Kindle Fire

When the Kindle first came out I was convinced that it wasn’t for me. I am the sort of person who loves the feel of the book in my hands, turning the pages and smell of a new book is something you can’t replace.  

Fast forward and the Kindle Fire comes onto the market, I debate with all the extra features it might be useful, and with a hint here and a suggestion there, my son and husband got me one for 2012 Christmas.  I never thought I would say this, but I absolutely adore it. The storage is 5.5 GB and along with books it can store music and film, it has quite a good speaker, wireless so you can download apps easily and you also have access to all the other social media, such as twitter, pinterest and whatever else you can think of. Photographs can be uploaded via Amazon cloud drive, videos can also be stored and if you connect to love film you have access to movies.

My screen is 7 inches in size and it’s very handy and fits in my bag without taking up too much room. It’s a slightly heavier than the earlier kindle, at 400g. The selection of books available for the kindle has improved and many eBook stores now have a converter for you to increase access to other eBooks. You can also download documents and PDFs via cloud.

I love being able to carry a huge selection of books that I can dip into depending on my mood, and I have got though more books since I started using it.  The kindle has some good features - storing or book marking your last place read, make notes within a book or highlight specific sections and apparently you can share what you've highlighted on your social media (though I haven't done that yet.  An audio function so that the books can be read to you and in effect you have an audio book (not sure if you can change her voice and she reads in one tone), I use this function when I am in the studio working. Another great thing is being able to look at a sample of the books before you buy, and option to change your mind if you have purchased something in haste. I found quite a good selection of Mixed Media Art books, though with these books I don't think anything can take the place of their visual impact on the pages I still want to hold them in my hands.

What I like most about it is that it has so many different functions; short of making me a cup of tea or having a phone function it has so many great uses. There is of course a down side, I guess we have yet to see the impact of staring at multiple screens and our eye muscles, and remembering to take the necessary breaks.I also find the battery life not as good as it could be currently supposed to last for 9 hours (I find with continuous use I get around 6 hours at best). I was hoping that it would have been like the earlier versions of the kindle that can last for up to 8 weeks, but I find I have to charge it every day, if not twice a day depending on usage which can be a pain, as you need to carry the charger cable around with you.  I found that to preserve the battery slightly you have to shut it down after use rather than leaving it on standby. And other down side is it only comes with the lead to plug into a computer which is a very slow way of charging your kindle. You have to buy the plug separate which to me didn’t make sense considering how much you would have brought it for.  A way round depending on your phone (as many come with a plug with usb connection) and if you already have one of these you won’t need to purchase the kindle plug.

That being said, the benefits and uses of the Kindle Fire outshine the down sides and hopefully with new and improved versions these things can be addressed. I think you will definitely enjoy using the kindle fire and wonder why you didn’t get one sooner!  Blessings, for the weekend.