(You can also read Parts 1 or 2)
Charging Time
I didn't use my Kindle 2 for a week or so, and when I pulled it out of its case discovered that the screen displayed a message saying the battery was dead and I needed to recharge. So I plugged it in, and am happy to report it took less than 2-1/2 hours to charge fully (the user guide claimed less than 3 hours).
I didn't realize until today that my Kindle was actually "asleep" but not completely off. So while asleep it apparently does use some energy. However you can turn the device off by holding the power switch for four seconds and then releasing. In this case the screen goes blank instead of displaying a static screensaver. When you turn the reader back, it only takes a few seconds for it to spring back to life.
Search
My first attempts at search a couple of weeks ago were unsuccessfully. I was able to bring up the search page as described in the documentation, but when I searched for words in my documents I got zero hits. I made sure to use words that I could see in one or more books, but all attempts to search within or across books failed.
After recharging my device this week, I tried to search again across all of my content. Shazaam! Now it works... sort of. In the search results I saw the list of books with hits, and an entry below that indicating that several books hadn't been indexed. So my earlier attempts failed due to lack of indexes.
Unfortunately there's no mention of indexes or indexing in the user guide, nor did I find any official info in Amazon's online help pages. So I sent another note to Amazon support, asking:
"Can you send me URLs describing more details on how Search and indexing works on the Kindle 2? Specifically, when does indexing happen, how long does it take, etc."
They responded with:
"The index process begins as soon as the book is downloaded to the Kindle. The Kindle will automatically index during any idle time. There are no specific numbers on how long the process takes and will vary from book to book.
"I apologize for the limited information I have, and I hope that it at least answered your questions. If you have further questions, please feel free to call us."
Left unaswered was whether "idle time" included the sleep state. Since I'd barely used the device during the most recent period where the battery ran out, my guess is that it does perform indexing while asleep.
Sync
One option I was curious about on the Menu list is labeled "Sync & Check for Items". Since I had copied several books over USB from my notebook computer to the Kindle, I wondered whether Amazon's site would magically upload copies of those books to my Amazon account. Nope. It is one-way down from the Amazon store to your device, i.e. anything you bought for your Kindle from another computer will be downloaded once you pay.
The exception to this one-way traffic is something called Whispersync. This keeps track of where you left off in your electronic books on all your portable reading devices. So if you own more than one Kindle, or have a Kindle and an iPhone with the Kindle software, Whispersync automatically shows you the page you were last reading on whichever gadget you pick up next.
So if you want a backup of your free Kindle documents, you need to manually transfer the files over USB, which isn't that hard. The Kindle shows up in Windows Explorer as a USB storage device, so you just drag and drop files between folders.
File Formats
In addition to displaying Kindle books, the reader will display various types of documents from your computer including plain text, HTML, most PDF files, and Microsoft Word documents. You can send a document to your Kindle quickly by emailing it as an attachment from your computer to your email account at kindle.com.
Today I emailed myself a random Word document to my Kindle account, and within a couple minutes I saw it appear in my book list on the device. When I opened it up, it was easily readable, though not all of the document was translated properly. The original document contained some horizontal lines and a variety of fonts; on the Kindle the lines were missing and it translated some of the fonts.
Just for the heck of it, I created a PDF of the Word document using CutePDF, and emailed that. Again it arrived very quickly, and although overall the formatting on the Kindle was not as accurate in the PDF, it was still easily readable.
Automatic Software Updates
Another pleasant surprise was that the Kindle 2 automatically downloads and installs software updates. It does this when you slide the power switch to place the device into sleep mode, assuming you have wireless activated.
