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Learning New Things, Kindle Edition
Feb. 27th, 2023 10:45 amNo, this is not a book review. This is an activity and I am blogging about what I experienced.
On our most recent trip (trip report blog entries already up! Might be a new record for me in terms of timeliness), A. and I had trouble connecting to wi-fi at a hotel with our kindles so we could get her something new to read (I ultimately got her _The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet_, which she is enjoying, and is the first of four books. Woot!). It wasn’t finding the hotspot on our phones, either. Eventually, I found a setting to toggle (maximize capability or something along those lines) and that worked. As a result of that, I learned a whole bunch about current wi-fi standards that I really should have known already because the change happened at least a couple years ago. Ooops. Also, her paperwhite (2018) doesn’t have cellular, which was confusing because I thought it did. And in fact, it may well have, but that, too, went away a few years ago.
So I thought, okay, maybe just go buy us both new devices with modern wifi and cellular included. I looked at the oasis, and that hasn’t been upgraded since I bought mine, so, not clear that will fix the wifi problem. I looked at the chart and am not optimistic about the wifi having been upgraded. It does, however, have functioning cellular. And then I looked over at the paperwhite, and they don’t make a paperwhite with cellular anymore but it _does_ have the upgraded wifi. Difficult decisions!
Next up: A. likes audiobooks and she likes to read along as she listens. Can a device do _that_? Answer, NO! Some kindles _can_ play audiobooks through bluetooth headphones / pods / wtf. However, they switch back and forth between text and listen — you can’t do both at the same time. Annoying! I knew we had looked for this feature a while back and been unable to make it work. It had not dawned on me that it cannot be made to work. Learning New Things! Unhappily! She has a solution — place the audiobook on her phone, read on the paperwhite — but ungainly!
Anyway. I’m really hoping for a new flagship ereader that lets you listen and read at the same time AND has color AND has cellular AND has modern wifi. I’m _completely_ okay if they want a ludicrous amount of money for it — I use these things for years and they just don’t seem to break down under ordinary use. But if I give up waiting for that Great Day in the Future when all my dream for ereaders truly Do Come True, I’ll probably buy a couple Signature Paperwhites. They’d at least let me leave a couple of the charging cables behind, since I could use USB-C for them.
On our most recent trip (trip report blog entries already up! Might be a new record for me in terms of timeliness), A. and I had trouble connecting to wi-fi at a hotel with our kindles so we could get her something new to read (I ultimately got her _The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet_, which she is enjoying, and is the first of four books. Woot!). It wasn’t finding the hotspot on our phones, either. Eventually, I found a setting to toggle (maximize capability or something along those lines) and that worked. As a result of that, I learned a whole bunch about current wi-fi standards that I really should have known already because the change happened at least a couple years ago. Ooops. Also, her paperwhite (2018) doesn’t have cellular, which was confusing because I thought it did. And in fact, it may well have, but that, too, went away a few years ago.
So I thought, okay, maybe just go buy us both new devices with modern wifi and cellular included. I looked at the oasis, and that hasn’t been upgraded since I bought mine, so, not clear that will fix the wifi problem. I looked at the chart and am not optimistic about the wifi having been upgraded. It does, however, have functioning cellular. And then I looked over at the paperwhite, and they don’t make a paperwhite with cellular anymore but it _does_ have the upgraded wifi. Difficult decisions!
Next up: A. likes audiobooks and she likes to read along as she listens. Can a device do _that_? Answer, NO! Some kindles _can_ play audiobooks through bluetooth headphones / pods / wtf. However, they switch back and forth between text and listen — you can’t do both at the same time. Annoying! I knew we had looked for this feature a while back and been unable to make it work. It had not dawned on me that it cannot be made to work. Learning New Things! Unhappily! She has a solution — place the audiobook on her phone, read on the paperwhite — but ungainly!
Anyway. I’m really hoping for a new flagship ereader that lets you listen and read at the same time AND has color AND has cellular AND has modern wifi. I’m _completely_ okay if they want a ludicrous amount of money for it — I use these things for years and they just don’t seem to break down under ordinary use. But if I give up waiting for that Great Day in the Future when all my dream for ereaders truly Do Come True, I’ll probably buy a couple Signature Paperwhites. They’d at least let me leave a couple of the charging cables behind, since I could use USB-C for them.