# K4 transfer?



## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

It's been a hundred years since I've been over here and I tried a search but I'm just not hitting the right search string I think.

I just bought a K4 and need to load all the books and collections I have set up on  my K3.  I know this is always a PITA previously but I was hoping maybe Amazon finally got with it and set something up to make life a little easier.  Typing all the stuff to transfer stuff to collections on the K4 is NOT going to be fun.  Do they have it set up that youc an do it from Kindle PC or something or am I just stuck doing all 500+ books by hand again?

Seriously Amazon, it's been YEARS.  There has GOT to be an easier way to deal with this.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

You should be able to import collections from the K3 to the K4.  Then, as you download books from your cloud, they'll be put in the right collections.  I think Amazon's instructions are to download the books first, then download.

Do you need to download ALL the books?  I'd have to look up the specs, I'm not sure of what the memory specs of the K4 vs the K3 are.  I generally leave most things that were on older Ks in the cloud these days, though when I had my K1, I downloaded everything.  I download new stuff to my current Kindle and older stuff as I want to read it.  Keeps the Kindle faster, too.

If you do want to download all the books, I'd recommend doing no more than twenty to fifty a day, spread out over the day....

EDITED because I can't remember if there's really a way to import collections to the K4, or if that was on later software?

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Ahh,  here it is...

You have to go into your Archives.  (Page until you find it.)

Then, use the five way controller to select "Add Other Device Collections." (It will have the line under it when selected.)  Press the center button.  The collections available should show.

Betsy


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

Ok, got the collections... is there a way to do the books in them that easy or is it still one by one?


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Unfortunately, still one by one.  Amazon really wants you to use the cloud. 

Betsy


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

But using the cloud is still one by one, right?  Or am I missing something here?  LOL It's been a couple years since I've had to do this so I'm a bit behind.  I mean I guess sending them from the could might search faster than from the archives but still..


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Yeah, still one by one.  But what I meant is that Amazon wants people to leave content on the cloud until they're actually ready, or almost ready, to read. 

I generally have a hundred to two hundred books on my Kindle that are the books I've ordered since the last Kindle.  I move books I've read this year to my "read" folder and then at the end of the year, I remove them all and start fresh.  I browse my cloud to read books that I've picked up in the past.

Betsy


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

I prefer to keep everything I haven't read on it cause I never know what I'm going to want to read next and I'll never remember I have it if it's not there.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Labrynth said:


> I prefer to keep everything I haven't read on it cause I never know what I'm going to want to read next and I'll never remember I have it if it's not there.


I get that...I do keep a couple of hundred books on mine for the same reason. But I can't keep everything, anyway, 'cause that would be over a thousand books.  If you get too much stuff on the Kindles, even if they fit spacewise, performance starts to degrade. So I keep a couple of hundred, it's a reasonable compromise for me; periodically, I go through the archive and download ten or fifteen additional possibilities. And if, for whatever reason, the two hundred or so aren't enough,  I just go back to the Cloud and check again, assuming I'm within WiFi range, and I usually am.

I guess what I'm saying is, for me, I'm usually within WiFi range, so there's not any real difference between the Cloud and the device. And if I know I'm going to be away from WiFi, I download another big batch before I go to be sure I have enough to choose from. Everyone's circumstances are different.

I would keep an eye on how full you make it, because it does change performance.

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

I should add:

Plus, I'm really lazy.  It's just too much work to download them all one at a time....
  

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

When I first got a Kindle 5 years ago, my theory was that everything I bought would go on the device and I'd delete it when I'd read it -- unless it was something I wanted to keep for reference or whatever.  That way, I knew that if it was on the device, I hadn't read it.

As I began to get more and more books and as I upgraded devices, that method really stopped working.  

I did try, when I moved from the Original Kindle to the first Keyboard model, to load it with all my unread books.  Frankly, that began to affect performance.  it would take a long time to search for a new book; paging through the 'home' page was slow, and it would take several seconds to open the new book.  From there reading was as fast as usual but the overall experience began to suffer.

So, first I went to kindle.amazon.com and rated all the books I'd read.  This is just for my own use but it meant there was a place I could see what books I had and know that if there was a rating, I had read it.  Then I did a factory reset on the kindle and went and downloaded a selection of books.  The device worked MUCH better after that.

When I then moved up to the new sans-keyboard Kindle and the Paperwhite, well, they have less internal storage anyway, so there's no way I could even get my full library on either one; I have over 2000 books.  New ones do usually go to my current kindle automatically, but, like Betsy, I periodically go through the Cloud to see what's there that I want to read sooner rather than later.  

I still rate a book when I've read it and delete it from the kindle. When the Touch was introduced, Amazon also introduced the 'share and rate' feature. So now I don't even have to go to kindle.amazon.com to do the rating there; I just do it on the device before deleting the book and it's carried over.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Also, a good tip if you don't rate or use kindle.amazon.com--if you have a "Read" collection and move books into it as you read them, even if you later delete them from the Kindle, if you re-download them, they will go automatically to that collection, so you'll know you've read them already.  Useful for those of us who have thousands of books in our library and don't necessarily remember we've read something before by the title.

Learned that from one of our members. 

Betsy


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

I can usually tell what I've read by the little status bar without any issues.  *shrug*  At over 500 I didn't have any issues with performance and most books I delete off after reading them with a handful of authors that I keep.

Right now I'm not loving this K4.  The whole go thru 4 screens to get a place you can turn wireless off is annoying as hell.

Heh I upgraded, in part, because they seem to be going for an all touch screen Kindle with no other options soon and I'll be done with Kindle at that point.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Labrynth said:


> Right now I'm not loving this K4. The whole go thru 4 screens to get a place you can turn wireless off is annoying as hell.


It sounds like you have a system that's working for you. I'm really just too lazy to download all my books every time I buy a new Kindle, since the Cloud works so well. But then, I probably change Kindles more often than many. (I keep telling people, I have to, as a moderator here. )

I agree, on the K4, it's too many steps. It's much better on the touch models, by the way. But I never put my Ks in airplane mode unless I'm actually, er, on an airplane or if the battery is really, really low. The battery life is very good and I prefer to have the flexibility that WiFi gives me. But then, I keep stuff in the cloud and want the WiFi there to be able to seamlessly access stuff....since you keep everything on your device, I wouldn't think you turn WiFi on and off much?

Curious as to why you wouldn't consider a touch device? Though I'm not convinced the K4 is going to go away any time soon--they want an entry level device for people.

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

FWIW, I was not excited by the idea of a touch screen on a reader. . . .but really really excited about the idea of the built in light.  So I jumped on the first PW.  

I'm glad I did.  The touch screen works very well.  You don't have the fingerprint problem you do with 'shiny screen' devices because of the texture of the screen.  I rarely have to clean mine and there's no loss of clarity or anything like that.  Definitely worth it.

Mind you, I think the basic kindle is a good starter device. . . . . but I think the PW is better in many ways. . . . . .if money is not a factor.


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

I. Hate. Touchscreens.

Despise them with a firey passion.  I went back to a Blackberry because I hated the touch screen droid.  I have a tablet that I rarely use because I hate touch screens.  I don't want to turn a page by swiping, I just want a simple button to turn it with.  I don't want color.  I don't want a lit screen.

Not to mention I see all the complaints about the PW and sometimes the complaints are meh... stuff that wont' bother me... but most of them I see are things that I know will.  

And I hate touch screens.  I'm not an Apple lemming.  I'm not adverse to having to actually push a button for something.  Not to mention when the touch screen itself goes bad you now have an expensive paperweight.

Yes, I really do hate them that much.  Looking at a new laptop and many of them are touch screens now and I flat out refuse.  God bless Lenovo for having a work like that isn't and still uses Win7.

I dont' upgrade Kindles often.  I usually go at least a couple of years before doing it.  I like the size of the K4 (Or whatever it's being called now and the page turns are lightning fast compared to the KK.  Once I get all my books in the lack of a keyboard won't bother me.  I am ticked there is no 3G version honestly though.  I work on the ambulance and there's not always a handy wifi available (Hence me keeping it off most of the time and the airplane mode being an annoyance).

I dunno.  LOL I was pretty attached to my KK and wasn't keen on replacing it but after some screen issues I'm waiting for it to just die on me so when this one went on sale for cheap I bought it.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Labrynth said:


> I. Hate. Touchscreens.
> 
> Despise them with a firey passion. I went back to a Blackberry because I hated the touch screen droid. I have a tablet that I rarely use because I hate touch screens. I don't want to turn a page by swiping, I just want a simple button to turn it with. I don't want color. I don't want a lit screen.
> 
> ...


I do like the page turn buttons. (And, really, people who don't mind or actually like touch screens aren't necessarily Apple devotees, let alone lemmings. Ann, above, is NOT an Apple user of any kind. Liking a touch screen doesn't make someone unthinking, or a bad person. Just someone with different tastes. Just sayin'.)

You might take a look, there have been Kindle Keyboards on sale recently on Amazon even though the line was officially discontinued. We have a thread about it in Let's Talk Kindle, entitled something like Zombie Kindles.... You could get a backup.

Betsy


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

LOL when I was in Afghanistan I took my KK with me and one of the guys was just baffled it wasn't a touch screen.  He literally asked "IF it's not a touch screen how do you get it to work".  The concept of buttons seemed off to him.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Labrynth said:


> I. Hate. Touchscreens.
> ....
> I don't want to turn a page by swiping.


I felt just the same when the touch came out, but I finally admitted defeat and tried a Paperwhite because I wanted the light.

The thing that helps with the PW is that you don't have to swipe, you only have to touch. The screen is divided into regions, and the "page forward" region is nearly the whole of the screen - excluding only a narrow region at the left (page back) and the top (menu).

In addition, the screen sensitivity is very good - it only needs the slightest touch to activate a page turn, but at the same time you very rarely get "bounce" and two page turns at once.

This means that you can tap the screen very easily with either thumb and the page turns happen. I use my left hand mostly to hold the kindle and my thumb easily reaches the page forward region. It's just as easy to use as the page turn buttons, and I'm completely happy with it.

HTH.


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

LOL Thanks, but I'm still not convinced.  I'll cling to my baby Kindle until it dies.


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