide - portrait mode, high angle

just|mobile Slide - landscape mode, low angle

Adjustments are easy: To lower your device, reach behind, roll the cylinder up, and lower the tablet to the place you want it to be. To raise it, simply tilt the tablet up to where you want it, and then release. The roller will roll down as you bring the tablet forward and hold it in place. It’s infinitely adjustable through it’s range, and there’s a slight lip at the top to prevent the roller from sliding off the back. Pretty neat.

Detail showing roller in storage silo

It is quite stable, either at a low angle for typing on the virtual keyboard, or playing a game or whatever. In portrait orientation, tapping near the top of the device can cause it to roll backwards, possibly unhooking it from the front lip. That’s an extreme case, however, but if the iPad is in a cover, it is more likely to happen.

It will work with some cases and covers, but works best with a naked device. You’ll have to test them on a case-by-case basis. (See what I did there? Case by case – get it?)

Ready to travel. Note the ample rubber pads that protect your furniture.

At $40, it’s not cheap, but it is solidly made and works like a charm. It makes a very elegant statement. There is a logo on the front of the lip, but it’s almost invisible. There’s even a black velveteen drawstring bag (with another just|mobile logo) to carry it in, which will prevent it from coming apart or scratching anything in your bag. I give it four stars out of five.

Filed in categories: Android related, eBook Readers and Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, Reviews

Tagged: ebook reader stand, iPad, iPad stand, Kindle, Stand for iPad, Stand for tablets, Tablet, tablet stand

Slide iPad Stand from just|mobile Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 29, 2011 at 3:00 pm.

The just|mobile Encore

Tablets are the new black this year. And that means that accessory makers are out in full force to bring us ways to integrate them into our lives. I was recently sent a brand new stand from just|mobile, the makers of such items as the Xtand, the Slide, and the AluPen for tablets, as well as a handful of sleekly designed, highly functional stands for laptops. This new stand fits well within the tradition. It is called the Encore.

Built on a circular loop base just less than 6″ in diameter and less than an inch in width, the Encore has a black rubberized tongue that extends from one edge of the loop for 4.5″. This piece is 1.75″ wide, and is stiffly adjustable. It will hold it’s place, even if you lift the whole thing by it.

Encore base

On the opposite side of the base loop, there is a plastic extension from the base that extends about 3.5″ around the loop. While it’s less than a half inch tall, it’s just enough to secure an iPad or other tablet while it rests back against the long piece on the other side. The tablet will stay in position, yet easily adjust to any other angle, as far back as about 50° from the surface, which is fine for typing on the built-in keyboard for short sessions. It’s a bit high for extended keyboard work, however. (You’ll feel it in your wrists the following day!)

The Encore holding an iPad at a high angle.

The Encore at it's lowest angle.

When using with a case, the issue of what to do with the cover became quite a problem. If you flap it over the back, it’s hard to get to the support arm for adjustment. If you fold the cover under, the front lip is not quite tall enough to hold it in place with some cases. With more protective cases (heavier, thicker), the stand falls back to maximum angle once it’s at about 60°, or if there is any tapping on the top half of the screen. In portrait mode, it’s even less stable. Also, in portrait mode, it’s fairly easy to tap and have the whole base start to topple over backwards, with or without a case. Even something as simple as tapping and holding to select and edit in a word processor was too much pressure for the friction arm. (I think it’s possibly the added weight of the case causing the mechanism to slip.)

Landscape mode at a high angle.

Landscape at the lowest angle. Still pretty steep for typing a lot.

I don’t know at this point how long the friction of the stand will work, as there is no visible way to tighten it. The channel that allows it to adjust ends at the back, so it won’t go further without dramatic (read iPad-damaging) force, but staying at the higher angles may get sloppy over time. Three stars.

Filed in categories: Android related, eBook Readers and Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, Reviews

Tagged: ebook reader stand, iPad, iPad stand, Kindle, Stand for tablets, tablet stand

Just Mobile Encore Tablet Stand Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 10, 2011 at 12:08 pm.

Amazon announced today that they will be bringing library lending to the Kindle. No word on when this will be available, beyond “later this year”, but I think this is a huge change. They will be using the same system already in place with Overdrive. I reviewed this back in December. It will be interesting to see how this is implemented. Is it possible the Kindle will simply use the ePub and PDF DRM files Overdrive uses now, or will they be converted?

Amazon is also adding value to the process. They will support adding notes to loaned books that remain in your account, so that if you borrow it again, the notes will be available. They will also be available if you later purchase the title.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle, lending, library

Library Lending Coming to the Kindle originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 20, 2011 at 6:24 pm.

Amazon is offering a special version of their current Kindle for $114.00 – $25 off the normal price.  To get the discounted price, this version of the Kindle displays advertising on special screensavers and on a bar at the bottom of the home page.  Amazon says this advertising doesn’t interfere with reading, and they even have a special application that lets you vote on the screensavers you’d like to see on this Kindle.  The offers will help you save more money, like a $20 Amazon gift card for $10 or 6 Audible audio books for $6.  The Kindle with special offers will be released on May 3, and you can pre-order at Amazon now.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: eBook reader, Kindle

Amazon Offers the Kindle for $114.00 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 11, 2011 at 10:34 pm.

If you’ve been shopping for a stand for the iPad, you’ll know that they come in all variety of shapes, sizes and materials. We’ve reviewed plastic, metal and wooden stands here on The Gadgeteer. If you still haven’t found the perfect stand, here’s another to take a look at. It’s the handcrafted hardwood iEcostand. This stand allows you to display your iPad (iPhone and even Kindle 2) in either portrait or landscape orientations. It also has a swing-out arm to aid in stabilization. Each stand is priced at $17.95 and $1 of that price is donated to the American Forests Organizations to plant a tree.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, News

Tagged: iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Spotlight Gadgets, Stand

Hardwood iPad / iPhone / Kindle 2 stand originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 16, 2010 at 8:00 am.

Today Amazon announced a new sleeker, lighter and less expensive version of their popular eBook Reader. The new Kindle is priced at a very affordable $139 and is available in White or Graphite. Besides the obvious physical changes, the display is supposed to have 50% better contrast that previous versions, battery life is supposed to last an impressive length of time – one month! What’s missing to make the price so cheap? 3G connectivity. This new $139 version only offers WiFi. No word on availability yet. I don’t even see this new model posted on Amazon’s site.

[Via msnbs.com]

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: eBook reader, Kindle, Spotlight Gadgets

Amazon Announces Third Generation Kindle for $139 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 28, 2010 at 9:24 pm.