Category: Library

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Amazon Kindle Library Overdrive

Kindle Fire and other Kindle updates

From what I’ve read so far it seems that Amazon.com has been very busy. I say this because of the following announcements I’m listing in random order.

  • You can now download library books your Kindle. (I haven’t tried this out yet & at this time is USA only. Also it needs to be downloaded via Wi-Fi or USB to the Kindle, I’m assuming because Amazon didn’t want to pay for the downloads of library books that I doubt they make much if any money off of the service.)
  • They are releasing the much rumored Kindle Fire. (It sounds like competition for the iPad & Nook Color to me.)
  • Also you can now buy a Kindle for as little as $79.
  • Two of the Kindles now have a 2 month charge with the wireless off.

When I went to their homepage I was greeted by the following message.

“Dear Customers,

There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp.

We are excited to announce four new products: the all-new Kindle for only $79, two new touch Kindles – Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G – for $99 and $149, and a new class of Kindle –Kindle Fire – a beautiful full color Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games, web browsing and more, for only $199.

These are high-end products – the best Kindles we’ve ever made. Kindle and Kindle Touch have the most-advanced E Ink display technology available, and the 3G Kindle Touch adds free 3G wireless – no monthly fees and no annual contracts. Kindle Fire brings everything we’ve been working on at Amazon for 15 years together into a single, fully-integrated experience for customers – instant access to Amazon’s massive selection of digital content, a vibrant color IPS touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle, a 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand, a state-of-the-art dual core processor, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, and an ultra-fast mobile browser – Amazon Silk – available exclusively on Kindle Fire.

We are building premium products and offering them at non-premium prices.

Thank you for being a customer,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO

p.s. – Kindle Fire has a radical new web browser called Amazon Silk. When you use Silk – without thinking about it or doing anything explicit – you’re calling on the raw computational horsepower of Amazon EC2 to accelerate your web browsing. If you’re curious, watch this short video to learn more about how it works.”

I’m now going to cover the cost of each model from lowest to highest price.

The 5-way controller Kindle has 2GB storage instead of the 4 GB that most of the other models have, with the exceptions of the fire having 8 GB. Also for the Kindle Fire they have included Whispersync for video content as well. So if you were watching content on your PC or TV & switched over to the Kindle Fire you could continue at the same point you were on the other device.

Here are the Battery Life listing with wireless turned off on the devices from shortest to longest.

  • 8 hours continuous reading or 7.5 hours video playback Kindle Fire
  • 3 weeks Kindle DX
  • 1 month Kindle 5-way controller
  • 2 months Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G, Kindle Keyboard, & Kindle Keyboard 3G

Since I saw people making some complaints at Announcement Kindle books now available at local libraries I thought I’d cover some of the issues that were mentioned that I have any knowledge of. Here they are in the order I saw them in the thread. I will follow the complaint with my response to the complaint. (When I’m quoting someone here I’m including all of their spelling mistakes as well.)

  • Every book ever written not available. {Not every copyright holder on every book ever published has said it is ok to make a digital version of their book, or if the book is out of copyright no one may have cared enough to make a digital version of it yet.}
  • Waiting list – why can’t they loan 1 license an infinite number of times. {Libraries only buy a certain number of licenses for any given book & thus are only allowed to lend that number of that book at the same time. If you want your library to have more copies of a book donate some money to the library & let them know you want some or all of the money to buy additional electronic copies of the book.}
  • Lots of complaints that certain libraries didn’t have that enabled yet on the day it launched. {I read several posts & finally saw people saying that they worked for a library & they were waiting on overdrive to enable the feature for them. So if you don’t see the option by now 7 days after it was launched, your library is in the USA, & your library offers ebooks through overdrive go talk to your library about it.}
  • “I’m done with Kindle – D-O-N-E(!) I just checked and the lending period for ebooks from my library in East Bumblefudge is ONLY ten days. One of my friends has a Nook and HER library in Cleveland allows fourteen days. I should have bought a Nook!” {It is the library that says how long you can have the book out not the hardware.}
  • I saw someone say “Wonder if anyone else is having a hard time downloading an ebook onto their K2? I worked on it for an hour and finally called Kindle Support. Since it’s brand new, the Rep had a hard time with it too so it still doesn’t work. I may be forced to buy a new Kindle with WiFi, just to read library books. There must be a simple way to download the books with the Overdrive Progam. Help! Thanks…” several pages after the answer was already posted. {since I don’t have a Kindle to test the suggested fix mentioned earlier I can’t confirm if it works.}