Kindle Tips

Summary:

New E-Ink Kindle (Paperwhite) with higher resolution screen (212 ppi).  A whiter screen, new fonts and a lighted touch screen.  The battery (with light) on will last 8 weeks at a charge.  Paperwhite 3G (free worldwide) version will be $179 and the Paperwhite wifi only will be $119. They new kindles can be ordered today and will ship on Oct 1.

The current Kindle 4 will be now $69 (ad supported).  The new lighted kindles do not seem to be ad supported.

Kindle Fire HD – 7 inch version for $199 (ships Sept 14), 8.9 inch version $299 (ships Nov 20)

Kindle Fire HD 4GLTE – $499

Slightly updated Kindle Fire – $159

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I love ebooks.  I primarily read digital formats.  But there are a couple of things I miss about physical books.  One of them is the ability to give books to friends and family.  Of course you can give a Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card.  Or you can ‘gift’ books using an email address on Amazon.

But Livrada has new idea.  They are physical gift cards that are for a specific book that can be redeemed for either Amazon Kindle or Nook books.

Right now they are exclusively sold at Target in the electronics section near ebook readers.

This is a good idea.  The cards have the cover of the book and the back has the description similar to the back cover of a paperback.

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One of the most unused, but nice features of the Kindle with Keyboard 3G is that it has web access.  Web access on a Kindle is not easy.  It is fairly slow, static, cannot handle modern web standards well.

But it is free, and it works almost anywhere in the world.  My sister-in-law brought her kindle to Kenya last year and was able to send us messages via twitter from out in the middle of no where.

But there are a few people that have really tried to break the system.  The Kindle is fairly hackable.  A few people have even tethered their computers to their kindle to try to obtain free internet access.

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Summary: A very good eink reader, highly recommended.

Last week on Amazon Local (Amazon Local is Amazon’s Groupon/Living Social competitor) there was a deal for the Kindle 4 (or Kindle Basic) for only $49. I did not really need another Kindle, but it was only $49 and I figured I could give it away to someone.

I have written about the Kindle 4 before, but I have not actually used a real one. After four days, about 700+ pages of reading I am thinking about making it my main kindle and using my Kindle with Keyboard to loan to friends.

What I Like

I am amazed how small and light it it. It is 1 inch shorter, .3 inches narrower and nearly 1/3 lighter than the Kindle with Keyboard. The screen is the same size and maybe a slight bit better (in the side by side comparison picture below, the darks seem a bit darker).

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One of the biggest promises of digital books is the ability to continuously update, correct and improve the text.  The author catches a typo after the book is published, they can correct it without waiting for a new edition of the book to be published.  A fact is discovered to be wrong (or changes after the book is published), it can be changed.

Unfortunately, the way Amazon structured it book updates means that up until now, when a book was updated the reader lost all notes and highlights from the old edition of the book.  Amazon learned that they need to ask for permission to update a book because of that.  So this is what the email used to look like from Amazon

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If you try to buy free kindle books long enough you will accidentally purchase a book that is no longer free, or at a price you are unwilling to pay.  The best way to prevent this is to refresh the page just before you purchase it to make sure you have to most recent purchase price.

If you do happen to buy a book that you thought was free, you can return the book within 7 days very easily.

First, you need to make sure you pay attention to your email receipts from Amazon.  This is the best way to catch a book that was not free.  In the past Amazon has sent you a receipt for every individual book that you purchased.  Recently, Amazon has been grouping books together so you get only one receipt a day.  This is much easier to look through and make sure you kindle book was actually free (or the price that you intended to pay.)

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