On 02/08/2017 10:40 AM, Night Mist wrote:
On Wednesday, February 8, 2017 at 11:02:25 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Hello Brian,
Thanks for all the information on the Kindle and down loading. I been unsure of what to buy and if I could actually download books. You know I am pretty dumb when it comes to computers or anything electronic.
Sandy$

Just a quick opinion on the kindle.

I kind of agree, but also disagree with your criticisms.
I got a fire tablet for my birthday. Within 3 months it had "upgraded" itself into a paperweight.

Yes, to my understanding, amongst the e-readers available from Amazon,
the Fire is kinda the lowest tier, with the quality for just e-reading
going up through the regular kindle, the paperwhite, and with their
newest model, the Oasis being the best ereader (at least according to
some reviewers) on the market.

It is an absolute horror of proprietary software that cannot be removed from the device.

While I agree that the kindle fire is quite heavily tied to books from
Amazon, and could be looked on as discouraging getting books from
elsewhere (such as Barnes and Noble), I do not find it to be a "horror
of propietary software".

An add pops up on screen every time you open it.

I have the version of the Fire that puts up the ad as well, and I have
accidentally opened it a few times, but have had no real problem in just
ignoring them, and just swiping past them.

They have meddled with their file formating and extensions so that it will not interface well if at all with other devices.
I keep everything on my desktop computer, so when they did that the
tablet's usefulness ended.

That is perhaps true, but except as a experiment to see what might
happen when I connect it (ubuntu 14.04 recognizes it, ubuntu 12.04 did
not, or at least did not appear to), so I really do not have any
problems there.

I do not like the browser it comes with and it really really does not want me to install a different one, not "lite" versions of popular browsers, nor specifically written for mobile device browsers like Midori.

I have installed the dolphin browser and the ocean browser which are, I
think, specifically written for tablets, and I had no problems
installing either one. The one that I like best, however, is Silk, the
one that comes pre-installed on the Fire, especially the newer version
of it.

Save yourself the grief and get a different tablet and the kindle app.

I am quite satisfied with my Kindle Fire, despite the shortcomings you
describe. However, if you keep everything on your computer like you say
you do, and your desktop is a Macintosh, getting an Ipad mini might be
the better investment, even though it is bit more expensive (~200 as
opposed to ~100, at least going by the prices on Amazon).

If your desktop is a windows computer, getting a Samsung, Lenovo or even
Dell (though those are really expensive) is perhaps a better investment.

If I ever need to replace my tablet, price would probably be the prime
consideration for me, and it appears that at least some models from
Lenovo are cheaper than some models of the Fire, and it turns out that
the actual manufacturer for both Lenovo and Amazon is a company called
Quanta computers.

If you do opt for an Amazon device, make sure you turn off Alexa. Alexa will eat your charge very quickly. When it downloaded onto my tablet, battery life was cut in half until I turned it off.

I do not know what Alexa is, nor have I ever seen it on the list of
installed programs on my Fire, but I do agree that battery life is a
problem on tablets, but I don't think that problem is unique to Fires.

The best technique I have found for extending battery life between
plugins is to fully shut it off between uses, and not just let the
screen go blank ("go to sleep").

--
Brian Christiansen