Help with Kindle, please...not very boaty

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NealB

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I'll admit upfront to being a really technophobic duffer.

However, in preparation for a week of kayaking and back to basics camping in Sweden, I've lashed out and bought a Kindle to take with me.

Now, even I have managed to download books from the Kindle book store without any problem.

I then thought that there must be loads of free stuff out there, too.

I found a website called the Gutengburg project (or something like that), and downloaded several mobi books (whatever they are) to my computer. Great stuff...Moby Dick, The Ancient mariner, Conrad, knot books...luvly jubbly!

When I connect Kindle to pc, and view the files, the downloaded mobis are listed.

However, they do not show up on the Kindle's home page itself.

Can anyone tell me what I'm not doing, please?
 
Those books are free from amazon, so go straight onto Kindle.

Just put in a keyword like "sailing" then search by "cheapest first" and you see all the free ones
 
Worth looking at a free download programme "Calibre". Designed for e book management and works a treat with Kindle. download the book to your download file then transfer to calibre. Plug the kindle into the pc then dump it to your kindle. Also good for converting other e book formats and html filles to mobi (which is what your kindle uses)
 
Don't know about copying direct to the Kindle; I don't think I've ever plugged mine into the computer. On the rare occasions I want to put something on it that didn't come from Amazon, I email it.

Look in your control panel on the Amazon web site and you will find an email address for your Kindle. You need to add your own normal email address to a "whitelist" of people that are allowed to email your kindle, this is so that you don't receive any spam etc to it. Then you can just email the file from your computer to the special kindle address and, assuming you have a network connection on the Kindle, the new file will appear.

I'm assuming this works for mobi files; I usually send PDFs (eg my boat engine workshop manual) or text, but mobi should be better if it works.

Pete
 
parsifal said:
Where are they listed?

I have just plugged my Kindle into a computer and had a look where my books are. They are in a folder (on the Kindle) called 'Documents'.
Click to expand...

When I plug the kindle to the pc, I get the usual 'open folder to view files' message. Opening that, all the mobi files are listed (ie under kindle F:).

They don't appear on the kindle's own screen on the homepage, though.
 
NealB said:
When I plug the kindle to the pc, I get the usual 'open folder to view files' message. Opening that, all the mobi files are listed (ie under kindle F:).

They don't appear on the kindle's own screen on the homepage, though.
Click to expand...

Yes but in the Kindle is a folder called 'Documents'? Are the books in there?
 
Calible is very useful for manageing ebooks and it can synchronise youe Kndle using USB or it will email books to the Kindle.

Documents that you email to your Kindle address are automatically converted to the right format if possible.

If your Kndle has 3G as well as wifi it will have two email addresses. On will be xxx@kindle.com and the other xxx@free.kindle.com. The free one will only work using wifi whereas the other address uses 3G or wifi. You will be charged for documents that are transferred using the kindle.com address but not when using free.kindle.com.

The "Manage you Kindle" pages on Amazon are quite helpful for the basic stuff. Calible is a little more complicated but very useful. Mine is set up to construct daily newspapers from various web sites and send them to my Kindle each morning.
 
OK - here we go with my effort... :o

The Kindle is optimised to interface with Amazon - anything you get from Amazon interfaces seemlessly with the Kindle and you don't even have to worry about it... the snags come when you are loading documents from other sources like Guttenberg....

  1. Basically download the book to your computer... on the Gutenberg site you can usually select Kindle format as Kindle is not keen on reading files in HTML or PUB format
  2. Once you have it on your computer, plug in the Kindle
  3. In the "My Computer" screen on your PC, copy/move the file to the "Documents" folder on your Kindle
  4. Jobs (should be) a good'un... :rolleyes:

This shows you how: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV_fsV3Gbao&feature=related

An alternative way is to just download them direct via the web - this shows you how...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaS6rY6NBG4
 
Fantasie 19 said:
OK - here we go with my effort... :o

The Kindle is optimised to interface with Amazon - anything you get from Amazon interfaces seemlessly with the Kindle and you don't even have to worry about it... the snags come when you are loading documents from other sources like Guttenberg....

  1. Basically download the book to your computer... on the Gutenberg site you can usually select Kindle format as Kindle is not keen on reading files in HTML or PUB format
  2. Once you have it on your computer, plug in the Kindle
  3. In the "My Computer" screen on your PC, copy/move the file to the "Documents" folder on your Kindle
  4. Jobs (should be) a good'un... :rolleyes:

This shows you how: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV_fsV3Gbao&feature=related

An alternative way is to just download them direct via the web - this shows you how...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaS6rY6NBG4
Click to expand...

OK ...thanks to all for your numerous modes of help.
 
NealB said:
Wow.....and you're intelligent....absolutely no chance for a numpty like me then!
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, but whatever I try fails to get the Gutenburg books from Kindle PC to the Kindle.

What I do to get them there is to open the Kindle, press the menu button, then select Experimental, which turns on the browser. You then need to select Google from the preloaded favourites and use the onscreen keyboard to type in Gutenburg, and select Gutenburg Kindle. After that you can search for books and download them directly to the device.
 
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