Monday, November 30, 2009

Firmware update 2.3 - Undocumented improvements


From the Amazon Kindle forums, an interesting thread on undocumented or unofficial improvements noticed by Kindle owners.

  Here are some of them, with the writer's name in italics after each:
1. The Notes and Bookmarks pages now have 6 entries per page rather than 5, saving some time paging through -- Twenty Haglund
  Reachable via the Menu button.

2. Navigation is faster, with the 5-way button's speed-up of cursor movement -- Betty J. Reed.

  I've seen this one mentioned in other threads, most often noted when moving the cursor to a word for an inline-dictionary lookup.

  I've also received email saying that web-browsing seems sped up, but there was nowhere to go but up, with that :-)

3. Kindle placed in Landscape mode is more stable for one writer's treadmill -- S. Dunham.

4. New column width options similar to those for the DX were added without comment by Amazon -- Twenty Hagland
  Changeable using the "Aa" font-key.

  There are normal edge to edge lines with almost no margins, as before, but now people can choose to make the column narrower, similar to the width of a newspaper column and easier for some people's eyes to scan quickly.  This is more important for the very wide DX but nice to have for the Kindle US and Kindle Int'l.
There are a couple of remarks on this thread re battery life but they're either not identified by U.S. or International models and the session life described is less than advertised for the older Kindle U.S., or a Wireless:Off situation is described when savings for Kindle 2 In'tl is a Wireless:On feature.

The Gomoku game has been a hidden feature for some time, which I've seen Bufo Calvin and other authors mention in their books.

If you've noticed any others and want others to know about them, please add them to the Comments area or to the Amazon forum thread that is linked above.  Thanks.

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