Sheldon the Kindle Fire - First Impressions

[seperis]

I love Sheldon the Kindle. So much.

Size

It's almost the exact same size as the kindle keyboard. Screen has a black margin all around at one half the size of my fingertip for easy grabbing without smudging the readable area.

Sensitivity

Touch speed I have no complaints so far. The onscreen keyboard is pretty easy to use and the keys are not impossibly small for my fingers, and my hands are not tiny, so YMMV.

Screen orientation

It flips about as fast as you turn it.

Weight

Easy to carry in one hand without effort, pretty much falling into the weight sweet spot that Kindle occupies on the higher end. The back is slightly rubbery for a pretty good grip bare, but I have to admit a naked Kindle freaks me out badly. My case doesn't arrive until tomorrow, but current estimates say this is going to be pretty much as easy as carrying my Kindle around.

Sound

Not terrible, not epic. Headphones work just fine.

Browser

Currently I'm in my home network and to clarify, this house is etherneted and wirelessed for both g and n, so given Time Warner Cable having issues, my speeds are usually decent. Speed on this browser is definitely above teh average I can get when I unplug the ethernet on my laptop and use wireless g. Load time for a previously viewed page when timed against my laptop is almost the same speed and possibly slightly faster and my laptop has good cache and a solid state drive and is fast. Therefore, I tentatively state the silk browser is really goddamn fast.

Home screen

The home screen is three separate sections; the top is teh search bar, below it are links to your stuff in teh following categories:

Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps, Web.

All have two options at the top, Cloud and Device you can switch between. With my books, a touch downloaded them fast. Video has a link to your library at the very top left and then three sections, one for Prime movies/tv that includes--thank you God--all of Farscape for free viewing for Prime members. My God, my life is good. Amazon Prime videos cannot be downloaded and watched offline on the Kindle fire, but given a wireless connection, its', um, actually pretty fast. I took a break just now to watch the first ten minutes of Farscape ep 1.

Next down is a carousel--it really is. It basically shows what you were jsut doing (a cute pic of teh archive appeared and of the help menu and of farscape and of all my books. The third row is alll the apps you favorited.

Youtube

HD Youtube loads...really fast. I mean, that was kind of disturbing. I couldn't access some vids including Tanglewood Tree for Fingersmith, Fascination for Billy Elliot and several X-Men vids and SGA vids since they aren't enabled for mobile, but any that were enabled loaded fast and all looked much better in HD than non-HD. I mean, seriously, beyond the obvious, the HD's were nice.

Tested successfully with the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkHwavK_urE&list=PLA742652EAF2F3634&index=31&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch3cOa7jy-A&list=PLA742652EAF2F3634&index=63&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq06MkQjAEU&list=PLA742652EAF2F3634&index=78&feature=plpp_video

Other

I wish it had a 3G option, but 3G is fucking slow, and I use broadband at home, so not having it when I don't have access to my home network might lead to homicide when nothing will load, so. The browser is ungodly fast.

Archive

The screen and size are fine but a little cramped when the Fire is vertical; flip to horizontal on dashboard and it's magic. Reading fic vertical is of course fine. But if someone wants to write a skin for the Fire, pretty much everything can be solved with a quick margin and tab reduction and possibly a function to hide the dashboard or turn it into a hover menu or reduce it to less than a quarter of available space. For me, the Mobile skin wasn't quite right for the Kindle screen area, but the regular archive is perfect when I flip the screen, so I'm happy. Recent bookmark list requires no orientation adjustment, so it's basically anything with the div columns.

Most websites do slightly better in horizontal mode, but none so far are unreadable in vertical; this is like, about a thousand times better than my phone.

Problem
So far, and I have no idea why, I cant' get the download functoin working. It downloads but does not add to library and this is annoying.

Note
To fix name, and whoo this is embarrassing, click on Synch in settings after changing it on Amazon. That does the trick.

Please
If anyone figures out how to download fic to library--and if it is obvious, pretend it is not--then please to be dropping a line?

Sheldon and I are getting along fine, thank you. How is everyone else with their Fires? And more importantly, what are their names?????

ETA

Okay, for those, like me, who can't figure out how to get the entire fic from AO3 to Kindle, it's kind of weird. Download the book. It is now in the Download folder.

Download ES File Manager from the appstore. It's free. When downloaded, open it. You will see a list of folders, one of which is called Download. Open it and select the book by pressing down on it. If you have only books in there in multiple, on the menu, select Select All, then Cut. Or do it one at a time, IDK.

Using the top menu fourth icon, go up a level, then click on Books. When Books is open, you will see a strip of white and a tiny knob at the bottom of your screen that is where your book(s) are that you slide up to open. Hold down on the book(s) and then choose Paste.

Your AO3 books are perfectly functional and happy in the Docs folder. I am a hundred percent sure there is a stupidly easy way to do this, but its' like, 10:47 and I just want to read some fic. Calibre will automatically download your mobi files into Kindle Books folder that will appear in Docs. Yeah, no idea what is going on.

Sheldon and I are learning each other.

Comments

[settiai]

My mother has done a very bad job at hiding the fact that she's planning on surprising me with a Fire when I go back to Tennessee for Christmas. Right now, I'm seriously thinking about naming it Darcy, but that might change between now and the time I actually have it in my hands. \o/

[silentcs]

When I get one, I am totally naming it Fred, after the intelligent white hole from Diane Duane's So You Want to be a Wizard.

As for the adding to library thing, I remember reading a while back on the Mobileread forums that it had to do with how the setup of the download link was recognized on the K3. Can't remember the specifics, but some websites, like manybooks.net would allow for a download that added straight to the kindle library, while others did not. ....If I figure out which thread it is, I'll drop the link here. Hopefully someone will find an actual solution.

[gblvr]

My Kindle is still in transit (to Delaware, so I won't get it until Saturday), but I think I'll be naming it Katniss. ::wanders off to find some Hunger Games icons::

[fyrdrakken]

Upon further reflection, wi-fi doesn't really figure in my life except when I'm at home. And when I'm at home, the preferred viewing option is always going to be the big HD TV in the living room (with my own largish desktop monitor or smaller bedroom TV being the fallback options if the living room TV is otherwise in use, depending on whether I have DVDs/vid files available or are using the DVR/watching live TV). Streaming is the absolute last resort, and if I'm streaming media at home my netbook is right there. (The desktop has no internet access anymore -- if it did I might be more interested in streaming things. As it is now, I torrent vid files instead if I can find them.)

So I think the Kindle I wind up getting is going to be one of the other models -- with 3G, which means I'm debating between keyboard and touch. (Also, given I won't be ordering one until I have Xmas gift money to play with, I'm wondering if it would be a good idea for me to do some preliminary work with my fic archives, getting a jump on the task of selecting the favorites I'll want to load and converting them into MOBI files (or downloading same from AO3).

(And I'm going through a Discworld reread at the moment, so I'd be tempted to call my Kindle "Ook" when I finally get one, a reference to the Librarian at Unseen University. Though I suppose Giles would also be a good option.)

[dorkpie]

Omg my Pepperjack is just the shiniest thing ever. Also, in re. to fic: I was just sending everything to the fire via the e-mail option they set up. :/a

(This comment brought to you by Silk, which holy shit is fast.)

[(Anonymous)]

Eeeek! Mine is supposed to arrive on Nov. 17th (compared to the 21st which is what I was told yesterday) and I am using the time to decide on its name...

:)

Thank you so much for the detailed review, this is very exciting.

[thornsilver]

Ahhh, new tech!

[mercurydraconix.livejournal.com]

SO UM. Your old Kindle. I have a few questions! I'm not in the market for a tablet, but I do think the e-ink is cool and looking on amazon, those prices are right:

a) Regular? Touch? Keyboard? and do you have an argument in favor of any of those?

b) "special offers" - offensively irritating or unobtrusive? also, do they ever go away or are they there for eternity?

I've read cnet, obviously, but it's always nice to get a personal opinion!

[vicki_rae.livejournal.com]

Agree with just about everything you said.

Her name is Amanda and she's damn fast. And very pretty.

[ladyclio16.livejournal.com]

Mine is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I'm so excited I'll probably scare the poor UPS guy when he shows up.

[helene94.livejournal.com]

I did, in fact, name mine George, because I had to snatch it away from my 11 year old and clutch it to my chest. Which is leading me to think that maybe I should name my regular Kindle Keyboard Martha...

I'm still testing to see if this is going to be my default e-reader, so thanks for the tips on downloading AO3 files, because I was struggling last night, and resorted to physically connecting it to the computer and manually moving MOBI files into the documents folder. Low-tech solution, for certain values of the phrase low tech!

Now if I can just figure out how to convert and send my millions of RTF fic files, I'll definitely be in business.

This is the coolest thing ever!

[aliciajd]

Mine's supposed to arrive today. I feel like I'm 5 and waiting for Santa Claus.

[goingferal.livejournal.com]

I have a Sony e-Reader (old!), a keyboard Kindle, and am considering getting a tablet, largely for reading online, checking email, blogs, social sites, etc.

I'm debating between getting a non-ipad tablet and the Fire in the near future. Having the Fire in your hands now, what do you think the big difference is--what would make you choose Fire over a tablet (or iPad)?

Future Fire (maybe)

[kiranovember.livejournal.com]

I'm saving up for one, but if I can't watch TV or movies offline, it will be less useful than I was hoping, as I have no wifi at home.

[thornsilver]

Seperis, you seem to have beaten your Kindle Fire into shape. Tell me, is there a way to download AO3 files directly to Kindle Fire and then open them? I download the files and see them in the file manager, but not on the Documents or Books tab, and there does not seem to be an option to open them to the program that can actually read them...