E-reader Uncertain?

If you are tired of hearing about ereaders- and my awesome Kindle- you might want to stop reading now :)

Everyone knows I love my Kindle. I honestly can live without it but so glad I have it. Surprisingly, I've never written a post on why I like the Kindle so much...I might not ever write the post. Or maybe I will someday.

Either way, if you are tempted by either the Kindle or the Nook (in Color or the original), I'm sure you've researched the differences. I actually, for the first time, was able to see and hold a Nook over Christmas break. I still like my Kindle better. The Nook is heavier but otherwise about the same as my Kindle. It does have the touchscreen at the bottom but I wasn't fond of it. The backing of the Nook is a nice non-slip material, whereas my Kindle is brushed metal (can get cold and it can slip if you don't have a hold of it well). And that is about all I could tell was different. The salesperson definitely didn't have anything to say that would make me think the Nook was superior to the Kindle. He actually mentioned that "there are about 4 things Kindle does better and about 4 things the Nook does better" but gave no specifics.

I like Barnes and Noble but really with such ease and selection at Amazon, the specific vendor wasn't a deciding factor. Interestingly, I also saw for the first time a Sony and Aluratek e-reader in 'person'... still love my Kindle!

Here is a great post by Trisha at A Multitude of Mercies that shows why she chose the Kindle over the NookColor. She lists some things that I actually had not thought of (such as the genre of books offered for the e-reader) in her comparison. I really like her post that she links to about why not to get an e-reader as well ;)

Here are a couple other blogs that can be of help on why to get a Kindle :) Freely Educate (Lori) and A Peaceful Day (Jeanne) (look at the comments on this one). 


OH! And one more thing- if you use Ambleside Online curriculum I've compiled books for Kindle up to year 9 (I'm still working on the remaining years) on my weebly website. There are great books for free as well as purchase.

Another Free eBook Site...Let's Hear It For The Girls!! & Free Audio Book Site

Wanted to put this FREE ebook site out there before I forget...

On the front page of Girl ebooks it states:

Much more than a simple ebook resource, Girlebooks aims to make classic and contemporary works by female writers available to a large audience through the ebook medium.

Where I found the link says:

classics and titles by lesser-known female authors, all free.

Either way, I think those who like classics, ebooks, and free will like this site :)

And then, after I posted this, I saw a post on a forum I am a member of that lead me to Books Should Be Free where you can find free audio books. What a great tip/find ;) These books are in mp3, iTunes and iPod format.

*Edited*

Another site that has links to free audio book sites is over at Homeschool-For-Free blog.

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon...Using Mozilla Firefox

If you are looking for how to download with Internet Explorer, look here. For Google Chrome downloads, look here. If you need to find the original post about downloading from somewhere other than Amazon, look here. Still not the right one? Try the search on the left sidebar.

On this post, I will be working with Mozilla Firefox downloading a book from Manybooks to the Kindle for PC.

This is assuming you have chosen your book from Manybooks and are choosing the format for download. Choose .azw or .mobi for use with Kindle for PC. Click download. A dialogue box will pop up asking if you would like to Open or Save the file.


You can either have it open directly with Kindle for PC, which might be the easiest way, or Save the file manually. For the purposes of downloading the book to Kindle for PC I will choose to have it directly opened/downloaded right now.

This next screenshot is of Google Chrome opening Kindle for PC but it will look the same with Mozilla Firefox, mine was just too fast for me to capture a screenshot.


Kindle for PC opens and begins the book. Check here for an how-to on using the Kindle for PC.

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon...Using Google Chrome

If you are looking for how to download with Internet Explorer, look here. If you need to find the original post about downloading from somewhere other than Amazon, look here. Still not the right one? Try the search on the left sidebar.

On this post, I will be working with Google Chrome downloading a book from Manybooks to the Kindle for PC.

This is assuming that you have chosen your book from Manybooks and are choosing the format for download. Choose .azw or .mobi for use with Kindle. Click download.

After it downloads completely, click on the file downloaded. Kindle for PC will automatically start to open.


From here you can enjoy your book!
Check out my posts on how to use the Kindle for PC here, but you probably already know :)

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon...Using Internet Explorer

My last post on downloading books to Kindle for PC..from places other than Amazon...showed how to search for a book on Manybooks.net and which format to choose for Kindle. This time I will go through the steps of actually downloading and putting it onto the Kindle for PC from Internet Explorer. I intend to go through these steps with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox as well.

This is assuming that you have chosen your book from Manybooks and are choosing the format for download.

After choosing to download (I chose .azw format), a dialogue box will pop up asking if you would like to Open, Save or Cancel. Click Save.



Make sure of where the file is going to be saved to. In order to easily find it later, put it in My Kindle Content (located in Documents unless you put it somewhere else...).


And now would be the best time to rename the file if you would like to something easier to remember.


Now to make sure the book downloaded correctly. Do this by either finding the file "An Island Story" in My Kindle Content and double-clicking or by opening the Kindle for PC and then browsing by author or title for the book on the Kindle. It doesn't always alphabetize the books like it's supposed to.


I think that is it, don't think I have forgotten anything... If I have, let me know :)

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon

In another post I made a somewhat useful tutorial on how to use the Kindle for PC but it was for books coming directly from Amazon.com, where the Kindle for PC is downloaded from. What about using Project Gutenberg, or Manybooks.net?? How do we get them on the Kindle for PC?

It's much the same process but without the 'buying' from amazon. I say it that way because, well, you don't buy the books because they are free.

Anyway, shall we get started? First go to the site you wish to download books from. In this case I will use Manybooks.net

Enter the author, title, subject or genre you are looking for in the search box.



At first I tried Our Island Story but with no results so instead I chose An Island Story by H. E. Marshall. Press enter (or if you would like to try the Advanced Search click that).



Click the title listed if it is correct. If it isn't, try another search or the Google search. When you find the book you want, you see an excerpt, which is nice. On the right you see the download pull-down box.





From here the process of opening and reading the book is the same as if it were downloaded from Amazon.com

Depending on your browser, you may need to choose the file to put the book in. Usually I use Google Chrome and it downloads it automatically. I will post a tutorial on that another time.

I hope it has been somewhat helpful. Leave some feedback if you were helped...or if you weren't help me figure out where I went wrong ;)

eReaders for the PC (and MAC)...Part 1, continued

Disclaimer: I am not paid or reimbursed for these 'reviews' and how-to's. I do them because I think they may be useful. I do not have a MAC computer, therefore I cannot vouch for the compatibility of these eReaders on MAC. The statement that they are compatible is based on the software claims. Enjoy!


So last post my Kindle for PC was downloading the book that I had just ordered (for free!) from amazon.com

I left it for a bit and did some other things. When I came back, here is what my Kindle looked like:



It automatically opens at the 'beginning' of the book, not necessarily where you want it to. You can find a different location of the book by clicking on Go To. A drop down menu will appear with your options. Some books will allow you to go to the Table of Contents, but this one unfortunately does not have that feature. If you click on Cover, that is exactly where it takes you.





You can turn the pages using your arrow keys, or placing the mouse cursor on the right or left of the page and clicking. For this book, a few 'pages' into it, there is a Table of Contents which are linked to the particular chapter in the book. Click on a chapter, and you're taken to the beginning of that chapter.





You probably can see that I have a larger screen on my computer and it spreads out the eReader quite a bit. I personally like to have the books I'm reading look more like, well, books. To do that, click on the Aa icon at the top of the eReader. From here you have the option of changing the size of font, the number of words per page, the color of the background (and if you choose black, then the font turns white), and the brightness of the page.





If you are not happy with your settings you can choose to reset it to the default setting. Also if you accidentally go to the wrong place in the book, click Back and it takes you to your last viewed page. One of the good things about the Back feature is that even if you scroll over a page or a few and then realize you are in the wrong spot, clicking Back takes you to the place you were before you turned any pages.

The Kindle for PC is a great eReader, in my opinion. It has some 'faults', such as the format the books are in to download them needs to be in one that it reads. If you go to Project Gutenberg and want to download an etext book to read on your Kindle for PC, as far as I know and have tried, you cannot read it on your Kindle for PC. In this case, you need to download it as a Mobi or MobiPocket format. The Kindle for PC will not read EPUB format.

eReaders for the PC (and MAC)...Part 1

Disclaimer: I am not paid or reimbursed for these 'reviews' and how-to's. I do them because I think they may be useful. I do not have a MAC computer, therefore I cannot vouch for the compatibility of these eReaders on MAC. The statement that they are compatible is based on the software claims. Enjoy!

If you use the AO curriculum, or OFE, or any other curriculum where your books are free but online, eReaders come in handy. You can print off the books but if money is an issue eReaders make it possible to view them in a much better way than just on the computer screen.

I am with those of you that say, "I would love one but they are too expensive right now." Not to brag ...but I was given a Kindle for my birthday...or I wouldn't have one either!

The internet is great, wouldn't you agree? But what if you can't find what you are searching for? That is where social networks (such as Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, Facebook, MySpace *I don't/won't recommend that one very often*, email, support groups, etc) come in super handy! Some day I plan on compiling a list of groups and sites that are perfect for social networking for homeschoolers- yep, I'm partial to homeschoolers :)

This post however, is for a few eReaders for the PC that I have come across because of specifically my Yahoo! Groups. Those ladies are great! They can find anything!

First, is Kindle for PC. I have posted some about this before but nothing too in depth because I hadn't used it very much myself. The little clickable icon down there is for the Kindle to purchase but if you click on it and then scroll to the bottom of the page you can see the link to click for the Kindle for PC or MAC versions.

After you have downloaded the Kindle for PC it should look like the next screen (sort of!)

This is a very easy to use eReader. Here is a screenshot of my Kindle for PC. It has a lot of books on it right now!



If you click on Shop in Kindle Store in the upper right corner of the Kindle for PC, it will open Amazon.com in a window. From here you can either type in what you are looking for in the search bar or on the left sidebar are some more options. My favorite are the FREE books :)







To download a book to your Kindle for PC is so easy! Pick your book, click "Buy Now with 1-click". If you don't have an account and the information set up beforehand, then the screen you see will be a different one, prompting you to fill in the information required. If you do have all that taken care of, your book should be delivered practically immediately!





Once on the Kindle for PC, it may go to Archived Items. If the file is large it will most likely go here. The smaller ones usually show up on the Home screen almost immediately. I downloaded the Count of Monte Cristo and it went first to Archived Items.



I double clicked on the book in Archived to open it and as I suspected, it was still downloading.



Okay, that is all I have time for right now. I will post another to finish up with Kindle for PC and hopefully get to the other great downloadable eReaders as well :)

Found another free ebook site!! Yippie!

I found this at Maple Hill Academy. She has a lot of other great resources and information on her blog.

Anyway, the ereader site is Mobipocket free books.

Just a note: You don't have to have a Kindle to download these books!! You can have another type of ereader (such as Sony or others that accept mobi format- such as the Kindle for PC). However, this site only has mobi format books.

I am on the lookout for more sites that have free books :) Whatever format! Know of any?