To help you handle your growing collection of e-books and audio books, the you can add extra memory to your Kindle in the form of an SD memory card. You can purchase these cards in many sizes from 1 GB up-to 16 GB. At the time you read this 32 GB cards may readily be available and affordable. Installing SD memory in your Kindle is straightforward. You can find complete instructions in our Kindle How-To Series available in the web-site listed below.

Once you have your memory card installed it’s time to move some of the e-books or audio books stored in your Kindle’s main memory to your new SD Card. There are a few things you should consider first before “making the move.”

1. Audio books are a good candidate for moving from your Kindle’s main memory to the SD card. Audio book files can be large – some are up-to 90 mb or more. Audio books will quickly consumer your Kindle’s main memory leaving less space for your e-books.

2. If you’ve purchased books that are on the Amazon digital site and have yet to be sent to your Kindle these also might be good candidates to load onto your SD memory card. This will keep all of your e-books and audio books in one place in-case you run into a situation where you do not have wireless access.

3. Pictures, music files, and digital files other than e-books also consume a lot of space in the Kindle’s main memory. Again, this makes them good choices to move to the new SD card you’ve installed in your Kindle.

Now – let’s take a look at your Kindle and get ready to save some files to your SD memory card. Here are the steps you can follow to do this –

A. Turn on your Kindle

B. Move the scroll wheel to “Menu” and press to select the Main Menu

C. Scroll to “Content Manager” on the Main Menu the press to select the Content Manager

D. Once the Content Manager screen opens take a look at your list of audio books and e-books – pay specific attention to the storage location of the book listed directly under the first word of the title –

a. “Kindle” – the book is stored in your Kindle’s main memory

b. “SD Card” – any books you’ve moved to your SD Card will have this location

c. “Amazon” – books you’ve purchased but that have not been downloaded to your Kindle will have this location

E. Choose a book now located on your Kindle by scrolling to the location of the book and pressing the scroll wheel to “select” the book. When you do this you will notice an “x” in the box immediately to the right of the book’s title.

F. Next scroll back down to “Menu” at the bottom of the Kindle screen and press the scroll wheel to select.

G. When the Menu opens, scroll to “Move to SD Card” and press the scroll wheel to select.

H. Once you do this you will notice the location icon will show the book is being transferred to your Kindle’s SD memory card. For example you will see an arrow pointing from the “Kindle” location to the SD Card location.

I. When the move is complete the location icon below the title will change from “Kindle” to “SD Card” – this is how you know the transfer process is complete.

That’s all there is to it! You’ve now learned how-to quickly save books from your Kindle’s main memory to the SD Card you’ve installed in your Kindle.

Complete instructions with photos can be found at the web site in the resource box below.

Another reason that you may wish to replace the battery on your Kindle is that you are going to be using it for a long period of time and can’t charge it. For example let’s say you are planning a trip with a long international airplane flight. In this case you can take two (or more) fully charged Kindle batteries with you and replace them as required.

To save battery life, the Kindle goes into a “sleep” mode if you have not been reading an e-book or listening to an audio book for a long period of time. You’ll recognize when your Kindle has entered “sleep” mode because a screen saver will appear on your screen in-place of the book you were reading. Kindle comes with built-in screen savers, or you can check the site in the resource box below to learn how-to create your own.

Your Amazon Kindle has a built-in battery power meter you will find at the bottom right-side of the screen. The battery power meter is right next to the wireless signal strength meter. It’s sometimes easy to get these meters confused. The wireless signal strength indicator appears as a bar graph with a small antenna in-front of the first bar. When your battery power meter shows nearly all white you know it’s either time to recharge your Kindle or replace your battery. If the power meter goes down quickly after a charge it may be time to replace your battery.

Here’s how you replace the battery on your Amazon Kindle:

1. Turn-off your Kindle 

2. Find a soft cloth or other means to protect the face of your Kindle 

3. Place your Kindle face down on a flat, secure surface 

4. Slide the gray back cover off of your Kindle 

5. You will see the gray battery in it’s compartment 

6. Note the battery compartment has a rounded “notch” on one end 

7. Using your finger (not a screwdriver or any other device that might damage your Kindle)gently push the battery to the back of the compartment then lift it out 

8. The battery is attached to your Kindle by a white plastic connector and several wires 

9. GENTLY pull the white connector back until the battery is disconnected from your Kindle 

10. Attach your new battery by pushing the white wiring connector into the proper location in the battery compartment 

11. Seat the battery into the back of the battery compartment – make sure the white wiring connector is attached properly 

12. Press the battery down at the front of the battery compartment – note that the battery and the compartment have a small notch and grove to help you line-up the battery 

13. Replace the cover 

14 Turn on your Kindle and you’re ready to get back to reading your favorite e-book or listening to your favorite audio book

Congratulations! You have just learned how-to replace the battery in your Amazon Kindle.

While this is not a procedure everyone will do regularly it’s helpful to know either when your battery does not hold a charge or if you are traveling with more than one charged battery.

One more important point! The battery in your Amazon Kindle is made from Lithium Polymer. It should be disposed of properly – likely at a battery recycling center located near you.

One of the other interesting reasons that the Kindle is great for Amazon is that it appears to be incremental sales for the company. During a recent earnings call, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos claimed that for every physical book Kindle owners purchase from Amazon they also purchase 1.6 to 1.7 e-books for their Kindle. It seems that the Kindle really gets owners even more involved in reading.

So what’s in it for people like you and me that might buy a new Kindle 2? We’ve done a little research on the rumors and some sites like The New York Times and The Boy Genius Report have some interesting details.

1. According to The New York Times the big feature is the improved responsiveness of the display on the new Kindle. One of the key irritants owners of the Kindle 1 have is that when you click the “Next Page” button the Kindle screen goes dark for a second before the next page displays. The new display uses a new microchip and digital ink technology that – reportedly – does away with this issue.

2. In addition to improving responsiveness for reading, the new display also improves responsiveness for doing things OTHER than reading – for example browsing the Web and working with e-mail. The Kindle 1 Web browser was an “experimental” feature that handled text-based sites best. You could use G-Mail for example, but in the “mobile phone mode” which is primarily text vs. graphics based. The new screen technology seems to remove this barrier.

3. Keyboard is larger – based on “leaked” pictures posted on The Boy Genius Report, the new Kindle 2 keyboard is larger making it easier to work with the keys.

4. The scroll wheel is replaced with a track-ball. Again – checking out the “leaked” pictures of the Kindle 2 it appears the scroll wheel is replaced by a track-ball. We expect this means the way you might interact with the new Kindle 2 screen will be significantly different than the Kindle 1. Rather than using the screen in a “linear” fashion, the track ball will allow you to roam the screen and select text more easily for bookmarks, notes, etc. The new Kindle 2 track-ball might also make it easier to interact with web pages vs. the current scroll wheel.

Let’s think about what we’d like to see in the new Kindle 2 as well!

A. Better web browsing – this seems to be covered

B. Built-in Media Player – allow selecting and playing of mp3 files vs. random play

C. Built-in ability to read .pdf files – Adobe .pdf is a universal file format for a lot of e-books. You can now read .pdf files by e-mailing them to your Kindle e-mail address. Google will convert them for a small charge

And the big question – will those people who now have Kindle’s on back order get the new Kindle 2 when it is released?

We can only wait until February 9th to find-out!

The new Amazon Kindle 2’s features and navigation is easy to access with the MENU, and HOME buttons, along with the 5-way navigator. But there are keyboard shortcuts built into the Kindle that can make using your new e-book reader more enjoyable. There also are some special features only available using keyboard shortcuts. Here are some of the shortcuts you should keep in-mind when using your Kindle 2.

Refresh your display – the new Kindle’s screen is a big improvement over the Kindle 1. The new “digital ink” gives the screen a little better contrast and sharpness. It also moves from page to page more quickly. What you’ll find however is that sometimes you get a “ghosting” image on your screen. This can be annoying as you read. To refresh your screen hold down the ALT key then press the “G” key.

Use the Kindle’s built-in Spoken Word feature – you can press and hold down the ALT key then press the SYM key to turn the Spoken Word feature on or off. If you want to pause the Spoken Word feature press the ALT key and the space bar. Press the ALT key and the space bar again to resume playing Spoken Word.

Can’t wait to buy some new books for your Kindle 2? Press the ALT key and the HOME button to go immediately to the Kindle store. 

If you find a key passage of a book that you want to send to someone you can take a screen shot using your Kindle. Press and hold the ALT and SHIFT (up arrow) keys and then the “G” key. The screen will flash when the screen capture is complete. Attach your Kindle 2 to your computer using the USB cable. You’ll find your screen shots there with a .gif file extension. You can copy the screen shots to your computer and attach them to e-mails or print them out.

Are you bored of reading and thinking of something else to do? Of course you could use your Kindle 2 to surf the web – or – you could play a game of Minesweeper. Press and hold down the ALT key and the SHIFT (up arrow) keys and then press the “M” key. The Minesweeper game will appear on your screen. Press the MENU button to change the game options.

If you’ve uploaded your own text files to your Kindle you may need to have the Kindle scan your documents so the new files show-up on your Home page. To do this hold-down the ALT key and then press the “Z” key.

How long have you been reading this book? To find-out press the Menu key and look at the top of your Kindle display. There you’ll see the time, the memory free on your Kindle 2, and details on your wireless network connection (right now mine says “3G”).

Need some detailed technical information on your Kindle 2? From the Home Page go to Menu > Settings and then type “411″. A screen will open showing your Settings and Device Information. Take a screen shot – hold down the “ALT” and “SHIFT” keys then press the “G” key – to save the information on the screen. Press the Home button again to close this window.

Congratulations! You’ve just learned how to get more use and enjoyment from your Kindle 2 e-book reader. To get keyboard shortcuts for your Kindle 1 visit the Guide to Kindle link at the bottom of this article.

Your new Kindle wireless reading device is great for holding e-books and audio books but did you also know you can display your pictures on your Kindle? Keep in mind that the Kindle has a gray scale display, not color, so the quality of your pictures won’t be great. But, despite that it might be nice to have a few of your favorite pictures for quick viewing on your Kindle.

The process for loading and viewing pictures on your Kindle is not entirely intuitive, but it’s not difficult for you to master. Follow the steps below and you’ll have more than just books on your Kindle.

1. Get a collection of pictures you want to load on your Kindle. These can be color images but remember that your Kindle will display them as gray scale images.

2. Use a photo editing program to reduce the size of your images before loading them into your Kindle. The Kindle screen can display a picture at a maximum size of 550 pixels high x 450 pixels wide. There is no sense loading large images – which will take-up a large amount of your Kindle’s memory – if the image size is limited.

3. Attach the Kindle’s USB cable to both your Kindle and your computer. 

4. Once the screen letting you know your Kindle is attached to your computer via USB appears you can double-click on your computer’s “My Computer” icon.

5. Your Kindle should appear as one of the disk drives attached to your computer.

6. Double-click on your Kindle drive. You will see several folders. One for Audible books, one for documents, and one for music.

7. Add a new folder to your Kindle called “pictures”.

8. Open the new “pictures” folder and create one sub-folder for each of the groups of pictures you wish to load onto your Kindle. For example “Moms Birthday” might be one folder and “Summer Vacation 2009″ might be another. These folder names will appear on your Kindle’s Home Screen so make them descriptive.

9. Open each new sub-folder then copy the pictures you’ve collected into their appropriate folder.

10. When you are done take a look at your Kindle’s screen. If the USB activity indicator at the bottom right side of the screen is not showing any activity you can remove the USB cable from your Kindle.

11. Go to the Home Screen of your Kindle. Press the “ALT” key and the “Z” key at the same time to refresh your Kindle’s list of e-books. The screen will blink a few time – when it stops use your “Next Page”, “Prev Page” buttons to locate the new picture folders you created in Step 8.

12. Scroll to the picture folder you want to open then press the scroll wheel to select it. The folder will open and in a moment or two your first picture will appear. You can move through your pictures by pressing the “Next” or “Prev” page buttons.

Congratulations! You now know how to make using your Kindle even more enjoyable by being able to carry special pictures with you in your Kindle wireless reading device.

For more complete How-To information, including screen shots of the process described above visit the web address in the resource box below.

Happy reading!

NOTE- the features discussed here are for the Amazon Kindle 1 device. The Kindle 2 device available after February 24, 2009 likely will have different keyboard accessible features.

To access these features you will use a combination of keys on your Kindle’s keyboard. Most all of the features begin by pressing the key which is the at the lower left-hand side of your Kindle keyboard. You also may have to press the key which is directly above the key and has an upright arrow symbol. Here are a few of the special features you can access:

1. Play a game of Minesweeper on your Kindle – From the Home Screen press the key and the key and then the key to access a basic Minesweeper game.  The Minesweeper menu lets you control the grid size and the number of mines you have to find.

2. Find-out the time – From the Kindle Home Screen press the key and the key. The page number display (i.e. 1 of 3) at the bottom left of your Kindle screen will change to a time display. 

3. Find-out the time – From the Kindle Reader Screen (i.e. while reading and e-book) press the key and the key. The “Locations” display at the bottom left of your Kindle screen will change to a time that is in text vs. numeric format. For example 1:31 is “Twenty-nine till two”.

4. Take a “screen shot” of your Kindle screen – From any screen press the and key, then the key. You won’t get any notification that a screen-shot has been taken but you will find the screen shot on your Kindle’s SD card. The Kindle won’t save screen shots to its internal memory.

5. Find your current location – Open the Kindle’s browser – Menu > Experimental > Basic Web then press the key and the key. Google Maps will open with your location shown. Your location is “triangulated” from the WhisperNet wireless access built into the Kindle so it’s not entirely accurate. But you can zoom in and out on the map to get a better idea of where you are – this gets you in the ball park.

6. View your e-book as a slide show – From the Kindle’s e-book reader press the key and key to turn on the slide show capability. Then press the key and key to start the slide show. Press the key and the key to turn the slide show off. Press the key and the key again to disable the slide show capability.

7. Control the Kindle audio player – Press the key and

key to play or stop the audio player. Press the key and the key to advance to the next track.

8. Reboot your Kindle – If you Kindle has been acting a bit “flakey” you can do a soft reboot by pressing the key and the key then the key.

The eight features listed above should give you an idea of the capabilities that are “hidden away” in your Kindle. Some of them will make your Kindle experience a bit better, and some will help you when you’re trying to trouble shoot problems with your Kindle. Keep this list handy so when you get tired of reading your favorite e-book or listening to your favorite audio book you can give them a try.

One thing about electronic devices – they know how to put us in a panic every once in a while! The new Amazon Kindle 2 is no different – it sometimes seems to get possessed by one of those demons in the books stored deep inside it’s memory. While the Kindle 2 is a very well designed and durable device, it is subject to strange behavior. The worst of these behaviors is when the Kindle 2 freezes-up. The pages don’t turn, the screen saver won’t turn-off no matter how many times you “Slide and release the power switch to wake”.

There are a few things you can do to “unfreeze” your Kindle 2, but the best cure is a bit of prevention. First, let’s get to the “unfreezing”. In the Kindle 1 you have a few options to unfreeze your device:

A. Use the keyboard reset – hold down the ALT and SHIFT keys then press the “R” button.

B. Manually reset by remove the back cover and insert a paper clip (GENTLY) into the “Reset” hole to reset and unfreeze the Kindle.

C. Remove the battery (with the unit unplugged), turn on the power button to discharge the power in the Kindle, then reinstall the battery.

Unfortunately the new Kindle 2 does not have a keyboard reset, there is no manual reset using a paper clip, and the battery cannot be accessed. So you have one option left for unfreezing your Kindle 2. That is resetting the device using the Power button.

Before doing this it’s a good idea to make sure your Kindle 2 is completely charged. Even if it is “frozen” it should still charge – that is the charging indicator should light when the charger is connected. If the charging indicator does not light-up check your plug and if that’s OK contact Amazon Kindle support.

Once you are satisfied that your Kindle 2 is charged it’s time to reset. To do this –

1. Remove your Kindle 2 from the charger.

2. Slide the power switch to the right and hold it there.

3. SLOWLY count to 15 (the switch has to be held in-place for at least 15 seconds).

4. Release the switch.

5. What will happen? At first NOTHING so don’t panic.

6. After about 5 to 10 seconds the Kindle 2 will flash on and off several times.

7. The Amazon logo will appear along with a progress bar showing the Kindle is restarting.

8. Next the Hope page will load with the ebooks, audio books, and other media you’ve loaded onto your Kindle.

That’s it! You should be back in business ready to read another book.

A few things to remember:

If you only hold the Power button to the right for five to 10 seconds you’ll just turn the unit OFF. You have to hold the power button to the right for at least 15 seconds.

If the process above does not work – contact the Amazon Kindle support team. They are very helpful and may be able to do some other trouble-shooting on your device.

Now – how do you prevent your Kindle 2 from freezing in the first place?

Well, unlike the Kindle 1, the Kindle 2 does not like to be completely turned off and on. The unit goes into a screensaver power-down mode when not in use consuming very little power. Try leaving the unit on continually and take advantage of the power-down feature. This seems to prevent freeze-ups for many owners. Ok, ok, if you’re flying please turn off your Kindle and wait until you get above 10,000 feet before turning on approved electronic devices. And please disable the wireless feature Kindle while flying!

One other thing you can do to prevent Kindle 2 freeze-ups is to make sure your battery doesn’t fall below about 15% to 20% charged. The device seems to work better when the charge is above 20%. You don’t have to charge your Kindle 2 everyday – in fact that is NOT recommended unless you need it. Just watch the power indicator and give your Kindle 2 a charge when the battery level falls below 20%.

OK – by now we trust you are back to enjoying your favorite ebook or audio book. Congratulations! You’ve learned how-to unfreeze your Kindle 2 and prevent future freeze-ups from happening.