So I Bought a Kindle Fire

The B&N thing is really part of the point I wanted to make. The Nook is a US-only device (does B&N even exist outside the US?), - the KF will (eventually) sell worldwide. That alone will at least double the sales numbers for the Kindle.

I agree with this. The Kindle app on the Fire is jerky compared to the iPad. I am hoping this is a software issue that can be updated, but it is quite noticeable.

I have to think Amazon will update their fork to ICS in the next few months and that should address a lot of the rendering and performance issues. Even with a (slightly) less resolution screen and more horsepower, browsing and Kindling on my Fire is an inferior experience to my iPad 1.

The Nook is, as well, for what that’s worth.

Again, the iOS UI is GPU accelerated, so most android devices will feel stuttery in comparison. That’s being fixed in android 4.

I expect both B&N and amazon will base their next software updates on android 4. They’re almost certainly already working on it.

Yet another free office suite on amazon’s appstore today.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004SDSSFY/ref=mas_ty

I have completely and utterly come around on this thing. I love it. I’ve used it almost exclusively for web browsing the last couple days, and outside of the crappy predictive keyboard, it works great.

What changed your mind?

If possible, go to Swype’s website and download it. Makes every Android device, especially tablets, infinitely better.

Still love the Kindle Fire. I’ve spent about $50 on Amazon digital content since I got it, which means it very well might be my “Farmville”…The choppy interface is lame, and I’m waiting for someone to remake Dungeon Master for it (as the interface is perfect), otherwise it’s great so far.

This was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but she couldn’t wait and turned it into an anniversary treat instead.

Since I already had 50 albums on the amazon cloud this is now my official mp3 player. Just need to work through my paperbased backlog before fully embracing.

Holy heck this type of typing is draining.

Hope they upgrade the suggestion list features to match online amazon, what with a big ‘not interested’ button.

Simply using it more, and for more purposes. Also disabling Silk and defaulting all web sites to the mobile view massively helped the web browser.

For the last two days, I was without a laptop, so I had either my phone or my Kindle Fire to browse the web with. After that initial hump with my negative impressions, I got used to how it handles web browsing, and adapted to the still-poor keyboard, and was quickly navigating almost as if I had a mouse and keyboard.

Not really digging the Fire. I think its great at its price point but already having an iPad, I am not finding it all that useful (duh? iPad is constantly being used in my house so I thought another tablet would help but no one wants to use it, they’d rather just wait for the ipad)

Two things that are especially bugging me:

  1. No 802.11A wifi, iPad has this. The gym I go to has an 802.11A SSID. No b/g…

  2. The power button is in a terrible spot. Its constantly being turned off on accident and you flat out cant stand it up length-wise because of this.

…unless you rotate it 180 degrees so the power button is on top.

I haven’t used my iPad since I got the Fire. With that being said, if there was a seven inch iPad, I would probably use that instead. The form factor is perfect for me.

Yep, I’ve been doing this. Only thing that doesn’t rotate is the lock screen, which is probably why most reviews don’t mention this solution.

Hmm. I want to say I tried that…and it didnt work. I assumed it just didnt rotate like an ipad will. I will have to try again.

The more I think about this Nook Tablet vs. Kindle Fire competition, the more I’m curious about a huge area most reviews seemed to have overlooked.

Is it just me, or am I on to something thinking that Amazon will be far quicker to update the Kindle Fire with significant OS updates, perhaps newer Android versions, than B&N would be to update the Nook Tablet?

Firstly, Amazon has been a software and services company for much longer than B&N. Agility is ingrained in their entire company from developers to project managers, and they have to know that frequent updates are 100% necessary to keep customers happy.

Secondly, if Amazon truly is losing money on every device sold, which seems extremely likely, there’s negative incentive for them to move recent Kindle Fire purchasers onto the newer and better devices. They need to keep Fire users continually using the Fire if they want to break even or make a profit on them, buying content, but in order for people to buy content, they need to be happy with the device. That means significant software updates to improve the underlying system making the devices people already have more pleasant to use.

As I’ve said, I’m pretty happy now with the state the Fire is in now, but I’m also very interested to see how much it would improve with some flavor of Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich under the covers. Hardware accelerated graphics rendering please!

I will say that Amazon definitely SHOULD be thinking the way you suggest. They should also be looking every which way they can to keep lowering prices on the KF as time goes on.

The latter I am sure they will do. The former… well, we shall just have to wait and see.

I gave my Fire another shot last night, and I am also a convert now. I think Silk and Amazon Video on Demand must have just been hammered the first couple of nights, because I feel like they’re running 10x better now. I looked up Skyrim hints for the wife then rented and watched Attack the Block, and both of them were smooth as, uh, silk. Both those functions were unusably slow for me when I first got the thing.

Is there a consensus on the best case? I just ordered a Marware Jurni.