I’m 68 years old and have been messing with computers since 1968, which makes me very old school. I’ve tried to keep up, but the kids these days just blow me away. My wife claims that she has an electronic curse and I constantly have to get her TV working, because she’s pushed the wrong button and goobed things up. We both carry smart phones. We both have Kindle Fire’s, which are fast becoming the most important devices we own and essential to our habits and life style. I’m sure many of you have IPAD’s and think that you are on top of things. I’m about to suggest you switch to Kindle because it’s easier, faster, friendlier and vastly less expensive. If you feel left behind now because you see kids and other folks doing things that you wish you could do, then this post should help you make a rapid and painless transition.
OK, the Kindle Fire, IPAD, smart phones, etc. are at the root level personal computers. What I have discovered in the last year or so is that almost everyone likes having a VERY PERSONAL computer. That is, it’s something that you carry with you all of the time and does everything that you need in your life, be it reading and sending an email, following the forum, buying and selling on line, paying and collecting on line, reading, playing music, watching TV and on and on. I still have and use a desk based computer and I like my ergo keyboard, but there is less and less I have to do on it. I am finding that the Kindle does it all, does it well, and does it from wherever I happen to be at the time. The absolute cheapest Kindle does everything that you need and sells for $49.99, or if you buy five they will send a sixth one free. Before you balk at this, the idea is that everyone in your family has their own Kindle. A lot of this can be done on a smart phone and they have their place, but generally they cost hundreds of dollars and are slow compared to the Kindle, and the screens are tiny. Also, Kindles go hand-in-hand with something called Amazon Prime, which is a $99 per year service. It’s like Netflix on steroids. You only want one Prime subscription per household. Every Kindle comes with a free month of Prime, but rather than get the Kindle and take a free month, it works better to subscribe for a year, and then buy the Kindles. The reason is when you buy the Kindle through Prime; they set it up for you before it’s delivered.
Prime really requires that you have an Internet connection and Amazon doesn’t sell that. The Kindle operates fine without a connection for many things, but it operates more fully and efficiently if you have a connection. Kindles don’t make phone calls or send text messages (they probably do text, I haven’t figured that out yet.) It’s getting so now that there is free Internet almost everywhere. If you have a “smart phone data plan” then you have a portable Internet connection. To use it, you need a “mobile hotspot” to connect to your plan, which can be in the form of a small device you carry, or it’s already built in to the latest smart phones. You can buy a Kindle, which will connect directly to your data plan, but that costs more for the device and you also have to pay more to the phone provider, just like having an additional line. That’s one of the reasons that I recommend the base Kindle.
As I said, I’m old school, and suspicious of “cloud computing”. In brief this means that your data (photographs, financial data, media {music, movies, video, games}, etc.) is stored somewhere out of your control and accessed through the Internet. I’m very selective about what I store on the cloud, but some parts just make sense. The Kindle has a calendar feature and my wife and I have lots of medical, social, and daily obligations. All of this goes into the Kindle schedule and any additions, deletions or edits automatically synchronize between her Kindle and mine. We always have our day planners with us, and they are always up to date for each other. You can do this with Google calendar on your smart phone; it was just already set up on the Kindle. We are both big readers and the Kindles are great for reading, particularly in low light situations or whenever we are waiting for something. Our tastes overlap. Every time a book is sent to one of the Kindles it appears on every Kindle linked to our Prime account. That’s why you want one for everyone in your immediate family. You pay for books and other media ONCE, or not at all, because there is a ton of free stuff. Since most of this is cloud based, you don’t need a ton of memory in the Kindle itself. The base model will be big enough to do everything you want it to.
The size of the Kindle makes it perfect to slip in my back pocket (just don’t sit on it, like I did with my first one. The screen shattered and I only lasted 3 days without before I bought another one. This was back in the $200 days. A week later they brought out the $49 one that replaced mine.) It’s ALWAYS with me. Anything you can see on the Kindle can be made to display on an HD TV, usually wirelessly. You don’t have to watch on the small screen, but if it’s only you, the small screen is very sharp and works great. If you look on Amazon, there are pages and pages of stuff about what the Kindle can do. I probably only use 25% of it – but that piece more than justifies my costs. There are a number of cases available for Kindles, I like this one for price, size and ease of use. On my Kindle, when I close the lid it powers down and when I open it, it powers up. Apparently this feature has been eliminated from the latest low end Kindles.
OK, so let’s talk a bit about the procedure to get you going and costs.
1) There are two ways to use Amazon, http://www.amazon.com and http://www.smile.amazon.com. The only difference is that with Smile you make a one-time designation of your favorite charity (you can change it later). From then on you log into Smile when you spend money and 1% of everything you spend goes right to that charity. Is that cool or what?
2) For the most part, every computer since this thing went big and public has been either a Windows operating system or an Apple operating system. Apples get high marks from a lot of folks because they are so easy to operate. Steve Jobs often said that he didn’t care what his customers wanted, he would give them only what they needed and block them from doing it in any manner except what he considered the best approach. He didn’t even want Apples to have ON-OFF switches. He deliberately tried to make Apple devices only work with other Apple devices and he charged premium prices. Windows were just the opposite, and had so many alternatives that they required the user to set them up and understand them. Apple moved smoothly into smart phones, tablets, watches, TV’s etc. Windows barely got into phones. So now the third system, Android, appeared for mobile devices. Android is very open, and sometimes confusing, but generally cheaper than Apple. The Kindle system is Amazon’s customized version of Android and is much cheaper than other Android devices and Amazon’s support and help are amazing and no charge to the user. From the instant I turned on my first Kindle I have been constantly impressed just how easy it is to use and I have talked to support and gotten answers many, many times.
3) If you don’t already have an account, sign up for Prime. It goes under one person’s name and gets paid annually. For 98% of the stuff sold on Amazon, you get free two-day priority delivery and they deliver seven days a week. This alone is worth the money. You get access to books, music, movies and video. Much of this has a small fee but much is free. Amazon is producing it’s own videos like The Man In the High Castle, Transparent, Orphan Black, Bosch, etc. I’m seriously thinking of dropping everything but basic cable and Internet because there is so much free to watch on Amazon. You and one other adult can be designated as the “managers” of your Prime account which allows you to name each Kindle so it’s readily identifiable which device belongs to which person. You can set up parental controls to regulate what your children can access.
At this point you have a couple of Kindles and you’re exploring Prime and finding out how rarely you have to use your laptop anymore. What else? Well, there is this thing called an Amazon virtual store card. It’s like a credit card that you would only use for Amazon. Every time you place an order you decide if you want a 5% rebate or special financing. Every month they determine what your 5% earnings are and automatically deduct it from your bill. If you spend $149 in a single order you get 6 months 0% interest. If you spend $599 you get 12 months of 0%. Recently Amazon sent me an actual credit card with the promise that it could be used at any merchant that accepted “paid by Amazon”. This tells me that Amazon is moving into the credit card business and competing directly against American Express, Visa, Discover and MasterCard. Last month Amazon passed Walmart as the largest retailer in the world. Their website is the bench mark for Internet businesses and they have spent so much money making their system fast and efficient that they are huge in “cloud services.” They are cloud providers to other businesses and earn money providing access and support. Like I said earlier, I have stock in the company.
I buy a bunch of stuff from Amazon. Even big, heavy stuff like motor oil and dog feed can be purchased more inexpensively than at local stores and it’s delivered right to my home – plus I get 5% rebates or no interest financing.