review — 2011 — The 21st Century Matriarch

Three weeks ago, an early Christmas present from my husband arrived – a Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi. I’m documenting my journey getting comfortable with it over the first three weeks. The 1^st week review can be found here; the 2^nd here. The review items for week 3 included:

The Kindle will allow me to be more ‘paperless’ when I travel since its screen is large enough that I can read my itinerary. I simply put things in the inbox of the email that I might need. As long as everything synced while the Kindle Fire could communicate with the wireless network, the email is there while I am on the road and not connected to anything.
I have also used it for a recipe again. This time I set the timeout for 45 minutes so didn’t have to touch the display while I was cooking.
I discovered that the Internet Archive has a lot of their texts available in Kindle format. I downloaded several to read while I waited for my car to be serviced. Since it is an OCR’d version and there are bad characters/words occasionally. I will probably use the ‘read online’ version when I know I am going to be connected while reading.

At the end of week 3, I’m still very pleased with my Kindle Fire and am making good use of its features every day. Is there still more to discover? Probably…but the steepest part of the learning curve is done.

One week ago, an early Christmas present from my husband arrived – a Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi. PCs and Blackberries are old hat for me, but touch screens are new. I’m going to write blog items over the next few weeks about my journey to use it effectively. My successes so far:

The first thing I did was put in the info to allow the Kindle into my home wireless network. It took less than a minute…and has worked flawlessly since.
I successfully downloaded and read a Kindle book from my public library - Diane Mott Davidson’s Chopping Spree (Goldy Bear Culinary Mystery). For this kind of text, the narrower line length was preferable. I even found an old acrylic bookstand to use for the kindle so I could read while I was exercising. The highlighting feature will take some getting used to; getting my finger positioned to start the highlighting was the most challenging for me.
My husband and I looked for a grocery list app and settled on OurGroceries. It wasn’t on the Amazon app store but my husband got the app on his Droid phone; then we used the PC and AndroXplorer to move it to the Kindle. It works fine. We can create a list that our PCs, his Droid phone, his iPad, and my Kindle can all share. We’ll see how my Kindle works when I shop for groceries this next weekend.
Email worked almost immediately. The only challenging part was my finger putting in my email address and password the first time. It is already easier.
Web browsing is easy enough if the links are not very closely spaced on the page. I have learned to enlarge the page before I attempt to follow a link.
My blog looks great on the Kindle. It was one of the first sites I took a look at.
One frustration so far is that the cases for the Kindle Fire are still pretty expensive and there is not much selection. I want something that will protect it while I am using it (like when I am grocery shopping) – not a bag or sleeve. Hopefully, more will come out soon.
Finally, I took a look at a PDF file – Protecting our Chesapeake from the National Park Conservation Association. This file was easier to read with the long line length the 7 inches provides. I got lots of practice moving around in the document since it was formatted with double columns. The pictures displayed well.