The Complete 2012 User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle: Covers All Current Kindles Including the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, and Kindle (5 page)

We believe that, in time, the vast majority of our readers will decide that they want to own both an E Ink Kindle and a Kindle Fire tablet, because of the very different uses that can be made of these two very different kinds of Kindle device. But we also realize that many of you will begin with an either/or choice. For advice on choosing between a Kindle Fire and an E Ink reader such as the Kindle Touch, see the section,
Tablet Computer or E Reader
.

Since this book covers all the Kindles, some of the chapters and sections will focus on features that do not apply to your Kindle. You may be interested in reading through such sections anyway so that you will have a clearer idea of how your device compares with other Kindles. But if you are just focusing for now on how to operate the Kindle that you have in your hands, feel free to read selectively. If you have an E Ink Kindle, for example, skip the chapters on watching movies, listening to music, and using apps. And because there are important differences between the E Ink and tablet computer versions of the Kindle, we will refer to all the E Ink Kindles as Kindle E Ink readers, and the LCD screen Kindles as Kindle tablets or “the Kindle Fire.”

When giving detailed instructions, we'll refer to the Kindles by model. To avoid confusion, we'll refer to the entry-level, lowest-cost Kindle as the "Kindle basic". On the other hand, when we refer to the "Kindle", we mean all Kindles including the Fire tablet.

But why would you want to read books on an electronic device? Aren't paper books a lot nicer to read? And what can the Kindle Fire tablet do that a computer can't do? Read on and find out.

Now in its sixth generation just four years after its November 2007 launch, the Kindle is a portal to all of the world’s knowledge and creativity. With a Kindle in your hand, you have unprecedented access to the world's books, both in print and out of print. You can shop the Amazon bookstore directly from any Kindle and access over one million paid titles priced at 99 cents and up, as well as Google books where you'll find more than a million free books - including classic literature. You can borrow Kindle books from a rapidly growing list of public libraries, or join an entirely legal peer-to-peer ebook lending community like Booklending.com to share lending-enabled books with readers of similar interests. And while printed books will always be a pleasure to read, the Kindle has its own pleasures, such as the ability to reformat text and adjust font sizes as desired or look up the meanings or references of unfamiliar words and phrases as you read, not to mention the ability to carry around your entire library in your pocket.

The Kindle Fire tablet also gives you access to the world's books but it also offers access to a rapidly growing list of magazines and newspapers in full color, music, movies and TV shows, audiobooks, and fast access to the World Wide web. In addition, the Fire tablet runs thousands of Android apps to further extend its capability.

We should also admit right up front a fact that may be evident: We hold a bias in favor of the Kindle.

But our bias is based on the fact that the E Ink Kindles, and now the Kindle Fire, make it easier than ever to do the things that we love to do: read, listen to music and audiobooks, watch movies and good, commercial-free television, function productively, and stay informed and connected via the web.

The Kindle was not the first e-reader, but it was the first to go mass-market, and for good reason. Amazon's Kindle line of e-book readers has a unique combination of features that optimize the reader's experience and are not available to users on any other e-book reader or tablet computer on the market:

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Simple-to-use dedicated e-reader “disappears” while you're reading--just as a print book would

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High-contrast E Ink Pearl display that looks like a printed page (E Ink Kindles)

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Easy to read in bright sunlight (E Ink Kindles)

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Brilliant color display (Kindle Fire)

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Ability to change fonts and line spacing

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Battery life of up to two months (E Ink Kindles)

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Storage for 1,500 to 3,500 books

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Text-to-Speech reads books to you (Kindle Keyboard, Touch, and DX)

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Lifetime content archiving on Amazon

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Buy books and periodicals from the Kindle and start reading in less than one minute

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Over 1,100,000 paid, current titles available in Kindle Store, with thousands more added each week

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The low prices for books

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Millions of free public-domain books

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3G Kindles offer free lifetime 3G wireless, with no contract and no monthly payments

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3G Kindles feature international wireless coverage in over 100 countries

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Wi-Fi for greater speed at hotspots, including in our own homes

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Fast page turns

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PDF reader can zoom and rotate

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Auto screen rotation (DX and Fire)

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web browsing for checking e-mail and more

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Fast Amazon Silk web browser on the Kindle Fire

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Lend books to friends and fellow members of lending communities like BookLending.com

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Borrow books from public libraries

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Special benefits for Amazon Prime members, including one free title per month from the Prime-eligible Kindle Lending Library and free instant streaming of over 12,000 Prime Instant Video TV and movie titles

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Listening to audio books from Audible.com and public domain audiobook services (available on all Kindles except Kindle basic)

All current Kindles except the Kindle DX have Wi-Fi connectivity. The Kindle Keyboard and Kindle Touch are available with both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. If you have one of the Wi-Fi only models, just ignore references to 3G connectivity. The only difference between the Wi-Fi and 3G models is that with the Wi-Fi model you need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network to have access to Whispernet, the Amazon Kindle Store, and the web. If you own a Kindle 3G, you can connect wherever 3G service is available, which is most cities and many rural areas. Note that all 3G Kindles except the DX also include Wi-Fi connectivity.

If you own one of the earlier Kindles that are no longer in production (Kindle 1 or Kindle 2), you may find sections of this book useful, but one of Windwalker's earlier Kindle guides will probably be more useful. You can find them in the Kindle Store at
 
http://amzn.to/sFU7Gh

Since the Kindle remembers the last page you read in every book and item on your Kindle, you can read this guide, press Home, go read something else, and come back to this guide where you left off. But you might find it easier to read this guide on your computer with one of the
Free Kindle Reading Apps
or the
Kindle Cloud Reader
so you can follow along on your physical Kindle.

Because this book has detailed instructions on using your Kindle and we cover all current Kindle models, we break out the instructions by model or groups of models. For example, some instructions apply to all E Ink Kindles, others only to 3G models, and still others to only the Kindle basic or Kindle Keyboard and Kindle DX. Since some Kindles have touch screens and others have physical buttons, we use the terms “press”, “touch”, and “tap” to mean a momentary touch of an icon, place on the screen, or physical button or key. “Long-press” means to press and hold a button or icon. This usually activates a different function than just tapping the same button. On the Kindle Keyboard and DX, pressing a combination such as “Alt+G” means to press and hold Alt while pressing another key.

For your convenience, this guide is extensively cross-referenced. Clicking on underlined hyperlinks (blue on color devices) takes you to a place in the book with details on that subject. For example, clicking on
Using this Book on the Kindle
takes you to the head of this section.

External hyperlinks will take you to web pages using the Kindle's web browser. We use shortened links generated by bit.ly to make it easier to type in a link on a computer if you don't want to follow a link on your Kindle or don't have a Whispernet connection. For example, clicking on
http://bit.ly/rqYe2p
or typing it into a web browser takes you to
http://kindlenationdaily.com/
. With the Kindle Fire’s fast Amazon Silk web browser, of course, it’s easier than ever to tap an embedded link in this or any other book to visit a website.

To return to the previous page after clicking on either an internal or external hyperlink, press the Back button or the Back arrow on the Kindle Fire and Touch displays.

If you get lost following hyperlinks or anywhere else on your Kindle, press the Home button. All Kindles except the Fire have a physical Home button. The Fire has a Home icon on the left side of the Options bar at the bottom of the screen. This always takes you to the Home screen on your Kindle - the starting place for everything you do on your Kindle. (Note: Within certain Kindle Fire apps including some magazine apps, you’ll have to tap the app’s Home icon first to navigate to the app’s Home page, and then you’ll be able to tap the Kindle Fire’s native Home icon.)

We’ve made this book DRM-free so that once you own it, you are free to download it to an unlimited number of your Kindle-registered devices, and we want to suggest that you will be able to get the most out of it if you keep a copy on your devices with fast web access such as the Kindle Fire, Kindle for PC, Kindle for Mac or other
Free Kindle Reading App
s. This will allow you to move seamlessly between the text and the webpages to which we provide links throughout the text.

As with any book purchased in the Kindle Store, it's a snap to request that Amazon send a copy to your other devices. Just use your computer to go to your Manage Your Kindle page (
http://amzn.to/sgSbZL
) and find this or any title under "Books." To the right of the title, select
 
"Deliver to" from the “Actions” pull-down menu, and select your device. Within a few seconds you should hear the sizzle of wires burning and the book will appear on the Home screen of the Kindle app to which you have sent it.

Users have discovered many undocumented features of the Kindle. Some of these are useful; others, not so much. Useful features are included here, but remember that since they are undocumented, they could be removed when the Kindle is updated with software releases. Since Amazon pushes these updates to all Kindles via Whispernet, undocumented features could disappear without warning.