Well, whenever they write reviews or FAQ's for new products, they certainly don't write them for complete idiots like me....so I'm writing a user guide to the Amazon Kindle for people of a sensitive nature, who don't use computer-y things much and need instructions for the onbutton and other things...
So, there I was, I bought the Kindle...super...lovely...except the post-person dropped it through my letter-box without ringing the bell and I was worried it was damaged.
First things first.
1 How to Turn it on = the turning on button is at the bottom and needs just a gentle push to get it on.
2 Charging up = I bought my charger from E-Bay (less than £2) and that worked fine. You plug the charger into the bottom with the smaller end in the Kindle and the larger end in the charger. The Kindle comes with a white cable that has a USB one end and a little pushy bit on the other. The pushy bit goes in the Kindle, the USB into the charger (or into your laptop or computer if you want to do other stuff, which I'll cover in a min) It didn't take long to charge. You can tell its charged when the amber light at the bottom turns green...all ready to go now.
3 It first of all goes through certain screens until it asks you what language you want. You choose your language by moving the square button (which has 4 options, left, right, up down and push-in-the-middle for enter) until the language you want is highlighted in black, then you push the middle of the square button firmly to enter. I chose (obviously) English UK.
4 There are 4 other buttons at the bottom of the screen.
Far left button is like a back button, it will take you back to where-ever you were before. So if you're on a screen and you want to go back, use that.
next left button has a teeny keyboard picture on it. If you push this a keyboard will appear on screen and you can move the cursor around using the square button in the middle and pushing the centre to accept or enter...you'll need to use this when you have to enter your password to get your Wi-Fi set-up.
first right button is for getting up a little menu page for settings and changing font size, very useful if you're short-sighted (or long!) and need to change the size of the font..
far right button is the home button which will take you back to the screen that's got your books loaded, and says 'YOURNAME's Kindle' on the top left.
5 This is the bit that took me most of today to work out and I got rather cross and disappointed and ruggly about...on the sides of the Kindle are 2 sets of push-down buttons. There is NO mention of them anywhere in the FAQS (which I read ALL the way through) and I only found MUCH later under a page called Navigation grrrr...well these side buttons are the ones you use to turn-the-page.
So there I was, trying to turn the page with the square enter button, when all along these daft thingies were there all along and I missed them. Of course my 18 yr old son instinctively 'knew' they were there...as his generation were born with these devices. I wasn't. If it doesn't say push here, I'm not going to touch it. Now the link I've put here is THE MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION PAGE OF THE KINDLE and it's not easy to find..anyway, I've put the link for you (and me!) incase you need it, and trust me, you will if you're over 20 years old..
I will come back with more information as I come across it and hopefully this little introduction has answered any questions you may have and given you some hope in all this technology our little brains have to adjust to...onwards and upwards...
