Today’s post is an update to this post , wherein I was unimpressed with myriad things on the Kindle Fire HD.

I mentioned last time that the Silk browser was not the best browser I’ve used (which would include Netscape, IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome). But then, I was checking out my blog (the thing you’re looking at right now). This is what it looks like on the Silk browser that comes on the Kindle Fire HD and that cannot be replaced with any other internet browser.

If you use Silk to browse my site, I feel compelled to tell you that it’s not supposed to look like this.

I had people using all of the other most popular browsers (and IE) send screenshots of the site from desktops, smart phones and iPads and was going to post all of those here to show the difference, but they all looked the same. The way it’s supposed to look. Like this:

This is how it looks in IE. I-freakin-E, people. Silk, I am disappoint.

An Update on the native document handler, OfficeSuite . I expected my ire to wane once I’d become accustomed to the Kindle’s quirks. But OfficeSuite doesn’t make that easy. As it doesn’t open .docx files. An extension that was released in 2007. Of course, OfficeSuite is one of the apps that can neither be removed nor hidden so it’s just…there. Now I use Documents to Go , which opens .doc and .docx files, excel and powerpoint files. It can open PDFs, but won’t unless you pay $15. Yeah, thanks, but the free PDF plugin for Perfect Viewer does that just fine.

Update on Perfect Viewer : It’s great. It does what it says, which is let you read comics and image files. It’s definitely worth the $3.

I wanted to be able to comment and markup my PDFs, but can’t seem to get the Adobe Acrobat app to cooperate. Will report back. Typically, I get on fine with their Readers so I must just be missing something.

Battery Life. The initial review was written a couple days after my Kindle arrived and so I couldn’t comment on the battery life. Thus far it’s been fine. I keep it in aeroplane mode most of the time so I can’t speak to spending hours watching streaming video. However. You know how I mentioned that it doesn’t come with an external charger and so you can only charge it through a computer? Well, when you plug it in, this is what your Kindle says:

Connected to low-power charger. Your kindle might not charge while in use. If you leave it connected, it will charge slowly while the device is asleep.

‘Slowly’ was an understatement. It was plugged in for hours, asleep and with wifi off and still didn’t fully charge. So the external charger isn’t so much optional as it is a necessity. A $20 necessity.

The actual app looks even better than this

Finally, though, some good news, the WordPress app works quite well and Notebooks by DroidVeda is an excellent note-taking app. It’s free, elegant and allows you to have multiple notebooks with as many pages as you’d like. You can PDF and send your notebooks to yourself by email or upload them to Dropbox. (Dropbox integration gets me every time.) You can also draw on pages rather than type and upload photos. I plumped for the $3 upgrade, but it’s by no means necessary.

Bonus Informations!

I was searching for an image, thinking something appropriate had to be tagged ‘effing technology’. No joy there, but I learned that there’s an actual company called effingtechnology , which made me smile for a moment. See? I can smile! I can be positive!