Saturday, November 19, 2011

Kindle helper - Calibre

Whew! It has been an exciting few days since the Kindle Fire arrived at our house. Even hubby is showing an interest in it as a way to watch the latest tv series (he likes to watch them one episode after another, from season 1) he is enjoying... now it is Brothers and Sisters... while we are in Florida the week of December 4th. I showed him how nice Netflix looked on the Kindle Fire screen and how easy it was to find the episode he was currently watching. He loved it. He isn't a huge recreational reader, but this made my heart go pitty pat.

It is a little disappointing to find the Kindle Android software wasn't what I had hoped. There is no real way to create collections or store your books into folders that I can find. I'm hoping Amazon will take what so many are saying about that and update that software so it is more than just a way to read one book at a time.

I do like the Cloud Reader much better on the Fire. It is a great way to access your entire Amazon library. I just wish they would spend a little time with the iBooks reader and come up with something comparable, if not better. I know the gurus at Amazon could if they wanted to.

Calibre Recognizes the new Kindle Fire...
One of the first things I did during this shakedown period with this new little machine was to hook it to my computers (pc and a mac) with the USB cable (from an older Kindle) to see what the folders looked like on it. There are quite a few new ones I will be learning about and (of course) sharing with you in the future, but today was the first day Calibre actually recognized the Kindle Fire when it was hooked up to my mac. There have been a couple of updates this week, so I'm sure one of those addressed the newer Kindles.

I used Calibre to transfer a book (mobi file) to the new Kindle Fire, then looked in the folders on the Kindle to see where exactly the file went. This was more to satisfy my own curiosity, and was before I even disconnected the Kindle to check and see if the book would appear on the screen with the other books I have on it.

Calibre transferred the book to the Documents folder on the Kindle Fire. There is also a Books folder where (it seems) books you have purchased from Amazon automatically go. At any rate, upon disconnecting the USB and turning the new Kindle on, I was happy to see the book appear in the Books area from the home screen.

I'm also thinking this is such a new thing for Amazon, there are bound to be updates and improvements over the next few months. So far, so good...

stay tuned, dear reader...
 
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