Psi Baba
Homo Skepticalis
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2001
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- 4,027
Sounds good. I'll give it a try.
Robin
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2004
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- 14,971
I don't have an iPad, I have an iPod. I am not into carrying around bulky equipment.I also have a netbook, so I can do much more than the poor iPad users. When I'm done reading, I can work on my office documents, or do some coding, or watch a movie. I feel pretty sorry for them, also
And I see the inability to do office work on the iPod as a plus.
BenBurch
Gatekeeper of The Left
Just seems a little faster to me. Hasn't crashed yet, either, and it used to crash sometimes.
RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
Me too. I had a couple of freezes previously and none since.
Psi Baba
Homo Skepticalis
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- Aug 13, 2001
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- 4,027
I've noticed that it's definitely a little faster with page turns and displaying the menu. Don't know if it's made the type any sharper. I haven't had my unit long enough to experience things like freezes. Didn't have any wi-fi problems either. At least the update itself was problem-free.
RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
Have you gotten any of the free books from Amazon? www.ereaderiq.com checks Amazon twice a day for new freebies.
Kindle Questions Three
First question: Is there any way to get the Kindle to keep track of what book I'm currently reading? If I press Home, or have to navigate anywhere else for some reason, Kindle remembers my page, but forgets my book. I have to go back to the huge long list and scroll, scroll, scroll, trying to find my book. (And early Alzheimer's note here: I can often remember the contents, but not the title, or the title but not the author, or some combination thereof).
My Sony reader not only sorts by author and book in the main list, but also remembers the most recent books being read. With only one or two keypresses, I can jump easily among multiple books. This is often desirable, since the book I read while waiting at the dentist's office is usually not the book I want to read that night before going to bed.
I thought the Sony interface was terrible until I got the Kindle. I absolutely love the Kindle's display, but finding stuff seems much harder than it should be.
I've googled for Kindle tricks and tips, and found lots of pages telling me how to play minesweeper or use keyboard shortcuts for things I never want to do. I'm sure that I must be missing something, despite my earlier plaint in this topic and the advice received. Am I the only person who reads five books at once and wants to jump quickly among them, or indeed even know which books are new?
Second question: Is there any way to get the Kindle to group books by author/title or author/series#/title? I spent hours and hours in Calibre going through all my collections, making sure that all the metadata was correct. The authors are listed as lname, fname. The individual volumes of each series are numbered in order. I put in keywords and categories (genres). But upon transferring it back to the Kindle, it's the same jumble it was before.
Third question (reprise from earlier post): I can't figure out how to get the quick search function to work. Typing in tol and pressing the center of the five-way key puts my Kindle to sleep for 15 seconds, after which it changes from page 1-220 to page 1-3 (which I assume is supposed to be the search results), but the first item listed is Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings. Further down, mixed with a couple (but not all) of my Tolkiens, I find Heinlein, Stephen King, Einstein, Charles Dickens, and Tom Clancy (none of which have "tol" in the metadata, title, or author names). Is it just broken, or am I expecting the wrong result? How would you guys skip through 220 pages to find just the Tolkiens?
P.S. The update to 3.0.3 was painless, except for the Kindle having forgotten which book I was reading. The page-turn speed may be a little faster; there's slightly less ghosting as the page changes. I don't notice any other differences.
First question: Is there any way to get the Kindle to keep track of what book I'm currently reading? If I press Home, or have to navigate anywhere else for some reason, Kindle remembers my page, but forgets my book. I have to go back to the huge long list and scroll, scroll, scroll, trying to find my book. (And early Alzheimer's note here: I can often remember the contents, but not the title, or the title but not the author, or some combination thereof).
My Sony reader not only sorts by author and book in the main list, but also remembers the most recent books being read. With only one or two keypresses, I can jump easily among multiple books. This is often desirable, since the book I read while waiting at the dentist's office is usually not the book I want to read that night before going to bed.
I thought the Sony interface was terrible until I got the Kindle. I absolutely love the Kindle's display, but finding stuff seems much harder than it should be.
I've googled for Kindle tricks and tips, and found lots of pages telling me how to play minesweeper or use keyboard shortcuts for things I never want to do. I'm sure that I must be missing something, despite my earlier plaint in this topic and the advice received. Am I the only person who reads five books at once and wants to jump quickly among them, or indeed even know which books are new?
Second question: Is there any way to get the Kindle to group books by author/title or author/series#/title? I spent hours and hours in Calibre going through all my collections, making sure that all the metadata was correct. The authors are listed as lname, fname. The individual volumes of each series are numbered in order. I put in keywords and categories (genres). But upon transferring it back to the Kindle, it's the same jumble it was before.
Third question (reprise from earlier post): I can't figure out how to get the quick search function to work. Typing in tol and pressing the center of the five-way key puts my Kindle to sleep for 15 seconds, after which it changes from page 1-220 to page 1-3 (which I assume is supposed to be the search results), but the first item listed is Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings. Further down, mixed with a couple (but not all) of my Tolkiens, I find Heinlein, Stephen King, Einstein, Charles Dickens, and Tom Clancy (none of which have "tol" in the metadata, title, or author names). Is it just broken, or am I expecting the wrong result? How would you guys skip through 220 pages to find just the Tolkiens?
P.S. The update to 3.0.3 was painless, except for the Kindle having forgotten which book I was reading. The page-turn speed may be a little faster; there's slightly less ghosting as the page changes. I don't notice any other differences.
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AdMan
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2010
- Messages
- 10,293
If the books aren't sorted by most recent first (i.e., with the ones you have been recently reading at the top of the list when you press Home), all you need to do is to move the five-way controller up to the top of the screen to underline your current sort setting, then move to the right to see the sort options and select "Most Recent First."
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roger
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 22, 2002
- Messages
- 11,466
Instead of a step-by-step for your questions, just press home. Make sure you are on the first page, and press the up arrow until you are highlighting the very top row. NOT the first book, the row above the first book. Mine says
"Showing all 20 Items by collections."
Press the right arrow to access the options. There you will see selections for Most recent first, title, author, and collections. The rest should be obvious.
As for remembering your book, just use the back button. Yes, if you did 20 actions you'll have to press 'back' 20 times, unfortunately.
roger
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 22, 2002
- Messages
- 11,466
I didn't think I'd like it all that much, but I really do. I was a past volunteer for project Gutenberg, but never really used it all that much, as I can't abide reading a book on a computer screen. However, as many have noted, the e-reader experience is nothing like that. I like. It's fortunate that a large portion of my reading is classics, so I can read for cheap. These days is a real mull-er to spend even $10 on a book, so having free books that I actually like is a huge advantage. Our library has some ebooks, but the selection is terrible right now, so that is mostly out. We'll see how it goes once I have read what I wanted from Gutenberg.
Psi Baba
Homo Skepticalis
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2001
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- 4,027
As far as grouping, you're just going to have to create collections. The easiest way to add a lot of items to a collection is to create the collection, open the new collection, press Menu, select Add/Remove Items, then you will be taken to your entire book list with first one highlighted and a button beneath it that says "add this item to collection." Then it's just a matter of click-move-click-move-move-click-click-move-move-move-click, etc. until you've selected all the books you want to include. It would be nice to have an iTunes-like computer-based interface application for creating collections just like you create playlists for an mp3 player. I don't think Calibre does that.
Remember that books can be listed in multiple collections. You can make a Tolkien collection that might include everything by and about Tolkien, and then a Fantasy collection that includes all fantasy authors, including Tolkien.
Remember that books can be listed in multiple collections. You can make a Tolkien collection that might include everything by and about Tolkien, and then a Fantasy collection that includes all fantasy authors, including Tolkien.
I have the Kindle 2, so this may not be how it works on the newest Kindle...
When I do the search function I described before, I only type in the first letter of the author's name (or title). It doesn't seem to work if you type in more than one letter ('t' instead of 'tol').
I don't have 220 pages of books, though.
I tend to archive a lot of stuff if it's from Amazon, or else store it on my computer, if it's not something I'm likely to get to in the next month.Linda
Psi Baba, if I go through all the trouble to make those collections, what happens if I rename a book, correct the author, or change the metadata? I.e., what is the Kindle using to tag a book as belonging to a particular collection?
If I were programming it, I'd have a GUID (or at least an index key) that uniquely identified the book regardless of its attributes. Do we know if the Kindle does that?
If I were programming it, I'd have a GUID (or at least an index key) that uniquely identified the book regardless of its attributes. Do we know if the Kindle does that?
Psi Baba
Homo Skepticalis
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2001
- Messages
- 4,027
That's a good question. I wish I knew.
fls, the problem with a large list is that practically every letter will appear in either the author's name or title in far too many books. It's quite frustrating to type 't' and get David Eddings. I can't find any way to limit the quick search to the author's last name (or anything else).
ETA: Just did some playing about, and apparently the Kindle uses the current sort order to know what fields to search. So, when showing the list sorted by author, typing 't' will take me to Terry Goodkind. Typing 'j' takes me to J.K. Rowling. Typing 'j.' takes 72 seconds before showing me a jumbled list of nonsense (I was hoping for just J.R.R. Tolkein and J.K. Rowling to show up).
Well, if I ever want to search by the author's first name, I'm golden.
I can then set the search order for the results (defaults to "relevance," which is clearly a misnomer) and change it to "author," which gives me the books sorted by the first letter of the author's first name, but no subsorting within that list.
Do the people who make these things ever USE them?
ETA: Just did some playing about, and apparently the Kindle uses the current sort order to know what fields to search. So, when showing the list sorted by author, typing 't' will take me to Terry Goodkind. Typing 'j' takes me to J.K. Rowling. Typing 'j.' takes 72 seconds before showing me a jumbled list of nonsense (I was hoping for just J.R.R. Tolkein and J.K. Rowling to show up).
Well, if I ever want to search by the author's first name, I'm golden.
I can then set the search order for the results (defaults to "relevance," which is clearly a misnomer) and change it to "author," which gives me the books sorted by the first letter of the author's first name, but no subsorting within that list.
Do the people who make these things ever USE them?
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No, I have to take that all back. The search by first letter doesn't work. I just went back to the main list (sorted by author) and typed 'g' hoping to find Grisham. It took me to page 1-31, starting with Aristotle, and not containing any Grisham at all.
I went back to the main page, changed the sort order to most recent, and repeated the 'g' search. Another 31-page result, this time headed off by H.G. Wells, Aristotle, Stephen Donaldson, Leonardo da Vinci, Heinlein, Tom Clancy, etc., with the first Grisham showing up on page 22 of 31. There's no sort order at all that's apparent to me.
I went back to the main page, changed the sort order to most recent, and repeated the 'g' search. Another 31-page result, this time headed off by H.G. Wells, Aristotle, Stephen Donaldson, Leonardo da Vinci, Heinlein, Tom Clancy, etc., with the first Grisham showing up on page 22 of 31. There's no sort order at all that's apparent to me.
Shouldn't whatever took you to that page be on the prior page you got back to by mistake?
Sorry to hear that the search function doesn't seem to work on your Kindle the way it does on mine. It sounds like this is something they changed. I was thinking about asking for the new Kindle for Christmas, but maybe I better make sure they haven't taken away the features I like on the one I have, first. Mine sorts by the last name of the author, for one.
Linda
RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
Linda, does the 2nd generation have Collections now?
On my 3rd generation one, when I have it sorted by Collections, typing a letter makes it search all the indexed text.
If I have it sorted by Title or Author, it goes to the book starting with that title or author. Different behavior depending on how I have it sorted.
On my 3rd generation one, when I have it sorted by Collections, typing a letter makes it search all the indexed text.
If I have it sorted by Title or Author, it goes to the book starting with that title or author. Different behavior depending on how I have it sorted.