Kindle Fire, anyone?

[brewerpaul]

After wanting an iPaddish device ever since I saw the iPad, I was thrilled to see the upcoming Kindle Fire for $199. I know it's not the same, but for my purposes it looks terrific. My wife thought so too, and we pulled the trigger on two of them
Anyone else joining the club?

[benhall.1]

My son bought me a Kindle for Christmas last year. I have no idea what to do with it.

[mutepointe]

I thought people were burning Kindles because of their content.

[Thomaston]

I've got a Nook Color that I rooted (ie hacked) to run pure Android, which gives me basically a tablet that has Kindle and Nook apps on it, and anything else that can be found in the Android app store.
The only thing I hate about it is the battery life. I hope the Fire is better on that.

[Tunborough]

I've worked a bit with an iPad and a Samsung Galaxy. I can appreciate the appeal, but when I had the opportunity to borrow one for an extended period, I turned it down, because I couldn't see doing much with it.

Some time ago, we got the better half a netbook. It's a bit thicker and heavier than a tablet, but it's got a real keyboard, MS Office, and USB connectors to plug in a DVD drive. She still loves it, and uses it for all her computing. However, we are planning to give the Kobo e-reader a try.

[Innocent Bystander]

Readers in the Bodleian Library at Oxford must take an oath that they will not kindle fires in the library.

[emmline]

I have the oldest version of a kindle (for which I of course overpaid,) and it will do. One of the girls wants a Kindle Touch for Christmas. Don't know about the 'Fire. Probably be cool, but redundant for me, what with the mini Mac I use and my iPhone. Mainly I use my old Kindle for flat reading material while on the elliptical.

[chas]

I couldn't understand the desire for tablets when they came out, but I broke down and bought an iPad a few months ago and love it. I originally got it for a camping trip; it replaced a pile of books including field guides, and allowed us to upload photos and edit/cull with a reasonably sized screen. Also allowed us to play the occasional video game and the kid to watch a movie on a larger screen than her touch. I've taken it on a couple of business trips, too. It's a lot lighter than a laptop, and you DON'T need to take it out of the backpack/briefcase at the airport! The 10-hour battery is a plus, too.

A lagniappe was that I was able to make a playlist (which can be done on the device) of all ghost/faerie/witch/etc. songs for a Halloween party and plugged it into the stereo and had five hours of theme music without having to burn custom CD's or fiddle with the stereo at all.

[brewerpaul]

My thinking is along the lines of what Chas said. I had a Touch that I loved and although I originally got it for music and to run ePocrates (drug database)in my podiatry practice, I soon found a multitude of valuable uses for it. I watched exactly one movie on it just for the experience but found the tiny screen sort of ridiculous. I now have an iPhone and use it numerous times during the day, least of all as a phone. Both devices are, for me, limited by their tiny screens made worse by my presbyopic eyes. I'm thinking that the Kindle will be great for lying on the couch and reading newspapers, maybe books (although I still love holding a paper book).

[missy]

I still like my Sony ereader for reading - it's not a "shiny" screen so I can read it in the sun, etc. Plus the battery lasts forever on it.

We have a Blackberry Playbook. The reflective screen is just not great for reading books on it - it's fine for other things.

[Dale]

FWIW, I have had a 2nd generation Kindle for sometime and when the new ones came out, I bought the low-end, plain vanilla Kindle for $70. I really do love it in a way I didn't love the 2nd generation device. This latest generation of Kindles has crossed some sort of line in terms of weight, size, and portability. I can stow the new Kindle in my pocket, comfortably manage it with one hand. I didn't buy the Kindle Fire because I own an iPad. There's an abundance of reviews of it, of course, on amazon.com .

[BillChin]

I've been away from this forum for many moons. I'll take this thread to resurface.

I shopped for a tablet for several months and ended up buying an Archos 80 G9 with an 8" screen. The main reasons I choose it, are the 8" screen, the expandability. It runs Android Honeycomb 3.2. I found a steep learning curve moving to Android from Windows and there were many times I have been frustrated. I wouldn't recommend it for non-techie's.

Compared to the Kindle Fire, the Archos screen is about 30% larger in terms of viewable square inches and about 30% smaller than the Ipads. The 7" screen is a significant negative for those of us with aging eyes. Also typing on the virtual keyboard is that much easier at 8" than 7" and yes that one inch does make a difference. For those with Ipads, the Kindle Fire is literally about half the size. I made paper cutouts of the three, and much preferred the medium size.

Some frustrations with my Archos: They advertised a USB G3 option, but I found out after I ordered my unit, that it only works in Europe. Several reviewers wrote about the many video formats supported, but straight MPG does not play unless I convert the file to AVI or pay an extra $10 for a codec. The internal mic and camera are very low end for a modern device.

Some things I like are the many free or low cost apps. I've downloaded and installed about 20 apps and still have 5.5 GB free of the 8 GB internal storage. The virtual guitar apps are very cool. I've sometimes wanted a guitar, but tuning, storage, and broken strings were huge negatives that I did not want to deal with.

The Kindle Fire is going to be very good interfacing with Amazon, for books, videos, TV shows, and select apps. There isn't a new game console or really hot toy this year, so it is going to be a huge seller. Developers are very excited at a big new market to potentially sell to. Many of the free games are ad supported, and many can get rid of the ads for a very modest payment.

Some negatives for the Fire are the small screen, for aging eyes, or larger hands, the older operating system (based on Android 2.3), and no expandability. For those with always on WIFI the storage isn't a hindrance, because cloud storage is available for free. I don't have that, so prefer being able to use mini SD cards that I can also use in my camera.

[brewerpaul]

We got ours yesterday, and so far they seem terrific, especially for the relatively low price. Ironically, I'm still not sure if I like reading books in this format but that's me and not the device.

[Doug_Tipple]

We got ours yesterday, and so far they seem terrific, especially for the relatively low price. Ironically, I'm still not sure if I like reading books in this format but that's me and not the device.

Paul, does the Kindle Fire have read-to-me functionality like the other Kindles? I can't seem to find the answer to this on the Amazon description pages.

[brewerpaul]

No Doug-- as far as I can tell, you have to read it yourself the old fashioned way
You can use audiobooks though, I think. I listen to those in my car via iPhone all the time. I get free, older public domain stuff and have come across some terrific things such as lesser known Mark Twain and A. Conan Doyle.