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    Kindle Fire HD For Dummies
    Kindle Fire HD For Dummies
    Kindle Fire HD For Dummies
    Ebook393 pages3 hours

    Kindle Fire HD For Dummies

    By Nancy C. Muir

    2.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Movies, apps, games, e-books, and more - enjoy them all on the hottest device in town - the Kindle Fire HD!

    From its stunning color touchscreen to its ultrafast speed, the Kindle Fire HD is sparking everyone's interest. This full-color guide will have you blazing through the web, staying entertained with the latest apps and games, watching your favorite TV shows and movies, and, of course, reading magazines, newspapers, and books to indulge all your interests. Whether this is your first tablet or you're upgrading from another device, you'll get to know your Kindle Fire HD and rekindle your love of reading with Kindle Fire HD For Dummies!

    • Covers the Kindle Fire HD and original Kindle Fire
    • Helps you navigate the interface, customize your settings, get connected, and take advantage of Amazon Cloud
    • Shows you how to work with the built-in apps and find new ones to to try out from the Amazon Appstore
    • Explains how to fill your Kindle Fire with cool stuff - from movies and music to videos, photos, apps, e-books, and more
    • Walks you through using Amazon's incredibly smooth Amazon Silk web browser to find anything you need online and keep in touch with e-mail, Skype, Facebook, and Twitter

    Light 'er up and unleash the fun with Kindle Fire HD For Dummies!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWiley
    Release dateNov 5, 2012
    ISBN9781118422151
    Kindle Fire HD For Dummies

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    Reviews for Kindle Fire HD For Dummies

    2.5/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Nice typesetting, but you would have to be more than a dummy to learn anything new from this book. It must have taken about as long to write as it takes to read it!
    • 3/5
      I bought Kindle Fire HD for Dummies for two reasons - first, to have a printed set of instructions with illustrations that would help me to get on board quickly, and secondly to have a handy reference which I could turn to when encountering difficulties or trying something new. I would rate this book good for the former, ie, intro, and fair at best as an ongoing reference manual. There are many illustrations, perhaps too many. Some are very helpful but others just aren't necessary and seemed to me to do nothing but add to the page count. Too often I wished the author had added more detail. The material covered was adequate but I found myself asking, yes but what if....I have discovered a lot on my own, as I believe all users should do, but I feel there is a lot that I am still missing. I had hoped this book would cover all my needs but at this stage I think I will explore a few of the $2-3 "users' guides" to uncover other capabilities.

    Book preview

    Kindle Fire HD For Dummies - Nancy C. Muir

    Part I

    Making the Kindle Fire HD Yours

    9781118422236-pp0101.eps

    In this part . . .

    This part provides information about what’s new in Kindle Fire HD and how to set up your Kindle Fire HD out of the box. You begin to understand how to navigate your way around the device and get things done using its simple interface. You also discover how to make some of the most useful Kindle Fire HD settings, such as adjusting volume and screen brightness and managing Parental Controls.

    Chapter 1: Overview of the Kindle Fire HD

    In This Chapter

    arrow Comparing Kindle Fire HD to the competition

    arrow Surveying all of the Kindle Fire HD’s features

    Amazon, the giant online retailer, just happens to have access to more content (music, movies, audio books, and so on) than just about anybody on the planet. So, when an Amazon tablet was rumored to be in the works, and as Amazon stacked up media partnerships with the likes of Fox and PBS, the mystery tablet was seen as the first real challenge to Apple’s iPad.

    Now, a year after the release of the first Kindle Fire, the Kindle Fire HD is available, and it turns out to offer several very nice improvements at the right price and feature mix for many people, while offering the key to that treasure chest of content Amazon has been wise enough to amass.

    In this chapter, you get an overview of the Kindle Fire HD: how it compares to competing devices and its key features. Subsequent chapters delve into how to use all those features.

    A Quick Rundown of Kindle Fire HD Hardware Features

    Let’s start at the beginning. A tablet is a handheld computer with a touchscreen and an onscreen keyboard for providing input, and apps that allow you to play games, read e-books, check e-mail, browse the web, watch movies and buy music, and more.

    In the world of tablets, the first device to hit big was iPad, and then subsequent tablets, such as Samsung Galaxy and HP TouchPad, appeared. No tablet since iPad seemed to have gained a foothold in the market until Kindle Fire showed up.

    Kindle Fire HD, the second generation of Kindle Fire, is lighter and smaller than iPad, at 7.6 × 5.4 × 0.4 inches (see Figure 1-1) and weighing only 13.9 ounces, versus iPad’s 9.7-inch display and 1.3-pound frame. For some, that smaller, lighter form factor makes the Kindle Fire HD easier to hold with one hand than the iPad. In addition, the rubberized back helps you keep a tight grip on the device, in most circumstances.

    Kindle Fire HD has a projected battery life of 11 hours. The screen resolution on the Kindle Fire HD’s bright color screen is just about on a par with the best tablets out there, and it brings the addition of gorilla glass, which means the screen is tough and probably doesn’t require an additional screen protector.

    9781118422236-fg0101.tif

    Photo courtesy of Amazon.com

    Figure 1-1: The neat size and weight of Kindle Fire HD make it easy to hold.

    In its first generation model, Kindle Fire had no camera or microphone, which meant you couldn’t use it to take pictures or make phone calls. With the arrival of Kindle Fire HD, you have a camera and microphone that allow you to make video calls with the built-in Skype app. However, there still isn’t what you’d think of a traditional camera, one that allows you to take still photos or videos, as you can with some other popular tablets.

    Finally, though a Micro USB cable (one end is a standard USB connector that fits in your computer and the other end is a micro USB connector that fits into Kindle Fire HD) is included with the Kindle Fire HD, there’s no power adapter for plugging it into an outlet and charging it. You can buy an adapter from Amazon for about $10 when you buy your device or $20 if you buy it separately. Alternately, you can root around in your kitchen drawer to see if you have ever owned a smartphone that came with such an adapter. The adapter simply plugs into the USB end of the Micro USB cable.

    Table 1-1 provides an at-a-glance view of Kindle Fire HD features.

    Table 1-1 Kindle Fire HD Specifications

    Key Features of Kindle Fire HD

    Kindle Fire HD is a tablet device with all the things most people want from a tablet packed into an easy-to-hold package: e-mail, web browsing, players for video and music content, built-in calendar and contacts apps, an e-reader, a great online content store, access to tens of thousands of Android apps, and so on. In the following sections, you get to explore all these useful features.

    Storage on Earth and in the cloud

    Kindle Fire HD offers 16GB and 32GB of storage in its 7-inch model. Either storage amount will probably work just fine for you because when you own a Kindle Fire HD, you get free, unlimited Amazon Cloud Drive storage for all digital content purchased from Amazon (but not content that you copy onto Kindle Fire HD from your computer by connecting a Micro USB cable). This means that books, movies, music, and apps are held online for you to stream or download at any time, instead of being stored on your Kindle Fire HD.

    This Amazon Cloud Drive storage means that you don’t use up your Kindle Fire HD memory. As long as you have a Wi-Fi connection, you can stream content from Amazon Cloud at any time. If you’ll be away from a connection, download an item (such as an episode of your favorite TV show) and watch it, and then remove it from your device the next time you’re within range of a Wi-Fi network. The content is still available in the Cloud: You can download that content again or stream it anytime you like.

    tip_4c.eps If you want to go whole hog into Kindle Fire HD Land, you can opt for the highest memory device, the 64GB 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE Wireless version of the device. Just be aware that this version comes with the cost of an AT&T data plan.

    App appeal

    In several ways, Kindle Fire HD is easy to use, with a simple Android-based touchscreen interface. It’s a great device for consuming media — and what a lot of media Amazon makes available! Kindle Fire HD also offers a brand new version of its Silk browser, an e-mail client, calendar and contact apps, and an available Skype app, as well as the Kindle e-reader (see Figure 1-2).

    tip_4c.eps Just because a particular type of app doesn’t come preinstalled on Kindle Fire HD doesn’t mean you can’t get one, often for free. At this point, the selection of apps available for Android devices isn’t nearly as robust as those available for Apple devices, but that will change over time. See Chapter 11 for a list of ten apps that can flesh out your Kindle Fire HD with popular features such as a budget tracker, weather reporter, and calculator, and check out Chapter 12 for ten or so great game apps.

    9781118422236-fg0102.tif

    Figure 1-2: Where it all started, with Kindle e-reader

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