The Complete 2012 User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle: Covers All Current Kindles Including the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, and Kindle (26 page)

If you originally transferred personal documents to your Kindle via USB, you'll need a computer with one or two free USB ports to transfer personal data from one Kindle to another:

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Plug the old Kindle into a USB port using the cable that came with the Kindle. The Kindle will show up as an external hard drive on the computer

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Repeat for the new Kindle

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Open the "documents" folder on both Kindles

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On the old Kindle, select all the personal document files you wish to transfer

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Drag and drop the files in the "documents" folder on the new Kindle

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Safely eject both Kindles from the computer and remove the USB cables

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The personal documents will appear in Home

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If your computer has only one free USB port, connect the old Kindle, open the "documents" folder, and copy all desired personal documents to your computer. Eject the old Kindle and connect the new Kindle. Then copy the personal document files to the "documents" folder on the new Kindle and eject the new Kindle. Now remove the USB cable. Your personal documents will appear in Home

You don't need a Kindle to read Kindle books. Free apps (applications) are available from Amazon for all the following devices:

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iPhone

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iPad

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Mac

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Blackberry

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PC

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Windows Phone

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Android devices

To get a Free Kindle Reading App, go to the Kindle Store on Amazon.com by pointing at the Kindle department on the left side of the Amazon home screen. From the pop-up, now click on "
Free Kindle Reading Applications
." Then select an app from the list in order to download it.

In addition, as of July 2011, there is also a free Kindle Reading app for the HP Touchpad. Instead of downloading it from Amazon, you'll find it in the Touchpad's onboard App Catalog.

Of course, reading on a LCD computer or device screen negates two of the major advantages of the Kindle -- its high contrast E Ink display and its long battery life.

Still, there are good reasons for reading with one of the free apps, including the fact all these devices and their apps display full color. Magazines, newspapers, and books that are heavily illustrated can be enjoyed in color on the free apps. Also, the apps are constantly being improved to offer features that take advantage of the larger screens on many of the devices.

As an example of the free Kindle Reading Apps, we'll briefly discuss the Kindle for PC. It has some features that take advantage of a larger computer screen:

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The Home page is called the "Library." A button on the toolbar takes you there

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Collections are shown in a sidebar on the left

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The Library pane shows either book covers or a list of books

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You can import collections from your Kindle or another free Kindle Reading app

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You can manage your Kindle-- the app opens your web browser directly to the Manage your Kindle page on Amazon.com

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Shop in the Kindle Store with the click of a button, which opens the store web page

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You can read full screen

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Text size can be changed as well as words-per-line

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The display brightness can be changed and also be set to white background, sepia background, or white on black

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Most other features of E-Ink Kindles are available, including annotations, sync to furthest page read, etc.

Amazon's Kindle Cloud Reader (
https://read.amazon.com/about
)
 
is a free web-based app that lets you read Kindle books on a PC, Mac, Linux computer, or iPad using the following browser versions or later:

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Chrome version 11

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Firefox version 6

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Safari iPad IOS 4

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Safari Mac/PC version 5

The Cloud Reader works much like the Free Kindle Reading Apps. Other browsers such as Internet Explorer are not supported at present, although they probably will be in the near future.

While the Cloud Reader is clearly Amazon's answer to Apple's demand that Amazon pay 30% of sales through Free Kindle Reading apps running on Apple devices such as the iPad and Mac computers, its major benefit is that it lets you read your Kindle library anywhere you have web access.

To use Kindle Cloud Reader, you must sign into your Amazon account with Chrome or Safari, and then install the Kindle Cloud Reader App. When you're asked if you want to enable offline reading, answer yes. This will allow you to read any Kindle book without an Internet connection.

After the Cloud Reader App is installed, you can access it in two ways, from your browser as an app, or from Your Kindle Library on Amazon.com.

For example, from the Google Chrome Browser, open a new tab, then click the arrow on the right or left side of the main screen to show installed apps. Click on Cloud Reader.

To select a title directly from Your Kindle Library, open your browser, go to Amazon.com, Your Account, Manage Your Kindle, and Your Kindle Library. Click the Action button to the right of any title, and select “Read Now.” This will open the selected title in Cloud Reader.

It's obvious that Amazon intends to add more features to the Cloud Reader, just as it has with the Free Kindle Reading Apps. In the meantime, here's what you can do with the Cloud Reader:

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Read any book bought (regardless of price) in the Kindle Store. Your place in each book is automatically synchronized with other copies of the book that you may be reading on other Kindles or Free Kindle Reading Apps

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Read books offline. Recently opened books are automatically downloaded to the Cloud Reader. To manually download a book, just right-click on the title. Downloaded books are "pinned" and marked with a green thumbtack

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View books with their covers in several different sizes, or view a list of books with thumbnail covers

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Sort books by most recently read, by author, or by title

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Shop in the Kindle Store. Clicking the Kindle Store button opens the store in the same window the reader was in, so you'll have to use the back button in the browser to return to your place

While reading, you can:

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Use the "Goto..." menu to go to the cover, table of contents, beginning, and any specific location

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Change font size and margins

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Select from three color modes- black text on white, black text on sepia, and white text on black

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Set or clear bookmarks

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Some of the things you can do on a Kindle and on some of the Free Kindle Reading Apps that you can't yet do in the Cloud Reader:

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Make notes, create highlights, or share text

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Search (although you can search an open book using the browser's search function)

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Read periodicals

Any Kindle owner interested in getting the most out of the free content available on the Kindle -- or paid content, for that matter --should make a point of getting familiar with one of the greatest Kindle apps to come along yet, called Calibre (
http://calibre-ebook.com
).

Calibre provides features for a wide range of different ebook platforms and devices, but the fact that it supports the Kindle so elegantly is bound to make it a favorite with Kindle owners. In this chapter we will focus on Calibre's usefulness in managing, accessing, reading, and maintaining accurate metadata for the ebooks that you may have acquired based on reading the tips offered earlier in Chapter 4.

According to its creator Kovid Goyal, Calibre was designed to make managing your ebook collection as easy as possible, and can be used to manage books, magazines, newspapers, comics and virtually any other kind of digital content. And, like most of the files that you will be managing with Calibre, the Calibre application itself is free.

The Calibre application will reside on your computer and will provide a great interface between your computer and your Kindle that will make it easy for you to do any of the following:

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Convert ebooks and documents from other formats -- including CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR and TXT -- either to MOBI format so that you can read them on your Kindle or to a wide variety of other formats so that you can read them on your computer or on another mobile device. These other formats include EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PDF, PML, RB, SNB, TCR and TXT. (The Kindle supports AZW, MOBI, PRC, AZW1, AZW2, and TXT)