February 1, 2013

Problems with the Kindle for PC app in Windows 8

By Mike Lewis

Kindle reading application for Windows 8After Microsoft released Windows 8 late last year, Amazon was quick to bring out a special version of their Kindle for PC app. This new release is specifically designed to work with the Windows 8 touch-based interface, and for the most part it does its job well. But I've found several annoying weaknesses with it - as have many other users.

The first thing that I noticed is that there is no internal search feature: you can't search for a word or phrase within a book. It's true that there is a search button in the Charms bar - as is the case with most dedicated Windows 8 apps. But this only searches the titles of books in your library or the Kindle store. If you want to search inside a book, you’re out of luck.


Speed

Speed is another issue. Many users have complained that page turns are sluggish. Changing orientation or font size can also take an unduly long time. My own experience is that most page turns are instantaneous, but a long delay occurs every fifth page or so, which is very irritating.

Perhaps the worst feature is that your books no longer exist as separate physical files in your computer. In older versions of the program, each book is contained in its own distinct file. These can be readily found in the My Kindle Content folder, the location of which is under the user's control. This means that you have the option of opening the books in other programs (such as the Calibre e-book manager) and of moving them to other devices (subject to DRM restrictions). More importantly, it means that you can use the Kindle for PC app to read books that you didn't purchase from Amazon. You simply double-click on the file within Windows to have it open within the program.

None of this is possible with the new version. The reason is that the app now stores all your books in an internal database which is inaccessible to the user - in much the same way that iTunes stores your music tracks. While this might make the program more secure, it also gives rise to the inconveniences mentioned above.




A solution

If you're running the RT version of Windows 8, I'm afraid I can't suggest a solution to any of these problems - other than to press Amazon to fix them. But it's a better story if you have the full version - the one that runs on Intel-compatible processors. This is the version that supports the traditional Windows desktop and can run legacy applications from Windows 7 and below.

In that case, there's nothing stopping you from reverting to the "standard" version of Kindle for PC - the version designed for Windows XP, Vista and 7. You lose nothing by using this older program. It works just as well under Windows 8 as on the earlier systems, and it has none of the performance issues or other problems that I've described in this article.

What's more, the two versions will happily co-exist. So you can run them both on the same machine until you decide which one to opt for. And if, like me, you have two Kindle accounts, you can register each version to a separate account, which is an added convenience.

Download and install

To install the original version, simply visit the Kindle store (not the Microsoft store). Follow the "Free Reading Apps" link, then the link labeled "Windows 7, Vista and XP". Click the Download button and follow the instructions on the screen. Once you have installed the program, go to Options / Registration, and register it to your Kindle account.

Talking of registration, keep in mind that you can only register the program to the Kindle store in the country from which you downloaded it. If your Kindle account is with Amazon UK, for example, don't try to download the program from Amazon.com. This might sound obvious, but it does sometimes catch people out. What's more, there's nothing in the program itself that tells you which country it belongs to, so do take care if this is an issue for you.

In general, Amazon has done a good job with its free reading applications. But it’s a pity that the Windows 8 version falls short of the earlier releases. If you're able to run traditional desktop programs on your Windows 8 system, I recommend you at least try the original version of Kindle for PC. I've found that it provides a much better reading experience, and I think you will too.

Acknowledgement: My thanks to members of the MobileRead forum for their help with some of the points raised in this article (any remaining errors are my own).

13 comments:

  1. Thanks for this article, Mike. It's very useful. You made a good point about downloading the app from the store in the country that has your Kindle account.

    This was an issue for me, because I live in the UK but my Kindle is registered to a relative in the US. However, I think you're wrong when you said that there's no way of knowing which country the app belongs to. If you go to the Regisration screen, it clearly says the device is "registerd to the Amazon.com user shown below". Note: Amazon.com, not Amazon.co.uk.

    Arsėne

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Arsėne.

      Regarding the Registration screen, in fact it always says "registerd to the Amazon.com user shown below", even if the program "belongs" to Amazon in a different country, and you are registered to that country.

      So, even if you were to download the program from Amazon.co.uk, and register it at Amazon.co.uk, it would still show - incorrectly - that you were registered to Amazon.com. That's why I said that nothing in the program tells you which country it's registered to.

      Mike

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    2. Actually, there is a way to tell which country the program belongs to. Just hit F1 to call up Help (or use the Help menu). If you have a UK edition of the program, it will take you to the Kindle support page at amazon.co.uk; if you have the US version, it will take you to amazon.com. I don't have any way of testing it for other countries, but I assume it's the same.

      Connie

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  2. Mike, you said that you can double-click on a book to open it in Kindle for PC. Does that apply to *any* e-book, like e-pubs and PDFs, or do they have to be in a special Amazon format? Thanks.

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    1. Rickie, the book has to be in a format that the Kindle program will recognise. That means either an Amazon format (AZW, AZW3, etc.) or .Mobi. The program can open PDFs, but these do not always display very well as they are page-oriented rather than containing flowing text. For e-pubs, your best bet would be to use the free Calibre program to convert them to .Mobi.

      If the book is protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM), then Kindle for PC can only open it if it was supplied to the same account to which the program is registered.

      Hope this helps.

      Mike

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  3. How can you forget something like a keyword search in a book reading app???

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  4. Thanks Mike! I installed Kindle for Windows 8. What a deception!
    I was krazed looking for My Kindle content without success.

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  5. An additional problem. Amazon Kindle sells books with original page numbers for every application except Kindle Windows 8.

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  6. Thanks for posting this, I found it very helpful. I installed the Kindle app for my Windows 8 tablet via the Windows store, and used it without any problems the first couple of times. I opened the app today, for the first time in a couple of months, and all my content had disappeared! it was showing as being on the Cloud but not on my device. I tried downloading to my device and got the message "a connection error has occurred." I signed into my account and tried redownloading to my device from there but the problem persisted. I ended up uninstalling it. I wasn't sure if the Kindle for PC version would work with W8 but thanks to your post I'm going to gve it a try.

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Jenny. Let us know how you get on with the old version.

      I hadn't heard of this particular problem before (the content being available from the cloud but not on the device). I wonder if re-downloading it from the Manage My Kindle page (on the Amazon site), rather than from within the app, would work any better.

      Mike

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  7. Mike,
    Thanks so much. I just moved to win 8 when 8.1 was available and it still sucks. Everything I try to do takes way longer to figure out. Looked and looked for a way the adjust the start screen size to no avail. The Kindle reader for Win 8 fills up my whole 27" monitor!
    Unbelievably short sighted by the Amazon people to buy into this Microsoft crap.

    MS should call it Doors 8, not Windows 8. Or maybe even TrapDoors 8, once you open it you're screwed.

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  8. Thank you so much! It worked! (Mostly) There are many books in my personal library I've accumulated from many machines and some of them will not open. I'm told to delete it and download it again. Many of them (not all) are books that were not purchased directly from Amazon, some actually were. Weird.

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  9. Thanks! I was about not to take my Windows 8 tablet abroad with me, because of the lousy Win 8 Kindle app. It's great to have the older version loaded.

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