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 (7 page)

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Multi-touch

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Virtual keyboard for shopping in the Kindle Store, annotating, searching, and web browsing

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Fast Silk web browser

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Fast dual-core processor

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Low cost for a tablet computer - $199

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Holds 80 apps plus 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books

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Wi-Fi

So, that question again: which Kindle is for you?

For reading novels and other material where color is not that important, but battery life and readability in bright light are important, choose one of the E Ink Kindles.

For watching movies, checking e-mail, listening to music, surfing the web, playing games, and reading in color, choose the Kindle Fire.

For living a fully connected life with Amazon as your go-to provider of cultural content and the wide world of the web at your fingertips, get ‘em both.

Among the Kindle E Ink readers, there are some other factors to consider. If your primary use is pure reading and you don't plan to do much searching and annotating, the Kindle basic is a great choice. It is small, light, and simple.

If you plan to take a lot of notes and do a lot of searching, as well as reading, the Kindle Keyboard or Kindle Touch make entering text much easier. The Kindle Keyboard uses a physical keyboard with small buttons to control the Kindle and enter text. The Kindle Touch uses on-screen buttons and a virtual keyboard activated by touch. It's a personal choice - some people like physical buttons, and some like touch screens.

All Kindles can connect to a feature that Amazon calls Whispernet. Whispernet not only synchronizes your Kindles and Free Kindle Reading Apps; it also allows you to shop in the Amazon Kindle Store for books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, music, and movies and surf the web through the Kindle's browser. The Kindle Fire takes things a giant step beyond the Whispernet with Amazon’s new high-speed Silk browset and instant streaming between the Amazon Cloud and the Fire’s onboard apps for Kindle books, Audible.com audiobooks, Amazon Instant Video and Amazon MP3 music files.

The Kindle Touch and Kindle Keyboard each come in Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi plus 3G models. With the Wi-Fi models, you must be in range of an available Wi-Fi hotspot to use Whispernet. This could be your home network, or a public hotspot such as a library or coffee shop.

The 3G models use the AT&T cellular telephone network to connect to Whispernet. In addition, all the 3G models except the DX can also use Wi-Fi to connect to Whispernet, which generally results in faster download speeds.

What many potential Kindle 3G owners don't realize is that 3G Whispernet is free.
Unlike a cell phone data plan that can run $30 per month or more, Whispernet and Internet access on the Kindle 3G is free: there are NO monthly charges, ever.

So for as little as $99, you get free access to the world's largest bookstore via Whispernet, as well as the Internet via both 3G and Wi-Fi. The $40 (Keyboard) or $50 (Touch) difference between the Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi will be paid for in less than two months, or you can save it on the front end if you opt for the Kindle 3G with Special Offers.

The Kindle Keyboard and Kindle Touch 3G also have Wi-Fi, so if you are in an area with Wi-Fi service, you can use it instead of 3G. Generally, Wi-Fi is faster than 3G.

The Kindle Touch Wi-Fi, Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi, and Kindle Fire all come with Wi-Fi only. These models are good choices for those who usually have access to Wi-Fi.

The Kindle basic, Kindle Touch, and Kindle Keyboard also come in lower cost versions with “Special Offers.” In a development that seems entirely consistent with the popularity of websites like Groupon, Living Social, and Woot, these models allow Amazon to advertise “special offers,” instead of the familiar screen savers that some Kindle owners have taken to calling the “dead authors.” Amazon has pledged that ads will never interfere with reading, and our experience has confirmed that such ads only appear when you first wake up your Kindle, and at the bottom of the Home screen, never within any content while you are reading it. Over at Kindle Nation, readers have coined the name “Kindeal” for the Kindles with Special Offers, and Windwalker has blogged effusively about his Kindeal experience: he has already saved more than the cost of his new Kindeal through special offers on items that he says he was planning to buy even without the deals.

While some readers say they are annoyed by the ads and special deals, the proof of the Kindeal's popularity may be in the pudding: the Amazon bestseller list of electronic items. Currently, each of the Special Offers Kindles are outselling their non-ad-supported counterparts.

Unless you spend most of your time within range of Wi-Fi networks, or if you have special needs,
we recommend a Kindle Touch 3G or Kindle Keyboard 3G.

The price difference of $50 in the cost of the Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi model and the 3G model places an elegant value-proposition accent on the Kindle's wireless connectivity. For instance, if you think that either of these Kindles is worth $139 as an e-reader, just one question remains: would you pay $50 one time, with no monthly fees or AT&T contracts, for wireless connectivity that would allow you to check e-mail, sports scores, stocks, weather, and any text-intensive website from just about anywhere in the world for the rest of your life?