Some (minor) complaints about the Kindle

[Papi]

Well, first I'm very happy with the Kindle NT, which IMO looks better in reality than on pictures. However, there are some things that didn't work properly or that could be improved :

1 - The most annoying thing to me is full justification is not always "full" : it seems when right aligning the text would involve too much spaces in a line, the algorithms decides the text simply won't be aligned. When I read German texts, which has a lot of long words, this can be very annoying, and I read with the smallest font size. I guess this problem has been discussed before, though I don't know how I would search for it...Is there a work around for that ?

2 - I purchased the Kindle on the French Amazon store so it comes with a French Dictionary. I have a German to French dictionary set for German texts. If I read a German text and move the cursor in front of a word, the translation will appear as it should. However, if I think of a word I want to search in the dictionary, I open the Keyboard, type the word, then go to "dictionary", it displays me a list of words from...the French Dictionary instead of the German to French one.

3 - I already saw that on another thread, but when you're reading a text, you see for example a famous Painter is mentioned, you'd expect to just move the cursor to the beginning of the name of the painter, click and launch Wikipedia, but no you have to type the name of the Painter. Honestly, I don't know why they didn't implement this yet, it seems evident when you use the device and access Wikipedia from reading a text.

4 - In some cases, I don't remember when exactly, moving the cursor in front of the word you want a definition for is not possible, because for example the character "«" is right in front, or in French we have l' d' s', etc so you can't have "access" to the word. In the second case it works though if I remember correctly, maybe because the dictionary handles the l'........ word as a declination of the word.

5 - There's seem to be a problem in some case with Personal Documents sending, I have 2 Kindles registered, the 2 have different Kindle emails, and the second can't have Personal Document sent to it. On my "Manage your Kindle" page, it says I have to de-register it and re-register it, which I did but it didn't change anything. Also I would like both devices to have the same send-to-Kindle email, which I can't do either. I emailed the Customer Service about it, they said it's a known issue and they're working on it, so I just mentioned it in case someone else encounters this problem.

6 - I really like the design, lightness and tininess of the device, though it's configuration makes it not practical to hold it with one hand. You either have access to the page turning buttons, or to the buttons at the bottom. An option to change the functions of right and left of the 5 way pad to page turning would be welcomed and intuitive.

Overall very nice device, the screen looks as good as the on on my PRS-650, it's very light and I like the design. The software is simple and pretty well thought IMO.

[odiakkoh]

#2 can be fixed by changing the default dictionary.

[Papi]

Originally Posted by odiakkoh

#2 can be fixed by changing the default dictionary.

Nope, because I have 3 default dictionaries : one for French, one for German and one for English. Now I guess when you search for a word in the dictionary, it looks for the default dictionary of the language set for the device which is French for me, but when you're reading a book it's not what you expect. It should open the same dictionary used for the book IMO.

[HarryT]

#1 is not a bug, but a deliberate design decision. When full justification would involve inserting too many spaces, it looks better not to justify at all.

[Papi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

#1 is not a bug, but a deliberate design decision. When full justification would involve inserting too many spaces, it looks better not to justify at all.

It's a matter of taste, because my PRS 650 does not do this, and it has never stroke me that there are too many spaces on a line, or that it didn't looked right, whereas I find it makes it look like an end of paragraph on the Kindle. Well if I had the choice, I know would opt for the "Sony way". Now maybe the font I use on the PRS 650 allows more words per line and I have less margins too.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Papi

Well, first I'm very happy with the Kindle NT, which IMO looks better in reality than on pictures. However, there are some things that didn't work properly or that could be improved :

1 - The most annoying thing to me is full justification is not always "full" : it seems when right aligning the text would involve too much spaces in a line, the algorithms decides the text simply won't be aligned. When I read German texts, which has a lot of long words, this can be very annoying, and I read with the smallest font size. I guess this problem has been discussed before, though I don't know how I would search for it...Is there a work around for that ?

There's a simple hack that lets you add a Aa option to toggle full justification on/off. It probably still works on K4. I believe calibre has a Kindle plugin that can edit the prefs file for this option and a couple of others.

[Zeebra]

Originally Posted by tomsem

There's a simple hack that lets you add a Aa option to toggle full justification on/off. It probably still works on K4. I believe calibre has a Kindle plugin that can edit the prefs file for this option and a couple of others.

I can confirm the justification hack works on the new NT Kindle.

[Papi]

Thanks for the tip, if I understand correctly, it only involves editing a file so I will try that.

[Papi]

I answer to myself on #3 : you don't really have to type the word. What you can do is : move the cursor in front of the word(s) you want to look for on wikipedia, click twice to start underlining, move the cursor to the end of the word(s), don't click to end underlining, instead make the keyboard appear, the underlined word(s) appear in the text box, reclick on the keyboard button to make it disappear, and use the right cursor to go to the "wikipedia" button. It's about the same "trick" from the Kindle Keyboard, but not exactly the same.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by Papi

It's a matter of taste, because my PRS 650 does not do this, and it has never stroke me that there are too many spaces on a line, or that it didn't looked right, whereas I find it makes it look like an end of paragraph on the Kindle. Well if I had the choice, I know would opt for the "Sony way". Now maybe the font I use on the PRS 650 allows more words per line and I have less margins too.

I used to see plenty of books on the Kindle that had half-a-dozen spaces between some words in order to force right justification. Now they limit the number of spaces (it's two, I believe) and as a consequence, you end up with lines that are not fully justified. The situation could be minimized, if not eliminated if the Kindle rendering engine allowed hyphenation, but it doesn't.

[RainingLemur]

I somewhat agree with #6. But, I haven't had any troubles handling the Kindle with either hand and turning pages. I think it would be nifty to be able to re-map some controls, though.

[Papi]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

I used to see plenty of books on the Kindle that had half-a-dozen spaces between some words in order to force right justification. Now they limit the number of spaces (it's two, I believe) and as a consequence, you end up with lines that are not fully justified. The situation could be minimized, if not eliminated if the Kindle rendering engine allowed hyphenation, but it doesn't.

So they change the behaviour at some point ? Interesting, I wonder why they would do that. It would be nice to have hyphenation (is there a reader that do that), but I guess it's rather complicated, and the rules would depend on the language of the book I guess, which would imply weird things if the language meta-date of the book is not correct.

After several more days of use I would add the following points :
7 - A subscription to a periodical can't be share between several devices. Now I don't know if it's due to the Publishers or Amazon (I would guess it's due to the Publishers), but for the consumer, it sucks !

8 - When I read a Newspaper, and I'm reading an article which ends on the current page, with another article starting right after, the next article is considered to be the first to be not at all displayed on the current page. Which means you can't read articles one after another by just clicking on the right of the D Pad. I guess this behaviour is deliberate, and of course you can just go to next page each time, but I would prefer next article to point to the beginning of the first title of the current page after the title on top.

Overall, again I like the device very much, it's very convenient and these are mostly, like the title says minor complaints that doesn't alter the enjoyment of using the device. What is very less enjoyable, and it's not particularly directed to Amazon but to the whole "protection" system, is that I realize more and more that these devices allow you more to access content that to actually possess it, and I guess it will go more and more in that direction. A paper book, can be easily lent, sold or given to someone ! Same thing with a newspaper, after I read it, I can give it to someone, but not on an eReader. I can't even share that newspageper between my own eReaders. On top of that, in France the eBooks / newspapers coming from the big publishers are almost as expensive as the printed ones, which makes the whole experience even less pleasing.
Of course there are advantages like the convenience of holding the device compared to a printed book, the ease and speed of using dictionary, the lighted cover which makes it easy to read in the dark, the automatic reception of newspapers. But sometimes I feel tempted to boycott this silly protection system and return to printed medias.

[Papi]

I'm answering to myself (once again )
About #7 : I always thought, and have read several times, that subscriptions can't be shared between Kindles registered to the same account. I don't know if it was always like that, and it's could be certainly be made more easy to do, but on my Manage Your Kindle -> Newspapers page, I can send the latest edition of my subscriptions to my Kindle Non Touch when the subscription was set on my Kindle Keyboard (not to Kindle 4 PC).
I even discovered by reading comments on amazon.com that some newspapers (a French newspaper "Le Monde" for example) have a specific version for Kindle for Android ! It has more pictures, some in color, unfortunately I don't know if the content is different (I guess not). So I purchased today's version for Android, went to my Manage Your Kindle page, I had the option to send it to my "regular" Kindles, but once I clicked "Send", it said it couldn't be delivered to the device. However I can transfer it to my computer and should have a bit nicer version on my Kindle.

[Papi]

#7 : I guess I was wrong, since you can actually share a a subscription between devices. I don't know if all subscriptions allow this, but I subscribed for a newspaper on my android device, and the newspapers is available on my "Archives" from my Kindle NT and Kindle Keyboard. What is not clear to me is : That newspaper has a special edition for android's device, with more (and some in color) pictures, that's why I subscribed on my Android's device. Now when I get the newspaper on my Kindle Keyboard for example, I don't know if it's the "augmented" version or the regular one. Also, I don't know if it's delivered through the 3G on my Kindle Keyboard (the newspaper of Saturday was 2.4MB). I guess it is since it's in the archives, but I always downloaded when connected through WiFi

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

#1 is not a bug, but a deliberate design decision. When full justification would involve inserting too many spaces, it looks better not to justify at all.