Friday, March 7, 2014

Kindle Tips: Large Software update v5.4.4 for Paperwhite 1 (Yr 2012). REVISED for New power-off options. [Paperwhite 2 also being updated, separately, linked to here]

KINDLE PAPERWHITE 1 Software Update v5.4.4

Kindle Paperwhite Software Upgrade from v5.3.9 to v5.4.4.

The Kindle Forum has an announcement that a major software update to the first Kindle Paperwhite is available, adding features to Kindle Paperwhite 1 that were first seen on the Paperwhite 2, the later and current model with a faster processor.  (A Paperwhite 1 U.S/ software update {UK page here} is also ready.)

  Affected Paperwhite models: See Paperwhite 1 (US);   (UK Paperwhite 1: here;  Global Paperwhite 1: here.)   [Bracketed notes are mine.]

  The new, free software update available for Kindle Paperwhite 1 can be found [here] [U.S.and international]

    [And Here's the UK-only software update page.]


 The software page tells you how to check the software version currently on your Paperwhite.  Mine still has v5.3.9 on it rather than v5.4.4

This update automatically downloads and installs on the applicable Kindle Paperwhite; however, you can also manually download the software and transfer the update to your device via USB cable.

  I've revised this blog entry March 10 to add, at the bottom, new information on the Power off options.

The software update includes general improvements and the following new features:
* Kindle FreeTime:
FreeTime lets you create personalized profiles for kids, and give them access to titles from your collection of books. Kids can keep track of their personal reading progress and earn achievement badges. To learn more, go to Kindle FreeTime

* Goodreads on Kindle (US only)
Connect with the world's largest community for readers from your Kindle Paperwhite. See what your friends are reading, share notes, and rate the books you read. To learn more, go to Find and Share Books with Goodreads on Kindle.

* Cloud Collections [Long awaited]
Use Cloud Collections to organize your content in custom categories. See your collections in a Collections view, and customize where your collections show on your device. To learn more, go to Organize Your Content with Cloud Collections.

* Page Flip [Great feature many of us have hoped for]
While reading, you can skim the book page-by-page, scan by chapter, or skip to the end for a sneak peek without losing your place. To learn more, go to Go To Other Locations in a Book

* Enhanced Bookmarks, Highlights & Notes
Access and manage all of your bookmarks, highlights, and notes more quickly and easily. To learn more, go to Bookmarks, Highlights & Notes

* Smart Lookup
When you look up a word or character, Smart Lookup provides you with dictionary, X-Ray, and Wikipedia information.To learn more, go to Explore Your Book with X-Ray.

* Vocabulary Builder
Words looked up in the dictionary are automatically added to Vocabulary Builder. View the definition and usage of the words, and quiz yourself with flashcards. To learn more, go to Expand Your Vocabulary. '

In a forum discussion, Kindle Forum Pro CBRetriever wrote the following about changes noticed in the (1) Cloud Collections processing (which AVOIDS the Paperwhite 2 problems from a default-automatic-importing of Collections from ALL other devices sharing the same account) and (2) Kindle Paperwhite Restart procedure.  (Bracketed info and emphases are mine):
' It didn't import any collections from my other kindles (YAY!!!!) not even in the Cloud

... my notes so far:

There's another new thing I've never seen before - when I hold the button in for 30 seconds, it doesn't restart, but I'm given 3 choices and I had to pick one (Shut Down, Cancel or Restart) I'm wondering if the new PW2 has the same choices [it DOES] ... I also had to reboot since it came up with a 2G and not a 3G connection. My collections have stars...

It did not bring in the Collections from other Devices.  I have now added 11 more dictionaries and user guides... I had to go download the user guide via manage Your Kindle - it didn't automatically download. ' [UK user's guide here]

New Power-off Options display
  Oddly, my Paperwhite 1's pop-up dialog box showed options different from what's described above.  The choices I saw during the attempts to either Power Off (holding the Power On/Off button for ~4 seconds) or force a clean "Restart" (holding the Power On/Off button for 20+ seconds) were:
"Cancel | Restart ! Screen Off" ...

  When an eInk screen is displaying a page but there is no change to that screen, the display is having no effect on the battery.
  When you change what's being displayed (changing or adding anything on the page, as in tapping it on the side to get a new page or when an action brings a pop-up window or dialog box), the display is not using the battery.  That's why just pressing the power button for only ~1 second puts the Kindle to 'sleep' during which it displays an image but the Paperwhite light turns off.

  Leaving it in this sleep state doesn't draw battery power as a result of the image display itself.  If, however, WiFi is On during Sleep state, any activity with subscription downloads or a Special Offers download -will- use battery power.

  There is always very slow battery drain in between charges even when a device is turned off.

  So, the "Screen Off" is an odd new choice on mine.  This just blanks the screen and puts it into sleep state.  SOME have requested a blank screen so they know it's "Off" but, in this case, it's only that there's no image seen - not even Amazon's default images during normal sleep-screens.

  "Restart" acts more like a soft-reboot on a computer and clears up memory states that may be causing problems.

  There is NO option on my Paperwhite 1 to completely Power Off or Shut down the Kindle.

  It could be that my dialog box for powering off is different because I chose not to get Special Offers sent to my Paperwhite (I accept Special Offers on my Kindle Fire tablets though) and, therefore, blanking the screen with a "Screen Off" does not interfere with the marketing offers on the lockscreen.

  CBRetriever, quoted above, may choose to get the offers on the Paperwhite and, as a result, doesn't get the 'Screen Off' option.  That's just conjecture on my part.

  But she does get the option to 'shut down' her Kindle.  Odd.

  Also, in my case, holding in the power button for over 20 seconds did cause a Restart, as in the past.


IF you experience unusual battery drain
Note that keeping your Kindle always connected to a Wi-Fi network can drain the battery faster under certain circumstances.  If you're experiencing that, then once you've got the update "over the air," put the Paperwhite back to "Airplane Mode ON" via the 'Settings' option on the Menu -- the option lets you toggle Wireless OFF, using the "Airplane On" choice.

  Amazon's Paperwhite development team won't return the Wireless Off/On choice to the front menu as they did last year for the Kindle Touch, removing the 'airplane mode' icon which confuses many.  It's very inconvenient to have the WiFi On/Off setting on a secondary menu and many, as a result, don't even know that they can turn WiFi Off if needed.

  Amazon probably prefers that we keep Wireless 'On' due to delivery of Special Offers but the battery-drain problem can occur when circumstances involve (1) subscriptions that are downloaded regularly (my New York Times Latest News subscription updates the Kindle edition about five times a day - $1.99/month) or (2) due to a weaker connection that results from the distance from the WiFi router, in which case the device keeps trying to connect when a download is due (and that can be for the special offers that Amazon regularly needs to send for those who choose to opt for the less-expensive model with the special-offers feature) and is then constanty active.

  BUT WiFi needs to be 'On' after you've read a book and made annotations for a session AND when you then want to be able to continue reading later, on another device (like a smartphone), starting at where you'd stopped.
  If WiFi isn't turned on, the Amazon servers won't have any way of knowing the last-page-read location nor any notes or highlighting you've made, which you'd want to be able to access on the other device.  So, a recommendation:
1. When you're finished reading, tap the top-toolbar and press the HOME icon.
  That will 'close' the book session and record the last page read and log the annotations.
2. Tap the top of the Paperwhite to bring up the toolbar and menu icon.
3. If you see an airplane icon at the top, your WiFi is Off (and you're in "airplane" take-off mode).
4. Tap 'Settings'
5. Turn Airplane Mode OFF, and that'll turn WiFi ON.
6. At that point, the Kindle will try to sync your changes to the Server and will download anything that is pending (a subscription to a newspaper, magazine, or blog, usually).
7. After that's done, you can go ahead and leave WiFi ON if you have no problems with faster battery drain
      OR you can turn OFF the WiFi if you need to save battery power.


Only if you'd rather not wait - DOWNLOADING and transferring the Update via USB
US:  Go to the Kindle Paperwhite Software Update v5.4.4 download section to get the instructions for the download and transfer to your Kindle via USB:
UK:  You can do the same for the UK-only page




Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

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18 comments:

  1. Ah, yet another illustration why Apple offers better user support than Amazon. My aging MacBook still gets a some bug-fix support, as does my iPhone 3gs, which just got an iOS update, and that's even though Apple no longer sells them. And my Mac mini and iPad 3 are fully supported by the latest OS, even though the latter is out of production.

    And yet my Kindle Keyboard, which Amazon still sells, hasn't had an upgrade in years. No fixes. No new features. No nothing. It's become a digital orphan, living in a dumpster, eating garbage and completely neglected by its sole parent Amazon.
    The only thing worse that Amazon's support for Kindle users is Amazon's support for Kindle authors. It pays less in actual royalties than almost any other ebook retailer, but expects us to leap through troublesome hoops to match their proprietary formats. There's still no Kindle plug-in for InDesign CC. Even though it has been out for about a year, Amazon has yet to announce, much less release support for it.



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    1. Inking (Michael), re updates to older hardware devices, your aging Apple devices get bug fixes but not so much the new features that came with later models and Apple makes hardware types pretty much the same size and shape usually, to keep updates simpler.
      -- Add that Amazon's developers program new features for apps for almost every other kind of device out there so that people with basic Android, iOS, WindowsPhone, Blackberry, Macs, PCs, etc can read Amazon's proprietery-format books. Apple books of course can be read only on Apple's own devices and Apple makes no effort to make them readable on other operating systems or competitor tablets. Apple's focus is on their own hardware while the bookstore is secondary (the opposite is true for Amazon).
      ..
      As for Kindle Keyboard 3 not having had an upgrade in years, it did release version 3.4 just 1.5 yrs ago (September 2012) and included these features: Crisper fonts w/ more contrast; KF8 layout support; Comic + picture books; parental controls, Whispersync for Voice, and support for children's picture books with Kindle Text Pop-Up.
      --
      -- This was despite the fact that the Kindle 3 keyboard model was and is non-Touch technology.
      -- The Kindle Touch, furthermore, got an update about one-half year ago (August 2013) that included feature enhancements that were first included in the newer Paperwhite 1 model.

      Delete
  2. I had been looking to get a PW2 as a Christmas present for myself :D, but after reading all the problems encountered by multiple user/kindle accounts with cloud collections, I decided to hold off.

    When the PW2 was discounted for 1 day earlier this week, I decided to go ahead and get it anyway, and deal with the resulting cloud collections mess as best I could.

    Serendipity! The very next day Amazon released 5.4.3 for the PW2 with "fixes" for cloud collections (not a lot of detail on that). I went ahead and changed the names of all my collections on my older devices to include a device ID in the collection name -- so that the automatic import of collections upon initial registration wouldn't collide across devices.

    I see from your post on yesterday's PW1 update that the auto-collections import does not occur (at least on the PW1). I hope there is some way to manually import collections from other devices because my objective is to end up with a single collection set spanning all my books across all devices and reading apps.

    One thing the new update doesn't do that was particularly vexing on the original PW2 cloud collections update: when you delete a cloud collection that has been imported from an older device, it will no longer delete the collection on the older device as well as the cloud collection.

    The documentation for the PW2 update still says that the auto collection import upon registration WILL occur. I can live/prefer that (now that I've renamed all my collection names :grin).

    My PW2 arrived yesterday, but I have not even opened the box yet. When I do get around to setting it up, I will document my experiences with cloud collections on an account with multiple old collection devices/apps/users. I'll post it over on the forums.

    Now if they would only provide an update for my Kindle Fire HD 8.9 adding cloud collections -- that would truly be heaven.

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    1. Edward,
      If you have not set up CC anywhere, it will import any collections you've created previously, and any that you don't delete will become your Cloud Collections. But older devices (that will never support CCs) will not be affected. There isn't going to be any interoperability between devices that support CC and those that do not. You'll have to continue to manage collections independently on the non CC devices.

      The main improvement (for both PW1 and PW2) is that there is a new Collections 'view', which shows only a list of collections and nothing else. By default, collections don't display in the other Views (All Items, Books, Docs, etc.), which I always found annoying as it created 'clutter'. You can choose to display any of your collections in All Views, however.

      Delete
    2. Edward, I included a link near the top, in smaller font, to the Paperwhite 2 update page (and will do a separate entry for it later), since v5.4.3 improves PDF reading and definitely improves the Collections feature, which no longer has automatic-importing of Collections from all the other devices on an account.

      As for the HDX 8.9" tablet, it's my main tablet now as it is lighter than my HD7", the display is just gorgeous, but most of all it is a speed-demon, where the older HD 8.9" is a laggard and there's just no comparison. I highly recommend trading in the HD 8.9" (since Amazon has sometimes reasonable trade-in pricing) for the speed and smoothness, not to even mention the large array of useful new features.

      I kept the old one for the wired HDMI out and for blog-testing of any updates.

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    3. Just a quick update: I bought my PW2 online 1 day BEFORE the 5.4.3 update released. When you buy online, your kindle is pre-registered to the purchasing account before it is sent. My PW2, consequently came with 5.4.2 pre-loaded, and my collections from my KT, KDX, and a desktop PC kindle app preloaded as cloud collections as well -- good thing I changed the collection names to reflect their import source -- minimizes confusion.

      I only mention it here (in a PW1-oriented post), because those with many older kindles with collections on them that buy a PW2 online from Amazon will be pre-registered with the Amazon account used to make the purchase, and if the kindle they ship to you has 5.4.2 on it, then the automatic collections import will take place. This is a short term catch 22 (assuming 5.4.3 does not do the auto collection import -- I have no way to tell). For me (given that my collection names were changed to reflect KT, KDX, or app as the source) this is actually a good thing, but for many it won't be -- just a heads up.

      My KF HD 8.9 is not my primary kindle (that has been my KT). I only use the KFHD89 to read PDFs, and my experience using it that way has been exemplary -- so I feel no need to upgrade to the HDX (maybe next year), but thanks anyway for the suggestion :grin.

      Anything else I might have to say about the PW2 vis a vis the KT, I'll wait for your PW2-related post.

      I haven't tried it yet, but I too am hopeful about the PDF margin improvements in 5.4.3.

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    4. Tom,
      Talk about cross-posting! `10:35am' :-) After postijg replies, I left the computer and the blog and forgot to come back to check - apologies for the delay in approval of comments. Since I now have 105,000 spam comments in the spam folder, I just have to have the delay -- I used to try to read them first but now I rely on Google-Blogger's automation, which of course doesn't catch all of them, so there's a bit of reading to attend to when I log into pending comments, but it's getting better. I need to check more often,

      Tom and Edward,
      I've always enjoyed Collections and had separate ones on all my applicable e-Ink eReaders starting way back in January 2011 on the Kindle 2 and the DX's that came later.. They've always imported nicely when I chose a specific one. Can't believe that with the new Paperwhite they automatically downloaded collections from ALL one's devices. What a mess. Glad they have corrected that,with the new procedure.

      But, Edward, they should check, when a customer is booting up a NEW device for the first time, that its software is vxxxx and that if it had one that presented problems like this, to delete those auto-downloaded device-located collections for people and let then select them as needed or wanted with the new update that would be processing upon the boot-up of a new device for the first time.

      . Sorry you and others got caught up in that problem when ordering early but you were wise to rename the collections to incorporate the source-Kindle for each collection.

      Re the Collections view. It has always been confusing as to where you find it and how it functions, changing with each new device. But with the Kindle Touch changes (prior to Paperwhite), it had a sort of view of its own in that it showed up ONLY under "All Items" under the top menu bar's "My Items" and did NOT show up if one chose "Books" instead -- which is sort of anti-intuitive.

      I explained it in a very long comment-response to someone asking how to find it.

      The bottom line was and is that with the Kindle Touch -- f you do want to view your Collections as well, you choose under "My Items " option the "All Items" choice and then use the sorting view at the right to Sort by Collections if that's what you want to see first. You won't see Collections option if you chose "Books" instead.

      They've done the same with Paperwhite 1 (and I find it easy enough once I know where it is). I'm still on v5.3.9 as it turns out, and I'll manually update it if I don't get the update this weekend. Glad I didn't get updated to v5.4.2 !!!

      So weird that Paperwhite II software update is designated as v5.4.3 while Paperwhite 1's new software update is v5.4.4 (They used to keep the numbering somewhat reflective of 'generation' and a bit more logical....

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  3. The Paperwhite 2 also got an update (to 5.4.3): http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_cn?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201307450

    For both PW1 and PW2, they have addressed the main issues people had with Cloud Collections (or at least the ones which I would have had problems with). This is achieved by adding a new View for Collections, that shows only collections (just like the other CC implementations). There is also a 'sort' mode for Collections as before, but it has been sort of deprecated. In order for this latter list to be enabled you have to set an attribute on the collections to 'Show in All Views'. That lets you designate 'Favorite' collections and these will appear even if you aren't in Collections view (such as a 'Currently reading' collection). At any rate the refinements are welcome. I really hated the clutter collections caused as they were implemented previously.

    The other problem had to do with getting nagged if you changed collection membership and weren't on wireless. I'm guessing that's been fixed too but would need to test it.

    Collections still show 'everything' without any way to filter to just what is on the device, so some people are still going to complain. But I think it works well as is (particularly with search enhancement as described below).

    Note that if you had other devices with Cloud Collections (PW2, 3rd gen Fire, Kindle for iOS, KIndle for Android) those collections will be used, else it will import any collections you had on non CC supporting devices.

    I'm really impressed with the Goodreads integration. I don't know if it has always been the same as this on PW2 or if it also has been improved. I am actually going to use it.

    I love having Notes in a tabbed view with Contents (new to both PW1 and PW2), and the Enhanced Bookmarks (new to PW1). Much more logical and usable. There are separate views for Yours, Popular, and Public notes so they aren't all mixed together.

    Search has been revamped as well (on home screen). As you type, it lists items in your library that match and you can tap to open or download as the case may be. I don't know if this is new for PW2. Before you'd have to hit 'enter' and wait for a list to return and there was a separate dialog to select search scope. This is so much cleaner.

    And of course there's the popup footnotes, page flip, which I'm going to really enjoy.

    For the record, I leave wifi on all of the time. The only reason I would turn it off would be if I were going off the power grid for a few days. I just like to know that my books are getting synched (I switch reading devices frequently) and that wikipedia and book descriptions are immediately available. I still get several days between charges and that's plenty.

    It's like a new device!

    Now they just need a feature bearing release for Fire, to fix its Cloud Collections (awkward to manage as compared to other implementations), add page flip and popup footnotes and report content error!

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    1. Tom, thanks for all the feedback on functioning! I did include, in small print, a link to the Paperwhite 2 software update change until I have time to do a separate entry for it.

      What confuses me about the Collections importing that I think you describe is that the forum regulars say it no longer automatically imports Collections from all your other devices. That had to be a prime change from what happened with Paperwhite 2, and the same people are saying that Paperwhite 2 now does not just automatically import them all either.

      The forum thread is filled with super-unpleasant posts from some Forum Pros about a questioner's lack of logic or mindset, so I didn't link to it this time, but other Forum Pros like CBRetriever always have good early reporting of changes too.

      You're uncommonly thorough. Re the wireless Off situation, I've seen too many questions about battery drain and if people are concerned about it (it can happen in one day with the circumstances I describe) they'll at least know what can fix it. The necessary syncing should happen immediately when we turn Wireless back on (it does on my Paperwhite).but you're right in the important situation that if you make a change and don't have wireless On, it won't be sync'd to your other devices because it hasn't made it to the servers.

      That's another reason I want them to put Wireless On as an option in the TOP menu and not hide it

      All that you describe is great news. Many thanks for doing that for us. Hope to hear more from you as you find things.

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    2. Again, if you have set up Cloud Collections on a PW2/Kindle for Android/Kindle for iOS, those should automatically be your Cloud collections when you apply the update. I don't know what happens to collections already there in that case, as I didn't have any, maybe those get merged and become CCs? If you didn't have CCs on your account the manual says it will import all of your non-CC collections.

      At first I wondered where the (expected) CCs were as the Collections 'sort' was greyed out. Then I discovered the new Collections View.

      I don't remember it ever 'automatically' importing collections from other devices but I don't have a PW2. There was an option to do that on PW1, it was not automatic. But now it does automatically pick up CCs if you have some.

      They also added the 'enhanced' home screen search that I think PW2 had all along (but it's not mentioned in the feature list). Makes it MUCH easier to find a book in your library as results pop up as you type in the search box and can pick right away instead of having to push 'enter'. Not sure how you check indexing status now.

      The only regression I've discovered so far is that dictionaries no longer 'cascade'. Used to be you could have several dictionaries for a given language and it would try the default dictionary first and continue looking in the others if that lookup failed. Now it just fails if the default dictionary doesn't have the word, and you have to point it at another one manually. Seems they botched the feature merge.

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    3. Apparently PW2 never had dictionary 'cascade', and now PW1 and PW2 have the same behavior (you have to manually select an alternate dictionary). I don't know what the story is for the 'basic' Kindle, which was the first to support language-specific defaults; I assume it also cascades. In any case, I thought it was a cool feature and hope to see its return in a future update, once enough K1 owners complain. K2 owners probably don't know what they've been missing for the most part.

      Another oddity is that I was able to download a number of personal documents over 3G yesterday. Might have been a local anomaly, we were driving around Tule Lake basin and maybe the provisioning is not set up the way it is supposed to be in this somewhat remote locaiton. Of course, I'm happy if the 3G policy has changed with this update...

      At any rate, the popup footnotes and enhanced bookmarks have me reading more on my Paperwhite than before. I read a lot of non fiction. The popup footnotes don't work perfectly when footnotes are put at the end of sections (instead of at the end of the book which is more common), and pull in text that follows these 'inline' footnotes, but it's pretty easy to tell when it has done that and just ignore the extra text.



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    4. Tom, I don't know about the basic Kindle but its user's guide might describe how the dictionary processes work.

      Re downloading personal documents... The first Kindles were 3G only and I was able to download mobi files from archive,org and Project Gutenberg... as long as they were *.mobi or *.txt files. They'd be seen as 'personal documents.' What I couldn't download to the Kindle eReaders were PDFs, as they were likely be too large for somewhat costly 3G data transfers.

      Yes -- Like you, I do really like the popup footnotes and also notes & highlights as well as the way bookmarks are shown now. I remember reading Musicophiia -- that book seemed to have footnotes for almost every paragraph, And then the footnotes would be so interesting that I'd read a few of them, one after the other, forgetting to get back to the text.
      But I had to remenber to press the back arrow right away or lose my current place in the book, so this change is really welcome.

      Some say the company is not really books-oriented but it's pretty clear to me that the developers are encouraged to look for ways to help with the reading experience - a lot of 'novel' ways, which have me missing those features when reading a print book. :-)

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    5. To clarify: I have 3G Paperwhite and normally it will not download personal documents from my library over 3G. But (I just tried again) it is letting me do it without wifi connection.

      I never understood why they do not (to this day) let you download PDFs from a web site over wifi with eink Kindles. It doesn't cost them anything.

      I checked the basic Kindle user manual, and it doesn't describe dictionary behavior in sufficient detail. 'Cascade' was an undocumented feature.

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    6. That's interesting. I guess I never tried to download onto my eInk readers docs from my library over 3G. I only sent them to myself (with it going to the library) and Amazon would then send it to my Kindle, but once it was up there I guess I never tried to get one down for another eInk device! PDFs - some (with illustrations or pages that are, each, actually photos), are enornous, with people not aware of that -- with only a 1.5 gig space for all our docs on a US Paperwhite. They may just be trying to minimize 3G data transfer costs for themselves.

      -- Re no WiFi downloads of PDFs to eInk readers, I'm thinking that maybe they want to lessen the need for customer support when a large transfer fails or interferes with the current session's inability to go on, if the file is too large for the Paperwhite, which has so little storage space.

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    7. Text only PDFs are no larger than equivalent reflowable format and often smaller. Conversely image-laden reflowable files are often much bigger than the equivalent PDF, particularly where images are vector based in PDF but raster based in reflowable, as is often the case (I buy lots of 'multi format' books direct from publisher and this pattern holds consistently). Poorly authored PDF (e.g. scanned pages, or lack of attention to appropriate image compression) can of course be huge, but I guess my point is that PDF files are not inherently 'huge'.

      The PDF exclusion dates back to when the Kindle did not have PDF support, and perhaps they just have not had any reason to change the behavior (apart from occasional complaints from people like me). The Experimental Browser, almost by definition, does not get a lot of attention. And they retain the 'Experimental' label to lower expectations and deflect customer support issues about it.

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    8. Tom, true - but I was thinking only of the graphics-laden PDFs, and you know that most people are not aware of how these situations affect file sizes. Someone just commented that a dictionary program I wrote about did not find words in his graphics-based book files.

      The thing is not that they're inherently huge but that Amazon probably would rather not analyze each file about to be downloaded and make a decision to tell the buyer that it's too large (and it can take resources to determine this so it's easier, not to mention making it more personal when the file is not allowed for download). I personally haven't cared, since I can download it and send it to my Kindle account via WiFi'd email.

      You're right about the forever-and-forever Experimental browser...

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  4. The worse happened to me with Kindle. It takes 5-10sec to flip a page, this is with me keeping only one book in the device. More worries settings and option does not work either. Have restarted the device repeatedly. Its not that i have extensively used kindle. I have read 8-9 books so far, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Please let me know if any restoration can be done.
    Software updation, jailbreak .. might help..only if kindle's settings and other options work.

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    1. Anonymous, sorry for the delay in getting back to this section. What you're describing just should not happen. When you say you restarted it, do you mean just powering off and then back on? Did you try the soft-reboot? That's holding the power button in for 21 seconds or more and then letting it go. After awhile it should start up on its own (if it doesn't, after a few minutes, then tap the power button to make it turn On). And that should clear up any memory problems caused from something in past sessions.

      If that doesn't work, then call Kindle Support at 866-321-8851, preferably during US work hours to get best help (in my experience), but it works 24 hours, 7 days a week, as they use call centers that run all the time.

      You can also use http://amzn.to/kcallme to get a call back within a few seconds usually.

      If nothing that they suggest works, and your Kindle is within the one-year warranty, they will likely replace it.
      If you can, let me know how it goes.

      Delete

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Am often away much of the day, and postings won't show up right away. Posts done to use referrer-links may never show up.

Usually, am online enough to release comments within a day though, so the hard-to-read match-text tests for commenting won't be needed this way.

Feedback and questions are welcome. Thanks for participating.

Technical Problems?
If you're having problems leaving a Comment, Google's blogger-help asks that you clear the 'blogger.com' cookies on your browser's Tools or Options menu bar and that will fix the Comment-box problems (until they have a permanent fix).

IF that doesn't work either, then UNcheck the "keep me signed in" box -- Google-help says that should allow your comment to post (it's a workaround to a current bug).
Apologies for the problems.

TIP: There's a size limit. If longer than 3500 characters or so, in a text editor, make two posts out of it.

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