Kindle 3 Review

It is really easy to get started using Amazon’s hand held reader. I wrote a short Kindle 3 review where I mentioned some of  my impressions about the device. Just now though, I want to talk in more detail about how to actually use the Kindle reader. Much of the functionality is really straight forward, it is a crime not to use it! There are plenty of more advanced tricks that you can perform but right now, I’m just going to outline some simple options that may enhance your Kindle experience.

Kindle Screen Rotation

By the end of this section, you will know exactly how you can change the alignment of your Kindle screen. It is a really simple operation and means that you can read horizontally or vertically. Changing to horizontal alignment is useful for reading PDF files. With the smaller 6″ reader, reading a full PDF page vertically makes the text really small. However if you change to horizontal alignment, you can scroll through your PDF without having to move left or right.

 

 

The first thing that you have to do is to press the A_A button, next to the space bar. Do this when you are on the Home page or while you are reading a book. You then get the option to choose how you want to align your screen. Just use the 5 way controller to select your desired alignment.

 

For reading PDF files, in this case, The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, I usually align my Kindle horizontally. This mean I can see the full width of the pages without having to scroll left and right. Also, the text size becomes large enough to read easily.

Kindle Dictionary

The Kindle dictionary feature is another really cool option. While reading a real book, I hardly ever took the time to look up a dictionary while I was reading. But the Kindle makes it so easy to do. Best of all, it hardly takes any time so really doesn’t interrupt the flow much at all.

 

All that you have to do is use your 5 way controller to move the cursor to the beginning of the word that you want to check. When you get there, a short definition of the word appears at the top (or bottom) of the screen. If you want a more detailed explanation, just press the enter button.

 

It will be interesting to see what features the Kindle 4 offers.