Kindle Classic for PC and Mac

Software Reviews and Criticism

• By pfunk4billion

  Infuriating

  I’ve used Kindle for years and I have always loved it. However, using it on PC is frustrating. Seven months ago I purchased a book on Javascript and attempted to work my way through it. With no input from me whatsoever, the pages jumped forwards or backwards by 2-8 pages. I didn’t click anything, I didn’t hit any keys. Then I would have to go back and find the page I was on. Clicking to find the page would also result in it going much further than I intended it to. So then I’d have to go back the other way. Then sometimes that would go too far. Then I’d get it right and halfway through the page it would start doing it again. Unfortunately, I forgot about that experience and, being busy with work, didn’t have time for Kindle until recently. When I ordered another book, this time on Python, it was the same wretched experience. I gave up on it a few times, then came back because I already paid for the book and was determined to get through it. Then I’d give up again. It is infuriating to try to learn something while your app can’t stay on the intended page and 2/3 of your learning time is getting annoyed and fighting the program just to keep the page. I hate to buy the books twice because I obviously can only do this with the hard copy now (with the added inconvenience of not having the reference on the screen next to what I’m working on). I love Kindle and Audible and I hate to give it a bad review but on Windows, this app is garbage.

  
  
• By FunkyMnky

  Finally digital content that is easy to read

  This is an impulse review so my opinion may change after awhile. I was thrilled when opening the Kindle book I bought to see how beautifully rendered the text was and the ease of navigating through it. I was about to dock a star since there was an image of a table on a page that was hard to read but found that double clicking the image brings up a larger easier-to-read version. I was weary of buying the book digitally since I did not have a great experience with purchasing magazines in a digital format in the past through other applications, not Kindle. For the magazines, I would have to zoom in on the text in order to read it and use the scrollbar to get across the whole page. The flaw with the magazine format was presenting the left and right pages at the same time so by default it was zoomed out to fit both pages on the screen at the same time thus making the text small and blurred. It was lacking a single page flip format like this Kindle app does for the digital book I bought. So far I’m impressed.

  
  
• By James the Programmer

  Functional but flawed

  This is written in from the perspective of a 2018 PC 15 inch. As far as I can tell the app works mostly as intended. The app hasn’t crashed on my yet and I’ve yet to have issues with any of the books I’ve opened. However I’ve noticed something mildly annoying about the highlighting system… So it seems like I’ve discovered a bug that happens when I use a mouse (Logitech Anywhere 2S Mouse) but functions perfectly fine if I use the trackpad. To elaborate in order to highlight something you hold your mouse down until the word is selected and in order to highlight a selection of text like a sentence or paragraph you just drag from the selected region to the end point. However, rather than having an event to finish the highlight when you let go of the mouse… it decides to only highlight within a time frame of about a second… Which means if I want to highlight a large selection of text I have to try and highlight as fast as I can and try to be accurate at the same time… It’s pretty annoying and hopefully will be fixed in future updates.

  
  
• By AJDestin

  Not all the features of a Kindle, but pretty good

  I have this app on both the Windows and iPad and while it doesn’t have 100% of the functionality of an actual Kindle, it does everything I need. I can open and read my books and documents without issue. The two features that are missing that I’d like are the useof foreign language dictionaries and the ability to have the app read books that are just text. Occasionally, I like to read French literature in French because, well, it’s usually better in French. My French is a little rusty, so I bought a French to English dictionary. On the Kindle, if there is a word I don’t know, I can just touch on that word and instantly get the definition from my French to English dictionary. It happens automatically. With the Kindle App, however, there’s a lot of hassle and the need to download a Google dictionary of some kind. The other thing I like about the original Kindle is the ability to have it read documents that are just text. Sure, the voice is a bit robotic but sometimes it’s very practical.

  
  
• By theyoungeraries

  Wish It Had More Features and Capabilities

  I've been using this app for years now, but it's been a while since I've used it for leasurely reading. The past two years has found me using it more often for grad school. If required books for my courses were available on Kindle and had corresponding page numbers, it was typically more cost effective, easier to organize notes, and allowed me to easily read and take notes anywhere. I do wish there were some more features, particularly when it comes to exporting highlights and notes. I wish that, just as we can filter our highlights and notes in the app, we could do the same when exporting highlights and notes. For example, if I only wanted to export the highlights and notes that I starred rather than every highlight and note, then I could do so by applying a filter. That way I could export the notes I know I need and found to be highly applicable and important to my work at the time, while still keeping the entirety of my highlights and notes on the app in the event that I need to export all of them in the future. I also wish that you could do more formatting with any notes that you take. I usually have to copy and paste my exported highlights and notes into OneNote and then reformat eveything. It would be nice to at least put bullet points in the "notes" section.

  
  

Leave a review or comment