Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club discussion

I bought it this morning at Sam's Club, and so far I'm quite pleased with it. I've spent the past couple hours transferring everything I want over to it. I still need to pick up a case and a screen protector for it; I'll hit the Evil Place (Best Buy) on the way home today.

This now leaves me with a Kindle Touch I don't really need in near-mint condition. Anyone interested in buying it? I'll even throw in the two Touch cases I have for it.

This is just a thought, but you might want to consider keeping the Touch if you think you will be in a situation in which you will want to be able to read in sunlight -- e.g., at the beach, or consulting travel books while traveling. I don't have a Fire, but my understanding is that, like computer screens, it is difficult to read in bright light.

I have considered that and I may yet keep the Touch if there is no interest in buying it. A backup never hurts.

I don't have a Touch, but I do have a Kindle 3G which I still use every day in addition to my Fire. I think both Kindles have their virtues. Of course, as mentioned, there is the sunlight reading (altho not a problem I've run in to), but the 3G rather thsn wireless only is, and battery life on standard Kindle is much greater than Fire. Also just got back from trip with 2-year old grandson who watched movies, played games, and looked at picture books on my Fire while I read and checked email on 3G. I like that Amazon keeps my current reading pages synched between the K3G, Fire and my smartphone. So keeping both was a no-brainer for me.

Further reflections on the Fire...

Now that I've had this thing for 10 days or so I am even more pleased with it. It does everything I need - e-mail, videos, music, games, books, document editing, and web - and is light and small enough to carry anywhere.

One thing I hadn't really expected when I bought this thing is I am rediscovering music. The number of excellent music available for very reasonable prices is staggering. A couple days ago I picked up a 66 song album of Spanish guitar for $5. Yesterday I found a fantastic traditional Chinese flute album for $9; and this morning I bought an album of Native American flute by R. Carlos Nakai called Canyon Trilogy which is just wonderful.

Have you played with Pandora? I find that's the number one music app I tend to use on my tablet.

Erin wrote: "Have you played with Pandora? I find that's the number one music app I tend to use on my tablet."

No. I've never tried Pandora. What would make it superior to the Fire's built-in app?

It's more like streaming radio. You can pick an artist or a song that you like and their algorithm will stream similar music that you might also enjoy. I've found a bunch of new artists that way.

Oh, and it's FREE! No buying necessary.

Erin wrote: "It's more like streaming radio. You can pick an artist or a song that you like and their algorithm will stream similar music that you might also enjoy. I've found a bunch of new artists that way...."

I'll look into it then.

EDIT: Downloaded Pandora and right away it found me some Tangerine Dream music I'd never heard. :)

I like and listen to Pandora & think it is great. That said, you can upload unlimited personal mp3 files to your Amazon cloud and play your own music using your Fire, smart phone or computer. I've digitized thousands of my personal records, CDs plus purchased mp3s which I can make into playlists or just shuffle/play if I am in the mood to be surprised and rediscover my lifetime of recordings. A fabulous free Amazon service.

I don't see myself in the "Fire" set...background light is really bad for migraine and eyes...so I love the virtual ink of the original Kindle. I like the concept of a devoted reading device...but I've considered 'upgrading' to the touch (I rarely use the keypad and with difficulty)...but the device seems so well engineered for pure reading. And magically, over time, and with no intervention of my own, any problems I had with document transfer between it and my computer (I do not have the 3G) have disappeared...probably due to upgrades in Amazon's software...so now my two beauties stay in touch seamlessly.

A recent trip to B&N brought me out of the store without a single purchase...the reason being I found the pages of their books unreadable...print too small, ink to 'grey'....lines to close and/or too long...and what has happened to paper--all the pages were yellow and felt like pulp...even in 30 dollar editions!

I've become a virtual reader, I'm afraid...I canna go back, Captain!

I have to admit I love the ability to change text sizes, background colors, and even sometimes fonts, as you can on my Fire, has somewhat soured me on "real" books. I was just thinking the other day that except for specialty books or used ones I doubt I'll ever buy another printed book. I don't have the issue with migraines, so for me tablets have been almost all positive.

I was commenting on another thread that maybe group numbers could be brought to bear in getting Amazon to "Kindlize" books the group would like to collectively put on a 'to-read' list? I get the impression from requesting books in e-format that it is all about the numbers.

As I understand it a book's publisher makes the decision as to whether a book will be available as an ebook, not Amazon or B&N. Lots of books on Amazon have a link below the book image "Tell the publisher I'd like to read this on Kindle." If you click it Amazon says "Thank you for letting the publisher know you want this book on Kindle."

I use that button all too frequently...it's the 'numbers' of clicks methinks that serves as the incentive.

Considering getting a Fire. I almost never read in sunlight, but I read alot in the dark and think the backlighting would be good for that.
Here's my question. On my existing Kindle which is a DX, I have books sorted into folders by author. Does the Fire allow you to make folders or is more like the Kindle app that I have on my iPhone where all books are kept in the cloud and you move onto the device books you wish to read?

The Fire does not (as yet) allow folders. This has generated a lot of criticism among Fire owners and hopefully Amazon will address this issue with a software update. It does separate books, music, the web, and apps but I would really like to be able to sort books in folders.

You can move books in and out of the cloud as needed. I tend to remove books from the device once I've read them as it takes only about 30 seconds to download it if you need it again. Right now I have about 80 books on the Fire and another 40 or so only on the net. I also have 30 or so albums of music on the device.

Amazon is rumored to be releasing a Fire 2 this fall so you might wait since you already have a DX. Me I'm quite happy with the Fire.

farmwifetwo wrote: "Does it not allow you to save your books to the computer? Being epub I can read my books with Adobe digital editions on the computer - don't but could - but they are saved on the hard drive and on ..."

Yes, any book you purchase can be put on a PC as well. All my books are also backed up on my computer; and occasionally I even read them on the PC as well.

Keeping in mind that you can't open any of the epubs you have for Kobo on the Kindle, of course. Unless you run them through Calibre or something.

The only thing that I'm kind of wishing I had a Kindle Fire for right now is video because Amazon makes it kind of a pain to download content you've purchased directly to your computer (Seriously...with their special downloader program it took like 15 minutes minimum to download one episode of Doctor Who...and there's no real way to download all content in one go, you've got to start them all individually). Not to mention that converting video file types to something useful (they download as wmv files, which isn't a widely viewable format) is even more a pain than getting the file downloaded in the first place. But I'm mostly just annoyed that they're making my life more difficult just specifically so I'll buy compatibility from them.

I'm about to try something new. Using a Groupon, I purchased a VERY inexpensive reconditioned 7-inch tablet running Android software, and I plan to install the Android apps for both Kindle and ePub. I'll let you know how this works out.

Lenore wrote: "I'm about to try something new. Using a Groupon, I purchased a VERY inexpensive reconditioned 7-inch tablet running Android software, and I plan to install the Android apps for both Kindle and ePu..."

Please do. While I do love my Fire, I'd have spent the additional $50 and bought a full Android tablet if I'd fully understood what it's restrictions are. Do I regret buying the Fire? Not at all. But my next tablet/ereader will be a full Android tablet or iPad.