Further on the Kindle Fire HDX
Feb. 4th, 2015 01:22 amJust on a whim, I went looking online for keyboards for mine, because it would be REALLY nice to be able to leave my laptop at home, and all I do abroad is use it for typing and browsing anyway - a basic keyboard and WP suite will do me nicely. There seem to be quite a lot of them, and all have reviews which suggest they are reasonable at what they do - enable text entry much more efficiently than does the touch-screen.
Unfortunately they are ALL Bluetooth-based, and given that the primary intended use is typing on the restricted tray-space of a trans-Pacific airliner, that's a no-go. It's easier just to take the laptop, although the HDX may be coming along as well, simply for its ease of flipping out and watching pre-loaded stuff on when I don't want to end up in a tangle of cables.
A keyboard which possessed both power and hardwire data connections to the body of the Kindle and which incorporated support for plug-in memory (flash drives of whatever description) would make a mint. It would also potentially destroy the micro-laptop market overnight. There are cables by means of which a standard USB drive can be adapted to a micro USB slot (I have one for my Galaxy S3 phone), and I can't see why a bunch of micro USB ports can't accordingly be put in the side of a Kindle keyboard for the appropriate interfaces - AC and/or data in, AC and data to Kindle out, and one spare for an appropriately cabled USB hub or card reader.
Unfortunately they are ALL Bluetooth-based, and given that the primary intended use is typing on the restricted tray-space of a trans-Pacific airliner, that's a no-go. It's easier just to take the laptop, although the HDX may be coming along as well, simply for its ease of flipping out and watching pre-loaded stuff on when I don't want to end up in a tangle of cables.
A keyboard which possessed both power and hardwire data connections to the body of the Kindle and which incorporated support for plug-in memory (flash drives of whatever description) would make a mint. It would also potentially destroy the micro-laptop market overnight. There are cables by means of which a standard USB drive can be adapted to a micro USB slot (I have one for my Galaxy S3 phone), and I can't see why a bunch of micro USB ports can't accordingly be put in the side of a Kindle keyboard for the appropriate interfaces - AC and/or data in, AC and data to Kindle out, and one spare for an appropriately cabled USB hub or card reader.