It was really interesting to hear how your device use has changed and evolved. The fact that a change in case can make a device so much more accessible was fascinating! Thanks for sharing this.
Happy end of August, Lenora! I visited and began reading your post early this morning. Then I took your suggestion to share with a friend.
I was so moved by the video of the 96 yo woman discussing living, illness, aging, but in the end being present and aware. With any luck and I live that long, I may develop a grasp on practicing presence as she seems to do naturally!
That resulted in my sharing your post with several friends. One about your age who writes and paints and publishes her own books, Gail Boenning in Wisconsin. The other a friend who has lived with severe arthritis requiring replacement of shoulders, hips, and knees. Remarkably, Anne lives her best life despite the surgeries and rehabs. Far greater patience and toughness than I would imagine possible.
I was astonished at your analysis of readers and tablets and functionality. As I enjoy cooking, my iPhone is not well suited due to frequent sleeps. Siri also seems to have a limited dictionary of the English language. Her autocorrect fails to recognize my words with regularity. My wife bought an Amazon Alexa for her dad, almost 90 yo now, three Christmases ago. He loves it! Uses it frequently.
Your tutorial on all the options was very helpful for me. I once swore you wouldn’t find me talking to my tech hardware and I rarely do! Perhaps I should reconsider that position.
Thank you, Gary! I’m so glad you found her video as inspirational as I did. I think I have watched it 3 times. May we all be so fortunate to make it to 96 with such presence, grace, and wisdom yet to offer. Thank you also for sharing it with Gail and Anne (who both sound quite inspirational in their own right)!
I hear you on never thinking you’d be chatting with your tech hardware, but Alexa has made a convert of me. (Siri, not so much…) I even ask Alexa how to spell things, the current temperature, or when the sun will set. Also, “Alexa, convert 86° Fahrenheit to Celsius.” (I’m forever discussing the weather with international students.) Sure, I can easily look up all those things myself, but this way I don’t have to stop what I’m doing.
I don’t know if I would have embraced the idea as willingly were it not for my experience of watching mom struggle mightily in her last year or so. I feel like it’s better to get used to using those tools while it’s still a choice, because it’s harder to adapt once you are already struggling. Your wife’s dad probably gets more use out of his Alexa now because she got it for him 3 years ago, so he’s had time to get used to it.
I have to say, it does feel a little like stepping into the Jetsons or Star Trek sometimes. Dick Tracy’s wristwatch seems almost quaint these days.
I didn’t get into this feature because my post was already so long, but another thing you can do with all Kindles is send PDFs to them by emailing them to an assigned (and unique) “send to kindle” email address. Handy for things like recipes you want to save.
I never used this capability much with my smaller Kindle, but now that I have the Scribe with its generous screen size, I think I will. And unlike with ebooks (which you can’t annotate in the margins), you CAN annotate PDF files with the Scribe. So you could easily add notes about recipe alterations, for example.
Of course, you can also just write out recipes by hand in a “notebook” you create in the Scribe for that purpose and change them later or not, but there’s no convenient way to attach a photo, which would be nice (even if it would only show in black & white).
And because the battery life on e-readers is SO much better than on LED devices, you can set the sleep time to be longer than you would with a phone or iPad. The default is 10 minutes, but you can easily change that to 5, 15, 30min. or 1 hour. I set mine to 15, but if I were using it in the kitchen to cook by, I’d probably bump it up to at least 30 minutes—maybe an hour.
The more I play with it, the more potential I see in this new device. It has already been a lot of fun. Thanks for weighing in, Gary!
It was really interesting to hear how your device use has changed and evolved. The fact that a change in case can make a device so much more accessible was fascinating! Thanks for sharing this.
SCRIBE ON!
I, too, have been intrigued by these devices. Thank you for the comparisons.
Thanks, Linda!
Happy end of August, Lenora! I visited and began reading your post early this morning. Then I took your suggestion to share with a friend.
I was so moved by the video of the 96 yo woman discussing living, illness, aging, but in the end being present and aware. With any luck and I live that long, I may develop a grasp on practicing presence as she seems to do naturally!
That resulted in my sharing your post with several friends. One about your age who writes and paints and publishes her own books, Gail Boenning in Wisconsin. The other a friend who has lived with severe arthritis requiring replacement of shoulders, hips, and knees. Remarkably, Anne lives her best life despite the surgeries and rehabs. Far greater patience and toughness than I would imagine possible.
I was astonished at your analysis of readers and tablets and functionality. As I enjoy cooking, my iPhone is not well suited due to frequent sleeps. Siri also seems to have a limited dictionary of the English language. Her autocorrect fails to recognize my words with regularity. My wife bought an Amazon Alexa for her dad, almost 90 yo now, three Christmases ago. He loves it! Uses it frequently.
Your tutorial on all the options was very helpful for me. I once swore you wouldn’t find me talking to my tech hardware and I rarely do! Perhaps I should reconsider that position.
Always grateful for your essays, Lenora.
Thank you, Gary! I’m so glad you found her video as inspirational as I did. I think I have watched it 3 times. May we all be so fortunate to make it to 96 with such presence, grace, and wisdom yet to offer. Thank you also for sharing it with Gail and Anne (who both sound quite inspirational in their own right)!
I hear you on never thinking you’d be chatting with your tech hardware, but Alexa has made a convert of me. (Siri, not so much…) I even ask Alexa how to spell things, the current temperature, or when the sun will set. Also, “Alexa, convert 86° Fahrenheit to Celsius.” (I’m forever discussing the weather with international students.) Sure, I can easily look up all those things myself, but this way I don’t have to stop what I’m doing.
I don’t know if I would have embraced the idea as willingly were it not for my experience of watching mom struggle mightily in her last year or so. I feel like it’s better to get used to using those tools while it’s still a choice, because it’s harder to adapt once you are already struggling. Your wife’s dad probably gets more use out of his Alexa now because she got it for him 3 years ago, so he’s had time to get used to it.
I have to say, it does feel a little like stepping into the Jetsons or Star Trek sometimes. Dick Tracy’s wristwatch seems almost quaint these days.
I didn’t get into this feature because my post was already so long, but another thing you can do with all Kindles is send PDFs to them by emailing them to an assigned (and unique) “send to kindle” email address. Handy for things like recipes you want to save.
I never used this capability much with my smaller Kindle, but now that I have the Scribe with its generous screen size, I think I will. And unlike with ebooks (which you can’t annotate in the margins), you CAN annotate PDF files with the Scribe. So you could easily add notes about recipe alterations, for example.
Of course, you can also just write out recipes by hand in a “notebook” you create in the Scribe for that purpose and change them later or not, but there’s no convenient way to attach a photo, which would be nice (even if it would only show in black & white).
And because the battery life on e-readers is SO much better than on LED devices, you can set the sleep time to be longer than you would with a phone or iPad. The default is 10 minutes, but you can easily change that to 5, 15, 30min. or 1 hour. I set mine to 15, but if I were using it in the kitchen to cook by, I’d probably bump it up to at least 30 minutes—maybe an hour.
The more I play with it, the more potential I see in this new device. It has already been a lot of fun. Thanks for weighing in, Gary!