Kindle calms customers with library update

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 24 Nov 2009 at 10:30

Amazon is to address one of the major bugbears of Kindle owners, by giving them the ability to organise their own libraries.

As it stands, books, newspapers and other documents downloaded to the Kindle are automatically dumped into existing folders, meaning that to reach books downloaded a month ago, users potentially have to scroll back through hundreds of other books.

Given that the Kindle holds thousands of books, and the menus are unalterable by the user, the clumsy system has swiftly become something of a sticking point for even the device's most avid fans.

Reacting to criticism, Amazon has announced it's addressing the issue, and will be releasing a fix next year.

"We have heard from many of you that you would like to have a better way to organise your growing Kindle libraries," the Kindle team says on its Facebook page.

"We are currently working on a solution that will allow you to organise your Kindle libraries. We will be releasing this functionality as an over-the-air software update as soon as it is ready, in the first half of next year," it concludes.

The announcement was met with (presumably sarcastic) delirium from the site's fans, with one user posting "A file system? It's like the Kindle Holy Grail!"

Speculation has immediately sprung up as to what the update will include, with many owners hoping for a tagging feature akin to that in Gmail. There have also been pleas for the changes to be extended to the first generation Kindle.

"Fantastic, it's about time!" writes a user identified as Mona MacKenzie Burkert. "It hasn't been quite a year since I bought my first-gen Kindle from Amazon, so it had better include us.

"It's not like I'm holding onto a cassette player and complaining that I can't find current music. Don't abandon us Amazon... we still buy books!" She concludes.