I was thinking of getting a Kindle Fire that's on sale as my first tablet. The thought was to use it as a roleplaying tool that will allow access Pathfinder rules apps, Pathfinder PDF books that I own, and Microsoft Word/Excel documents of character sheets during roleplaying games.
What I want to know is, for those who own one, what has your experience been like? Does it read PDFs at all? Is it smooth and easy, or clunky and troublesome with the Pathfinder PDFs in particular?
Is it compatible with Microsoft Office documents? Can I view them? Edit them on the tablet? Can I easily sync them back to Microsoft OneDrive or elsewhere on my desktop computer?
I read somewhere that you can get a Microsoft Office app for an android device if you had an Office 465 subscription; is that true?
Is this a purchase you would recommend for this purpose? Or would you recommend something else instead? If so, what and why? (I prefer not to spend more than $150 or so.)
It works for me. I can't download from paizo onto my fire, but I can unzip the time and than email to my kindle.
Eyup. Works better than my other tablets. i use it almost exclusively for running scenarios in PFS and it works just fine
I have a Fire HD6. It reads pathfinder and other pdf just fine.
So I guess that answers the question about PDFs.
What about Word docs?
The are several free PDF apps that you can download for the Kindle Fire. Android tablets can also show PDFs - the same apps are mostly available for both. I just bought 2 nine-inch android tablets for $60 each so I no longer need a laptop to GM. (I have the Kindle AND two Androids so that I can have 3 documents up at the same time.) The Kindle Fire is good if you already have an Amazon account and like to read eBooks.
Wait, so I can't easily flip back and forth between PDFs, docs, and apps? I thought tablets were past the whole "one program at a time" limitation.
I use my Fire to write short assignments for class, it does Word docs okay. The only problem is the small selection of fonts.
Nah, I won't need to edit the PDFs. I just need to be able to read my rule books that I put on there. (Also, is there a Pathfinder rules reference app that you would recommend?)
My character sheets are usually created and edited in Microsoft Word then, if need be, converted into PDFs.
I don't even know what that means, Oxylepy.
There is a pretty good SRD app that I used to use, although I haven't for a while, I think it was called MasterTools or something similar. This was from the google play store, not the Amazon app store, but it was just a simple search to find it.
If you have a wifi connection, you can also always just use the web like on a traditional computer.
It works fine - the process to get PDFs onto it is a bit clunky, but it reads ok. I use it as my AP reference while I'm running Roll20 games because I hate switching screens. Even the native Docs app does a fine job of working with PDFs, although the page turning is a little clunky sometimes and there's no table of contents, so switching between sections is annoying.
Overall, I'd probably prefer physical books, but for books I don't have in physical form, or situations where I can't have my books with me, the Fire does just fine, and that's with little to no expertise in its tricks.
So what's so "poor grade" about the default system?
(I have no experience with android devices, or really modern mobile devices of any kind.)
I was thinking of getting a Kindle Fire that's on sale as my first tablet. The thought was to use it as a roleplaying tool that will allow access Pathfinder rules apps, Pathfinder PDF books that I own, and Microsoft Word/Excel documents of character sheets during roleplaying games.
What I want to know is, for those who own one, what has your experience been like? Does it read PDFs at all? Is it smooth and easy, or clunky and troublesome with the Pathfinder PDFs in particular?
Is it compatible with Microsoft Office documents? Can I view them? Edit them on the tablet? Can I easily sync them back to Microsoft OneDrive or elsewhere on my desktop computer?
I read somewhere that you can get a Microsoft Office app for an android device if you had an Office 465 subscription; is that true?
Is this a purchase you would recommend for this purpose? Or would you recommend something else instead? If so, what and why? (I prefer not to spend more than $150 or so.)
I read Paizo PDFS on it all the time. I simply hook up to my computer and use the USB transfer function to put them on my Kindle HDX.
DOCX is officially supported for direct reading but it's kind of iffy. For editing you'll want to save to one of the older Word formats and download an office package from Amazon.
So what's so "poor grade" about the default system?
(I have no experience with android devices, or really modern mobile devices of any kind.)
It isn't really poor grade system. But Amazon mainly wires it heavily into being a front end for their media store. so it means that you don't get to use Google apps on it.
There are ways to hack the device, but the results are extremely variable and as someone who's done it, I really don't recommend it for the novice, as going wrong on it can wind up bricking the device as the procedure is EXTREMELY dependent up on getting the right (often old versions) of software as matched to the particular hardware. And there really isn't any need to do so to read PDFS or edit word docs as the Amazon store does have both Word clones and alternate PDF readers to work with the docs you want to work with.
DOCX is officially supported for direct reading but it's kind of iffy. For editing you'll want to save to one of the older Word formats and download an office package from Amazon.
I might just save the docs as PDFs then and settle for viewing only.
Have you tried using the mythweavers site for your character sheets. I really like it. I' was assuming you don't play without Internet.
It isn't really poor grade system. But Amazon mainly wires it heavily into being a front end for their media store. so it means that you don't get to use Google apps on it.
This is probably my biggest gripe about using a Fire for reference - I have my entire Pathfinder PDF collection saved to my Google Drive, but no Google Drive app for Kindle means I have to go the long ways around to access it. Sigh.
This is probably my biggest gripe about using a Fire for reference - I have my entire Pathfinder PDF collection saved to my Google Drive, but no Google Drive app for Kindle means I have to go the long ways around to access it. Sigh.
They do have dropbox though and it works easily with Dropbox.