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Old 11-21-2011, 09:47 AM   #1
TechnoCat
Zealot
TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'TechnoCat gives new meaning to the word 'superlative.'
 
Posts: 131
Karma: 150390
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Pacific NorthWest
Device: Kindle Fire
And it reads ebooks too!

Hello. My Kindle Fire arrived Weds 16 Nov. First off, thanks to Blossom(?) for her posts on getting books onto the puppy.

Some thoughts and questions.

Built-In features:
  • Amazon Video is pretty impressive
  • I have a super-fast commercial fibre connection and N WiFi, but Netflix is so jumpy it's unwatchable
  • What? No Exchange email support? (See below)
  • No Calendar?
  • The Cloud base storage is a bit small
  • As is 7GB or so of storage
  • Love the screen
  • Not loving how many apps Amazon's store claims are "not compatible"

So... I started working around it. Currently I have...
  • Quantum's Enhanced Email; I needed 2xExchange accounts, and even TouchDown can't do that.
  • Business Calendar, which Amazon claims is not compatible, but which works wonderfully with both calendars.
  • Opera Mini. Yeah, Amazon includes a browser. I prefer Opera.
  • File Expert, which is a fantastic way of getting files on the Fire. It can access a Windows share directly and even install from it, and while it can't seem to do that with a Mac SMB share, it can act as a web server for copying to the Fire from the Mac.
  • Root stuff: SuperUser, Root Explorer, SQLite Explorer. Useful for me, probably not for most people. I haven't used it for anything a non-developer would care about.
  • Voodoo OTA RootKeeper, so that I can turn root on/off and keep Video working.
  • My own list/password/shopping app, which syncs to my PC, Mac (yes, I use both) and any J2ME, Nokia and Android devices I'm using. I had to fix a small bug in it but it doesn't require any Kindle-specific code.

One very bizarre thing: I buy all my books from Amazon and have been using Kindle software on my iPod and Android phone for a long time. Last week I sync'd a "sample" of Terry Pratchett's Snuff onto my phone. Two days later Snuff was no longer available, sample or full, for the Kindle. Still on UK site (which I will forever think of as BookPages), but not in the U.S.

Any idea what's up with that? Even in the sample if I try to buy, it's "Not available".

Thanks
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