New Kindle upgrade (2.5) just announced.. Released in late May

[Ann in Arlington]

It might be worth it for all of us with K1' to write nice, pleasant e-mails to Amazon explaining that we realize that many of the new features aren't possible with the K1, but might we have "collections" please?

[freelantzer]

Yay Collections!  That's the most exciting thing for me about this upgrade. Fonts will be good, too, and I think Popular Highlights could be interesting, but the Collections is what I've been waiting for.

[tsemple]

I'm disappointed they're not bringing back the justification toggle and adding hyphen support.


Mike

Yeah, it's kind of a mystery why justification toggle went away, it is usually considered more risky to remove features than to leave them in, even if they don't work perfectly. A sure way to p.o. users who've come to rely on them as well.

I think hyphenation is probably going to wait for a future device and a more discriminating demand. It requires language specific hyphenation dictionaries, more processing power (do you want page turns to get any slower?), and ideally, content needs to be tagged with language codes so that the device can apply the correct rules automatically - and I doubt very much of the existing content is. Plus in all likelihood it would involve licensing technology from a third party, therefore increasing fixed costs. So some sort of business case has to be made to justify the effort and expense.

The 'cheap' way to accomplish this is to encode the source with 'soft' hyphens. Some web browsers now support this I believe, but it really adds dramatically to the sort of typos that are possible - as if we didn't have enough of these - and currently Kindle doesn't handle soft hyphens properly - you actually have to strip them out when authoring a mobi format book.

I've read a number of discussions about this, and many people profess to not like reading hyphenated text, even in print editions. Chalk it up to too many hours spent reading text in front of web browsers with their lack of any sort of typography: now people find nicely typeset books hard to read??? What is this world coming to???

[ellesu]

It's all good - especially the collections!

[shammers]

Just got the update to 2.5.  It takes quite a while to download and restart so be patient.  It's worth it.  So far I've only checked out the Collections and PDF pan and zoom features.  Both are great.

Collections - You name them and add books to them just by going through the home page list of books and clicking on the books you want in the collection you've just created and named.  Within collection you can sort by Most Recent, Title and Author.  You can also add the same book to multiple collections.  Setting them up was pretty intuitive - you start a collection from the Menu on the Home Page.  The Collections you created show up on the Home page followed by the number of books they contain.

PDF Pan and Zoom - you access this feature from the Font Size menu.  Magnifications are limited Fit-to-Screen, 150%, 200%, and 300%.  When you are in higher magnifications, you choose the area to magnify using a box - so no great for reading across lines of very small text since the whole line won't always fit in the "box".  The pan and zoom only works with PDFs - not with maps or figures inside a book.

[tsemple]

Just got the update to 2.5.  It takes quite a while to download and restart so be patient.  It's worth it.  So far I've only checked out the Collections and PDF pan and zoom features.  Both are great.

Collections - You name them and add books to them just by going through the home page list of books and clicking on the books you want in the collection you've just created and named.  Within collection you can sort by Most Recent, Title and Author.  You can also add the same book to multiple collections.  Setting them up was pretty intuitive - you start a collection from the Menu on the Home Page.  The Collections you created show up on the Home page followed by the number of books they contain.

PDF Pan and Zoom - you access this feature from the Font Size menu.  Magnifications are limited Fit-to-Screen, 150%, 200%, and 300%.  When you are in higher magnifications, you choose the area to magnify using a box - so no great for reading across lines of very small text since the whole line won't always fit in the "box".  The pan and zoom only works with PDFs - not with maps or figures inside a book.

I'm going to assume these collections exist only on this Kindle device, and if you get another you have to start all over again. But it sounds pretty good. I will probably use it to collect my samples (right now I send them to Kindle4Mac to declutter my Kindle), maybe another for dictionaries and directories etc.

Too bad there's no pan/zoom for non-PDF images. You'da thunk...

How is the new improved font?

Have you tried Twitter/Facebook/Popular Highlights features? those look pretty interesting...

[CaroleC]

Like others, I am thrilled at the prospect of being able to organize my books into collections, and to zoom into a PDF (that otherwise I would need a magnifying glass to read). How cool! I can hardly wait.

I am not as thrilled about the password protection. I live alone, and NOBODY touches my Kindle but me. Never. When I leave home, it is in my purse and I don't put it down (I just put it back in my purse). So, nobody is going to be getting into anything they shouldn't. I hope I don't have to type some long password in every time I use my Kindle. Ewww.

[chilady1]

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am so excited about this upgrade - this is awesome news and I for one am glad that Amazon is stepping up it's game.  It's about time!  Way to go Amazon!

[tsemple]

Wonder what the password recovery procedure is. Nothing more humiliating than to lock yourself out of your own Kindle. 

[shammers]

I have a DX so my fonts were always pretty good - but these do seem cleaner particularly in the small font sizes (still only one font type).  There are now 8 font sizes to choose from and the larger ones are HUGE.

I haven't checked out the other features - but it looks like you can link your Kindle to your existing FB and Twitter accounts to share your notes or highlights.

You can also password protect your Kindle.  All of these features are accessed from the Settings Menu.

[intinst]

I would hope that the password protection would be an optional thing, or only if the Kindle was turned off, instead of sleep mode.

[Leslie]

Just got the update to 2.5.  It takes quite a while to download and restart so be patient.  It's worth it.  So far I've only checked out the Collections and PDF pan and zoom features.  Both are great.

Collections - You name them and add books to them just by going through the home page list of books and clicking on the books you want in the collection you've just created and named.  Within collection you can sort by Most Recent, Title and Author.  You can also add the same book to multiple collections.  Setting them up was pretty intuitive - you start a collection from the Menu on the Home Page.  The Collections you created show up on the Home page followed by the number of books they contain.

PDF Pan and Zoom - you access this feature from the Font Size menu.  Magnifications are limited Fit-to-Screen, 150%, 200%, and 300%.  When you are in higher magnifications, you choose the area to magnify using a box - so no great for reading across lines of very small text since the whole line won't always fit in the "box".  The pan and zoom only works with PDFs - not with maps or figures inside a book.

You got yours already? Amazing.

Okay, can somebody refresh my memory on how to remove the font hack? That's all I have, I never bothered with the screensavers.

L

[intinst]

NogDog has a link to it in his signature line

[shammers]

Password protect is optional.

[Leslie]

NogDog has a link to it in his signature line

Okay, I found that. Now remind me exactly what I am supposed to do...?

[pidgeon92]

Okay, I found that. Now remind me exactly what I am supposed to do...?

Just put the uninstall file on your Kindle, and update the Kindle.

[intinst]

Click on Kindle Hacks Files and it takes you to a page that has instructions

[Morpheus Phreak]

I'm waiting to see if it gets kicked through to my device. I have an issue (stuck blogs, related to the 'Clip This Article' feature) that engineering told me would be fixed in this update, and that I'd likely get it pushed out early so I could report back on if it fully fixes my issue.

I'm hoping I do since with my almost 2 decades of software testing experience I make a good person to have testing your latest update before it goes out to the whole wide world

[BookishMom]

Shammers, thanks for sharing with us. I love the idea of collections, font improvements, and password protection and look forward to upgrading.

[shammers]

I'm waiting to see if it gets kicked through to my device. I have an issue (stuck blogs, related to the 'Clip This Article' feature) that engineering told me would be fixed in this update, and that I'd likely get it pushed out early so I could report back on if it fully fixes my issue.

I'm hoping I do since with my almost 2 decades of software testing experience I make a good person to have testing your latest update before it goes out to the whole wide world

It will be interesting to see if Amazon has a method to pushing the update.  Most of the books I have I've purchased from Amazon and I've posted to KB before.  I also purchased a K1 and then got the DX when it came out.  I literally read the post about the update - uninstalled the SS hack and turned on WN and I got the update.  I think that's the first time I've gotten an update so fast.

[Ann in Arlington]

Well, I just turned on my WN and will leave it on for a while and see what happens.

Shammers, are there other fonts available, or just more sizes?

[shammers]

Wonder what the password recovery procedure is. Nothing more humiliating than to lock yourself out of your own Kindle.  

On the password - no length or content requirements.  You can also create your own password hint.  

If you forget your password you can reset the Kindle but they warn that resetting will erase ALL content from your Kindle.  That's probably a good thing if your Kindle is stolen but I wouldn't use the password feature unless you have backed up all your non-Amazon content.   I can't even imagine having to chase down all the non-Amazon books again!

[shammers]

Well, I just turned on my WN and will leave it on for a while and see what happens.

Shammers, are there other fonts available, or just more sizes?

Still only one font - just now there are 8 sizes

[LenEdgerly]

In preparation for 2.5, I'm having trouble uninstalling the fonts hack from my Kindle US using update_K2_fonts_uninstall.bin with a date of Feb. 143, 2010 on it.  After restart, I receive message, "The update was not successful.  Please record the error code shown below...   (it's 0003).  To resume using your Kindle, press the R key on your keyboard."  Any ideas what I should do?  I will also need to remove the screensavers hack.

[Kathy]

This is so exciting. I can't wait. Glad to see they are listening to folks.