Claire...its not as complicated to load flash as you may think.....it took me about 30 minutes in total...but only because I am not a kid and wasnt brought up with technology....I found using my laptop with the instructions, I managed to get Flash loaded on my kindle by first loading a new browser....Dophin....so its fiddly, but if I can do it, anyone can.
If I had realised the irritating restrictions...such as fiddling around with Flash (I am angry with Flash for dropping support of Android)....and in retrospect, would probably have gone with an ipad...but of course the Kindle is less than half the price....
This is answer is an amalgam of two previous answers I gave in another discussion on this subject with an adjustment for what I have found out since, I hope it helps.
I have the new Kindle Hd. I don't realy want it to be a tablet computer so I think of it as an e-reader with internet extras. What I mean by this is that you can't do word, Excel etc. But I can surf the net if there is a wireless signal and pick up emails.
The big down with the new Kindle Fire is that it doesn't support flash player. If you want to watch you tube videos you can if they aren't flash player ones. You can sideload itv player and BBc i player to the kindle fire but they don't work if you are outside the Uk When I go to the Uk ( once in a blue moon)I expect they will work. The old version of the kindle fire USA did support flash player so it could be worth thinking of getting an older one. They say you can get a version of Flash from google play but the kindle won't use google play unless you do something horribly complicated to it( formatting or rooting something quite profound). I found online instructions but decided I was happy watching odd things on you tube for free at the moment. Just the other week i found a new app for Filmon called filmon family TV which means I can now have some streamed uk tv on the kindle plus a very useful radio app called tunein which means ican listen to the radio while I sew in direct rather than listening via podcast as I did previously. i can still listen to podcasts on the kindle fire.
You can of course watch as much as you want to pay for with Love Film which is an Amazon company
I have my Kindle registered to a Uk adress for the most part, apart from when I want to download apps and then I have to switch it to my french address download the app from the app store, I believe this is because of my french IP address, and then I switch back to the Uk amazon . I do this because I get more choice of free books on the UK Amazon.
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You can read non amazon stuff on the Kindle Fire HD I have used 2 sites for free ebooks. Which I have been very happy with.
http://www.smashwords.com/books/category/3/newest/0/free/full/140
http://www.feedbooks.com/original
You just have to side load them via the USB cable. I was given a 15£ gift voucher by my sister but being a cheapskate I have still about £9 left 6 months later, and am working my way through everything that is free so far I have about 1400 books on the kindle plus 1 film and some music i.e.. pod-casts I only have the 32GB one but it's doing fine. It saved our bacon when the computer broke down as i could still check emails etc. Couldn't get the hang of predictive text however. I think that's me not the machine.
I have no knowledge of the nexus but I do know it supports flash according to the critics reviews.
I am very happy with my Kindle Fire as it does what I want, it's an e-reader with benefits. Hope that helps
Yes, that's right. They are kept in your Amazon account so it's never a problem .Also if there are any updates on the books you've downloaded they notify you and the amendments are downloaded for you.
Not as far as I am aware...they are stored in the ether....when I bought a second kindle...all the books that were on my other kindle...were sat waiting to be downloaded...ie....click on them...was very easy. I believe the fact you own them....they are in your Amazon account.
What actually happens when a kindle expires - do you lose all the downloads?
My difficulty with pads is the typing...I am a touch typist and I find it clumsy to type on a small screen....so for me the keypad option at times...makes it perfect!
In France...returning to UK Tuesday then onto Dubai to visit kids...back to France for summer. Husband said,...if you have only enough room in your life for one more gadget...go for the ipad....best thing about it is you can add to the gadgetry...and buy a cover with a keyboard...to turn it into a laptop. Must say, since he got his he has been a very happy bunny....no cursing at it or counting to 10 so must be good! Hope you have a great birthday Sheila...x
Good point Mark. I love my kindle(s) but love books as well. I can lay in the bath and read my books and dont mind if they become a little dogeared...but when travelling....the kindle makes my life so much easier...can remember 20 years ago and sharing out my books amongst my childrens handluggage! no difficulty now, just take my little kindle and can read 100 books on it if I want. I totally agree...both are fantastic....your bookshop sounds amazing...I am very jealous...one of my dreams was to own a bookshop. My future daughter in laws family come from Inverness...there is a second hand bookshop there...with a cafe...and one of the biggest log burners I have ever seen....people spend hours browsing there....a delight!
Sandra apart from the free downloads which are brilliant...all the classics...there are very cheap downloads as well...just as you can buy cheap books on Amazon, so they have cheap downloads. I am reading a series of books at the moment by an author called Frederick Nath....he is an English neurosurgeon but writes fabulous books about wartime France....I am part way through a trilogy at the moment...reading Farewell Bergerac (the area I live in) I paid about £1.20 for this book but others of his have cost pence....well worth looking up less well known authors.
I could not afford to download to my Kindle without the free sites. If you can afford it then no problem obviously. I too intend staying here until my last breath but have to search out bargains of every sort, wherever they are, to maximise my income so for me the free downloads are wonderful.
Yes but we have several French friends who buy from ~~.co.uk (heavily using google translate) because of price.
Thanks, Sandra. I've a curmudgeonly insistence on staying with French sites - I'm French resident, I intend to stay here for the rest of my life and don't like pretending I've still got one foot the other side of the Channel by the use of stratagems such as false addresses, Virtual Private Networks and the like. I find that eventually the French sites catch up with the expatriate demand - iTunes and iBooks had a dreadfully sparse catalogue but now have more music and books than I need. They're all probably stored in the same vast database anyway - with just the taxes and commissions adjusted for each country.
J'y suis et j'y reste!
Personally I would burn all kindle-like appliances in the street! They are evil & cause madness & lewd behaviour! This is a scientific fact which is well known among bookshop owners ( of which I happen to be one ). Just think of how many secondhand books you could buy for the price of a kindle!
Seriously though, we get customers in our bookshop who are reluctant to admit to owning a kindle & we have to persuade them that we think that they are a very good idea. To be honest there is room for both hard copy AND ebooks in the marketplace. Many who travel swear by their kindles but could not leave one on their towel on the beach & expect it to be there on their return. Others like the feel of a traditional book when they read. As we only deal in secondhand books we don't get the latest releases anyway, although by careful procurement we are not far behind.
I must admit that with over 10,000 books in the shop I do not yet have a kindle so do not really know what the reading experience is like. Do they swell to twice their size when you fall asleep whilst reading in the bath?
I have had a Kindle e reader since they came out and although they do not replace real books, if you are an avid reader, you can not be without one and a tab of any kind does not do the same job. I have the original Kindle Keyboard, still going strong with a cover with built in light - (blimey, set me back about 180£ at the time!).
Since then I have a Galaxy tab for work, with the Kindle app but it is just not the same as a book, too heavy, light strains the eyes and so on. Bought my young daughter a Kindle Fire (not HD) on the basis that tabs are the way forward for that generation and for her it's great. She listens to music, watches u tube etc, looks at her photos, researches her projects without hogging the family computer, plays games and occasionally reads a book.
However, neither are these are comparable as a book replacement, I am very happy with them all though as they all do different jobs. I would add that we are not gadget people at all eg TV is big old box, the single family PC is well past it's sell by date and we managed to but the Kindle for £99 on promo when we were discussing it was a good idea to get small daughter something along those lines. So the key is, what do you want it to do Sheila?
PS we also have the kindles registered in the UK at my mums.
Sheila, forgot to add - a friend of ours had a Nexus 7 for Christmas from Darty - she raves about it and is sending more photos and messages via Facebook than ever before!!
Yes that's correct. I have registered my Kindle with a UK address. If you want to change your registration you can by going online and going into your Amazon account. Just change your email address to one which could be in the UK and not obviously out of the UK, maybe your own address too, I can't remember now. I use my daughter's address. It's easy to do.
Thank you Sheila - Please let me have your email address, and I will organise a copy. I suggest you go to the Adobe site and download Adobe Digital Editions, and I can order an .ePub format version for you, then when you get it simply click on it and the Adobe software picks it up along with an interactive table of contents. If you prefer not to publicise your email address then send it to me at boaden.roger@gmail.com
Thanks Roger and you're right - since I first thought about buying an e-reader, my research has indicated that many offer the functions available on tablets. As I have mentioned in replies to others, I am quite interested in the Nexus 7 which is available on amazon.fr for €200.
I am more than happy to review your book, if it can be read on the laptop. Might be just the thing to give me the proverbial kick in the derriere to get on with finishing my own!
Hi Sheila
I agree with Brian English - what do you want to do? Since publishing my first eBook, I have become acutely aware of the vast range of devices now available from most manufacturers, eReaders, Tablets, Smartphones, there are dozens out there. I think the basic question which follows on has to be the portability. If you want to be able to read anywhere - walking around, in bed, on the beach, or whatever - then a tablet in some form has to be the answer, and I would recommend one which uses the industry standard .ePub, which of course Kindle does not, and maybe gives you other applications such as Internet and email. If you merely want to read an eBook, then of course you can do so on your laptop. There is free software available from Kindle Direct Publishing for the Kindle format .mobi, and from Adobe for .ePub called Adobe Digital Editions. I’m currently reading a second novel in the .mobi format as a volunteer reviewer for an American author on my Dell laptop, and find it more than satisfactory. And finally, I can’t miss the chance of offering you a gift copy of my novel ‘A Mole in the Hand’, in any format you choose, in return for a review - that is of course if you happen to like the genre Espionage and Spies!!