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Nov. 27th, 2011
Kindle Fire
Nov. 27th, 2011 12:49 pmSo my birthday present this year was a Kindle Fire. Amazon finally shipped and it arrived Friday afternoon. So far? Loving it.
Comparing Fire to my dads (wifi) Ipad (1) the pros and cons:
Fire Cons
* Well, the most obvious con is that the Fire is smaller than the Ipad. It simply is. Now, it makes the Fire easier to carry around, so it's pehaps a pro as well, but the screen size is smaller. So if size matters to you. Ipad bigger / Fire smaller.
* Fire has no bluetooth. So no bluetooth keyboards and no bluetooth speakers.
* Fire's speakers don't have a lot of volume, are a bit tinny and on one side of the module so it's a bit mono-directional. (Earplugs work fine though).
* Fire has no camera, so no Skype or taking pictures.
* Fire has no GPS, so it can't track you on maps.
* It has a pre-loaded Facebook Ap... that you can't delete off the device unless you root it. And I'm not doing that, so I'm stuck with a facebook ap in the menu.
Fire Pros
* Everything else... at half the price of an Ipad (wifi).
1) Basically, everything I can do on my father's Ipad I can do on the Fire. The Fire is for all intents and purposes Amazon's overlay over an Android, so Android aps work on the Fire. I've noticed no dirth of aps. And all the aps I've ever used on my dad's Ipad are available for Fire.
2) LiveJournal doesn't have an ap per se but the mobile Live Journal works just great and keeps me from having to do the pinch and zoom of going to LJ through the regular site. Since the mobile LJ works a tad differently the size of the font is set by my Kindle settings so even though the screen is smaller, everything reads really easily.
This is true of nearly all websites. You can set the font size in settings so you can have ample font size making most every web site fairly easily read.
NOTE: Odd Kink... because Amazon's "Silk" browser is routed through the Kindle servers (which supposedly speeds it, but I haven't noticed the browser being slow even when I have the "acceleration" off on sites I regularly visit). But, anyway, because silk is routed through the Amazon servers it handles secure transactions strangely, meaning if it's having to send a password to something ... it won't. All you have to do is click the settings button at the bottom of the screen and turn off the "acceleration" and the password will go through. So basically, if I'm on LJ or BuffyForums or something, I have the acceleration off and there's no problem posting. And I've noticed no change in speed. (There's also an ap for forums that functions like mobile LJ called 'tapatalk'... but I haven't tried that ap. I haven't had a problem with forums in the regular mode so I haven't tried tapatalk.)
3) The included e-mail ap works nicely. It allows you to use multiple e-mail accounts and it displays them in an easily viewed style, again with the font based on the kind and size you've chosen in settings, so it remains easily read even on a small screen.
4) Having already used the Amazon (free) Cloud to store most of my music to access from work or home, the way that the Kindle Fire accesses media on the Amazon Cloud was pretty seamless for me right off the bat. I already had a couple of hundred songs on the cloud to begin with. But, just in case you were wondering, you can use the Amazon Uploader freeware to upload all your media to the Amazon Cloud. The Fire will let you access anything on their cloud or own your own device. The same is true of your Kindle and your Audible.com library (since these are owned by Amazon. Yeah, it's an Amazon delivery device. But if you don't have issues with Amazon, it's rather nice to have it as an Amazon delivery device.
5) They also have an ap included that lets you access your storage from box.net or dropbox. So you're not hemmed in to just amazon storage.
6) The screen display is quite lovely. Very sharp. The only problem I've noticed is a bit of motion drag when streaming game play on ESPN... but then, this is true on a lot of TVs so it's not a big deal.
7) The pre-loaded "Pulse" ap is actually quite nice. It allows a fair amount of customization in that it lets you choose which sites from Gawker to The New York Times to USA Today to The Onion to DailyKos, ThinkProgress, The Atlantic, Salon, Dilbert, Dwell, etc. etc. that when you open the "Pulse" ap loads the headlines from each of these sources so that you can click to articles. Nice ap.
8) The Pre-loaded e-mail ap is also nice. Works well as far as I can see.
9) The onscreen keyboard in portrait position is fairly small but is adequate fro typing in web addresses. In landscape position the onscreen keyboard is fairly nice. The only thing that I've run into is that the backspace key isn't in the upper right but is on the lower right and sometimes I hit 'p' when I'm intending backspace. There is an ap for a "thumb keypad" that has high ratings, but I haven't tried it. Thus far the onscreen one that it provides has been good enough. As stated, there is no bluetooth so no bluetooth keyboard is available. They would have to eventually come up with one that literally plugs into the port to have an accessory keyboard as opposed to the one that pops up on screen.
10) Currently they're offering Amazon Prime for a certain amount of time with purchase, so you actually have access to the 'free' lending library... which is basically a teaser for you to join prime and pay a monthly fee for access. But, hey, at least they give you a month or so try it out to decide whether you want to pay for the service.
11) Yes, you can access YouTube and I believe there's a YouTube ap somewhere. There's also Angry Birds aps (and lots of games aps, but I don't tend to play games much.
12) Kindle works just like Kindle. The fire is backlit, so it's not the same as e-ink. Which is a bummer in that e-ink hels avoid the eye fatigue of backlit devices. But for all the pretty color... you've got backlit. So it basically works like Kindle for IPad or your computer. You still manage font size, spacing and whether it's black on white, white on black, or lesser contrast sepia toned. You can store what you're currently reading on your device, but it also stores on the cloud, so you can delete it to save storage space on your device but it's still on your cloud and you can download it again at any time... ala the way that Amazon has always handled Audible. So once you own the book, you own it. You just don't have to keep it on your device all the time.
Anyway, I've been quite happy with it. And, other than the obvious -- the size, lack of camera, and 3 or 4G -- it does most things most ordinary users would ask of an Ipad... for less than half the price of an Ipad. (Which isn't to say that the Ipad doesn't do more... because it does. It's just how many of us actually use everything than an Ipad can do? For most normal users? Fire does everything you want for reading, web browsing, e-mail, etc.)
Comparing Fire to my dads (wifi) Ipad (1) the pros and cons:
Fire Cons
* Well, the most obvious con is that the Fire is smaller than the Ipad. It simply is. Now, it makes the Fire easier to carry around, so it's pehaps a pro as well, but the screen size is smaller. So if size matters to you. Ipad bigger / Fire smaller.
* Fire has no bluetooth. So no bluetooth keyboards and no bluetooth speakers.
* Fire's speakers don't have a lot of volume, are a bit tinny and on one side of the module so it's a bit mono-directional. (Earplugs work fine though).
* Fire has no camera, so no Skype or taking pictures.
* Fire has no GPS, so it can't track you on maps.
* It has a pre-loaded Facebook Ap... that you can't delete off the device unless you root it. And I'm not doing that, so I'm stuck with a facebook ap in the menu.
Fire Pros
* Everything else... at half the price of an Ipad (wifi).
1) Basically, everything I can do on my father's Ipad I can do on the Fire. The Fire is for all intents and purposes Amazon's overlay over an Android, so Android aps work on the Fire. I've noticed no dirth of aps. And all the aps I've ever used on my dad's Ipad are available for Fire.
2) LiveJournal doesn't have an ap per se but the mobile Live Journal works just great and keeps me from having to do the pinch and zoom of going to LJ through the regular site. Since the mobile LJ works a tad differently the size of the font is set by my Kindle settings so even though the screen is smaller, everything reads really easily.
This is true of nearly all websites. You can set the font size in settings so you can have ample font size making most every web site fairly easily read.
NOTE: Odd Kink... because Amazon's "Silk" browser is routed through the Kindle servers (which supposedly speeds it, but I haven't noticed the browser being slow even when I have the "acceleration" off on sites I regularly visit). But, anyway, because silk is routed through the Amazon servers it handles secure transactions strangely, meaning if it's having to send a password to something ... it won't. All you have to do is click the settings button at the bottom of the screen and turn off the "acceleration" and the password will go through. So basically, if I'm on LJ or BuffyForums or something, I have the acceleration off and there's no problem posting. And I've noticed no change in speed. (There's also an ap for forums that functions like mobile LJ called 'tapatalk'... but I haven't tried that ap. I haven't had a problem with forums in the regular mode so I haven't tried tapatalk.)
3) The included e-mail ap works nicely. It allows you to use multiple e-mail accounts and it displays them in an easily viewed style, again with the font based on the kind and size you've chosen in settings, so it remains easily read even on a small screen.
4) Having already used the Amazon (free) Cloud to store most of my music to access from work or home, the way that the Kindle Fire accesses media on the Amazon Cloud was pretty seamless for me right off the bat. I already had a couple of hundred songs on the cloud to begin with. But, just in case you were wondering, you can use the Amazon Uploader freeware to upload all your media to the Amazon Cloud. The Fire will let you access anything on their cloud or own your own device. The same is true of your Kindle and your Audible.com library (since these are owned by Amazon. Yeah, it's an Amazon delivery device. But if you don't have issues with Amazon, it's rather nice to have it as an Amazon delivery device.
5) They also have an ap included that lets you access your storage from box.net or dropbox. So you're not hemmed in to just amazon storage.
6) The screen display is quite lovely. Very sharp. The only problem I've noticed is a bit of motion drag when streaming game play on ESPN... but then, this is true on a lot of TVs so it's not a big deal.
7) The pre-loaded "Pulse" ap is actually quite nice. It allows a fair amount of customization in that it lets you choose which sites from Gawker to The New York Times to USA Today to The Onion to DailyKos, ThinkProgress, The Atlantic, Salon, Dilbert, Dwell, etc. etc. that when you open the "Pulse" ap loads the headlines from each of these sources so that you can click to articles. Nice ap.
8) The Pre-loaded e-mail ap is also nice. Works well as far as I can see.
9) The onscreen keyboard in portrait position is fairly small but is adequate fro typing in web addresses. In landscape position the onscreen keyboard is fairly nice. The only thing that I've run into is that the backspace key isn't in the upper right but is on the lower right and sometimes I hit 'p' when I'm intending backspace. There is an ap for a "thumb keypad" that has high ratings, but I haven't tried it. Thus far the onscreen one that it provides has been good enough. As stated, there is no bluetooth so no bluetooth keyboard is available. They would have to eventually come up with one that literally plugs into the port to have an accessory keyboard as opposed to the one that pops up on screen.
10) Currently they're offering Amazon Prime for a certain amount of time with purchase, so you actually have access to the 'free' lending library... which is basically a teaser for you to join prime and pay a monthly fee for access. But, hey, at least they give you a month or so try it out to decide whether you want to pay for the service.
11) Yes, you can access YouTube and I believe there's a YouTube ap somewhere. There's also Angry Birds aps (and lots of games aps, but I don't tend to play games much.
12) Kindle works just like Kindle. The fire is backlit, so it's not the same as e-ink. Which is a bummer in that e-ink hels avoid the eye fatigue of backlit devices. But for all the pretty color... you've got backlit. So it basically works like Kindle for IPad or your computer. You still manage font size, spacing and whether it's black on white, white on black, or lesser contrast sepia toned. You can store what you're currently reading on your device, but it also stores on the cloud, so you can delete it to save storage space on your device but it's still on your cloud and you can download it again at any time... ala the way that Amazon has always handled Audible. So once you own the book, you own it. You just don't have to keep it on your device all the time.
Anyway, I've been quite happy with it. And, other than the obvious -- the size, lack of camera, and 3 or 4G -- it does most things most ordinary users would ask of an Ipad... for less than half the price of an Ipad. (Which isn't to say that the Ipad doesn't do more... because it does. It's just how many of us actually use everything than an Ipad can do? For most normal users? Fire does everything you want for reading, web browsing, e-mail, etc.)
Kindle Fire
Nov. 27th, 2011 12:49 pmSo my birthday present this year was a Kindle Fire. Amazon finally shipped and it arrived Friday afternoon. So far? Loving it.
Comparing Fire to my dads (wifi) Ipad (1) the pros and cons:
Fire Cons
* Well, the most obvious con is that the Fire is smaller than the Ipad. It simply is. Now, it makes the Fire easier to carry around, so it's pehaps a pro as well, but the screen size is smaller. So if size matters to you. Ipad bigger / Fire smaller.
* Fire has no bluetooth. So no bluetooth keyboards and no bluetooth speakers.
* Fire's speakers don't have a lot of volume, are a bit tinny and on one side of the module so it's a bit mono-directional. (Earplugs work fine though).
* Fire has no camera, so no Skype or taking pictures.
* Fire has no GPS, so it can't track you on maps.
* It has a pre-loaded Facebook Ap... that you can't delete off the device unless you root it. And I'm not doing that, so I'm stuck with a facebook ap in the menu.
Fire Pros
* Everything else... at half the price of an Ipad (wifi).
1) Basically, everything I can do on my father's Ipad I can do on the Fire. The Fire is for all intents and purposes Amazon's overlay over an Android, so Android aps work on the Fire. I've noticed no dirth of aps. And all the aps I've ever used on my dad's Ipad are available for Fire.
2) LiveJournal doesn't have an ap per se but the mobile Live Journal works just great and keeps me from having to do the pinch and zoom of going to LJ through the regular site. Since the mobile LJ works a tad differently the size of the font is set by my Kindle settings so even though the screen is smaller, everything reads really easily.
This is true of nearly all websites. You can set the font size in settings so you can have ample font size making most every web site fairly easily read.
NOTE: Odd Kink... because Amazon's "Silk" browser is routed through the Kindle servers (which supposedly speeds it, but I haven't noticed the browser being slow even when I have the "acceleration" off on sites I regularly visit). But, anyway, because silk is routed through the Amazon servers it handles secure transactions strangely, meaning if it's having to send a password to something ... it won't. All you have to do is click the settings button at the bottom of the screen and turn off the "acceleration" and the password will go through. So basically, if I'm on LJ or BuffyForums or something, I have the acceleration off and there's no problem posting. And I've noticed no change in speed. (There's also an ap for forums that functions like mobile LJ called 'tapatalk'... but I haven't tried that ap. I haven't had a problem with forums in the regular mode so I haven't tried tapatalk.)
3) The included e-mail ap works nicely. It allows you to use multiple e-mail accounts and it displays them in an easily viewed style, again with the font based on the kind and size you've chosen in settings, so it remains easily read even on a small screen.
4) Having already used the Amazon (free) Cloud to store most of my music to access from work or home, the way that the Kindle Fire accesses media on the Amazon Cloud was pretty seamless for me right off the bat. I already had a couple of hundred songs on the cloud to begin with. But, just in case you were wondering, you can use the Amazon Uploader freeware to upload all your media to the Amazon Cloud. The Fire will let you access anything on their cloud or own your own device. The same is true of your Kindle and your Audible.com library (since these are owned by Amazon. Yeah, it's an Amazon delivery device. But if you don't have issues with Amazon, it's rather nice to have it as an Amazon delivery device.
5) They also have an ap included that lets you access your storage from box.net or dropbox. So you're not hemmed in to just amazon storage.
6) The screen display is quite lovely. Very sharp. The only problem I've noticed is a bit of motion drag when streaming game play on ESPN... but then, this is true on a lot of TVs so it's not a big deal.
7) The pre-loaded "Pulse" ap is actually quite nice. It allows a fair amount of customization in that it lets you choose which sites from Gawker to The New York Times to USA Today to The Onion to DailyKos, ThinkProgress, The Atlantic, Salon, Dilbert, Dwell, etc. etc. that when you open the "Pulse" ap loads the headlines from each of these sources so that you can click to articles. Nice ap.
8) The Pre-loaded e-mail ap is also nice. Works well as far as I can see.
9) The onscreen keyboard in portrait position is fairly small but is adequate fro typing in web addresses. In landscape position the onscreen keyboard is fairly nice. The only thing that I've run into is that the backspace key isn't in the upper right but is on the lower right and sometimes I hit 'p' when I'm intending backspace. There is an ap for a "thumb keypad" that has high ratings, but I haven't tried it. Thus far the onscreen one that it provides has been good enough. As stated, there is no bluetooth so no bluetooth keyboard is available. They would have to eventually come up with one that literally plugs into the port to have an accessory keyboard as opposed to the one that pops up on screen.
10) Currently they're offering Amazon Prime for a certain amount of time with purchase, so you actually have access to the 'free' lending library... which is basically a teaser for you to join prime and pay a monthly fee for access. But, hey, at least they give you a month or so try it out to decide whether you want to pay for the service.
11) Yes, you can access YouTube and I believe there's a YouTube ap somewhere. There's also Angry Birds aps (and lots of games aps, but I don't tend to play games much.
12) Kindle works just like Kindle. The fire is backlit, so it's not the same as e-ink. Which is a bummer in that e-ink hels avoid the eye fatigue of backlit devices. But for all the pretty color... you've got backlit. So it basically works like Kindle for IPad or your computer. You still manage font size, spacing and whether it's black on white, white on black, or lesser contrast sepia toned. You can store what you're currently reading on your device, but it also stores on the cloud, so you can delete it to save storage space on your device but it's still on your cloud and you can download it again at any time... ala the way that Amazon has always handled Audible. So once you own the book, you own it. You just don't have to keep it on your device all the time.
Anyway, I've been quite happy with it. And, other than the obvious -- the size, lack of camera, and 3 or 4G -- it does most things most ordinary users would ask of an Ipad... for less than half the price of an Ipad. (Which isn't to say that the Ipad doesn't do more... because it does. It's just how many of us actually use everything than an Ipad can do? For most normal users? Fire does everything you want for reading, web browsing, e-mail, etc.)
Comparing Fire to my dads (wifi) Ipad (1) the pros and cons:
Fire Cons
* Well, the most obvious con is that the Fire is smaller than the Ipad. It simply is. Now, it makes the Fire easier to carry around, so it's pehaps a pro as well, but the screen size is smaller. So if size matters to you. Ipad bigger / Fire smaller.
* Fire has no bluetooth. So no bluetooth keyboards and no bluetooth speakers.
* Fire's speakers don't have a lot of volume, are a bit tinny and on one side of the module so it's a bit mono-directional. (Earplugs work fine though).
* Fire has no camera, so no Skype or taking pictures.
* Fire has no GPS, so it can't track you on maps.
* It has a pre-loaded Facebook Ap... that you can't delete off the device unless you root it. And I'm not doing that, so I'm stuck with a facebook ap in the menu.
Fire Pros
* Everything else... at half the price of an Ipad (wifi).
1) Basically, everything I can do on my father's Ipad I can do on the Fire. The Fire is for all intents and purposes Amazon's overlay over an Android, so Android aps work on the Fire. I've noticed no dirth of aps. And all the aps I've ever used on my dad's Ipad are available for Fire.
2) LiveJournal doesn't have an ap per se but the mobile Live Journal works just great and keeps me from having to do the pinch and zoom of going to LJ through the regular site. Since the mobile LJ works a tad differently the size of the font is set by my Kindle settings so even though the screen is smaller, everything reads really easily.
This is true of nearly all websites. You can set the font size in settings so you can have ample font size making most every web site fairly easily read.
NOTE: Odd Kink... because Amazon's "Silk" browser is routed through the Kindle servers (which supposedly speeds it, but I haven't noticed the browser being slow even when I have the "acceleration" off on sites I regularly visit). But, anyway, because silk is routed through the Amazon servers it handles secure transactions strangely, meaning if it's having to send a password to something ... it won't. All you have to do is click the settings button at the bottom of the screen and turn off the "acceleration" and the password will go through. So basically, if I'm on LJ or BuffyForums or something, I have the acceleration off and there's no problem posting. And I've noticed no change in speed. (There's also an ap for forums that functions like mobile LJ called 'tapatalk'... but I haven't tried that ap. I haven't had a problem with forums in the regular mode so I haven't tried tapatalk.)
3) The included e-mail ap works nicely. It allows you to use multiple e-mail accounts and it displays them in an easily viewed style, again with the font based on the kind and size you've chosen in settings, so it remains easily read even on a small screen.
4) Having already used the Amazon (free) Cloud to store most of my music to access from work or home, the way that the Kindle Fire accesses media on the Amazon Cloud was pretty seamless for me right off the bat. I already had a couple of hundred songs on the cloud to begin with. But, just in case you were wondering, you can use the Amazon Uploader freeware to upload all your media to the Amazon Cloud. The Fire will let you access anything on their cloud or own your own device. The same is true of your Kindle and your Audible.com library (since these are owned by Amazon. Yeah, it's an Amazon delivery device. But if you don't have issues with Amazon, it's rather nice to have it as an Amazon delivery device.
5) They also have an ap included that lets you access your storage from box.net or dropbox. So you're not hemmed in to just amazon storage.
6) The screen display is quite lovely. Very sharp. The only problem I've noticed is a bit of motion drag when streaming game play on ESPN... but then, this is true on a lot of TVs so it's not a big deal.
7) The pre-loaded "Pulse" ap is actually quite nice. It allows a fair amount of customization in that it lets you choose which sites from Gawker to The New York Times to USA Today to The Onion to DailyKos, ThinkProgress, The Atlantic, Salon, Dilbert, Dwell, etc. etc. that when you open the "Pulse" ap loads the headlines from each of these sources so that you can click to articles. Nice ap.
8) The Pre-loaded e-mail ap is also nice. Works well as far as I can see.
9) The onscreen keyboard in portrait position is fairly small but is adequate fro typing in web addresses. In landscape position the onscreen keyboard is fairly nice. The only thing that I've run into is that the backspace key isn't in the upper right but is on the lower right and sometimes I hit 'p' when I'm intending backspace. There is an ap for a "thumb keypad" that has high ratings, but I haven't tried it. Thus far the onscreen one that it provides has been good enough. As stated, there is no bluetooth so no bluetooth keyboard is available. They would have to eventually come up with one that literally plugs into the port to have an accessory keyboard as opposed to the one that pops up on screen.
10) Currently they're offering Amazon Prime for a certain amount of time with purchase, so you actually have access to the 'free' lending library... which is basically a teaser for you to join prime and pay a monthly fee for access. But, hey, at least they give you a month or so try it out to decide whether you want to pay for the service.
11) Yes, you can access YouTube and I believe there's a YouTube ap somewhere. There's also Angry Birds aps (and lots of games aps, but I don't tend to play games much.
12) Kindle works just like Kindle. The fire is backlit, so it's not the same as e-ink. Which is a bummer in that e-ink hels avoid the eye fatigue of backlit devices. But for all the pretty color... you've got backlit. So it basically works like Kindle for IPad or your computer. You still manage font size, spacing and whether it's black on white, white on black, or lesser contrast sepia toned. You can store what you're currently reading on your device, but it also stores on the cloud, so you can delete it to save storage space on your device but it's still on your cloud and you can download it again at any time... ala the way that Amazon has always handled Audible. So once you own the book, you own it. You just don't have to keep it on your device all the time.
Anyway, I've been quite happy with it. And, other than the obvious -- the size, lack of camera, and 3 or 4G -- it does most things most ordinary users would ask of an Ipad... for less than half the price of an Ipad. (Which isn't to say that the Ipad doesn't do more... because it does. It's just how many of us actually use everything than an Ipad can do? For most normal users? Fire does everything you want for reading, web browsing, e-mail, etc.)
Kindle Fire
Nov. 27th, 2011 12:49 pmSo my birthday present this year was a Kindle Fire. Amazon finally shipped and it arrived Friday afternoon. So far? Loving it.
Comparing Fire to my dads (wifi) Ipad (1) the pros and cons:
Fire Cons
* Well, the most obvious con is that the Fire is smaller than the Ipad. It simply is. Now, it makes the Fire easier to carry around, so it's pehaps a pro as well, but the screen size is smaller. So if size matters to you. Ipad bigger / Fire smaller.
* Fire has no bluetooth. So no bluetooth keyboards and no bluetooth speakers.
* Fire's speakers don't have a lot of volume, are a bit tinny and on one side of the module so it's a bit mono-directional. (Earplugs work fine though).
* Fire has no camera, so no Skype or taking pictures.
* Fire has no GPS, so it can't track you on maps.
* It has a pre-loaded Facebook Ap... that you can't delete off the device unless you root it. And I'm not doing that, so I'm stuck with a facebook ap in the menu.
Fire Pros
* Everything else... at half the price of an Ipad (wifi).
1) Basically, everything I can do on my father's Ipad I can do on the Fire. The Fire is for all intents and purposes Amazon's overlay over an Android, so Android aps work on the Fire. I've noticed no dirth of aps. And all the aps I've ever used on my dad's Ipad are available for Fire.
2) LiveJournal doesn't have an ap per se but the mobile Live Journal works just great and keeps me from having to do the pinch and zoom of going to LJ through the regular site. Since the mobile LJ works a tad differently the size of the font is set by my Kindle settings so even though the screen is smaller, everything reads really easily.
This is true of nearly all websites. You can set the font size in settings so you can have ample font size making most every web site fairly easily read.
NOTE: Odd Kink... because Amazon's "Silk" browser is routed through the Kindle servers (which supposedly speeds it, but I haven't noticed the browser being slow even when I have the "acceleration" off on sites I regularly visit). But, anyway, because silk is routed through the Amazon servers it handles secure transactions strangely, meaning if it's having to send a password to something ... it won't. All you have to do is click the settings button at the bottom of the screen and turn off the "acceleration" and the password will go through. So basically, if I'm on LJ or BuffyForums or something, I have the acceleration off and there's no problem posting. And I've noticed no change in speed. (There's also an ap for forums that functions like mobile LJ called 'tapatalk'... but I haven't tried that ap. I haven't had a problem with forums in the regular mode so I haven't tried tapatalk.)
3) The included e-mail ap works nicely. It allows you to use multiple e-mail accounts and it displays them in an easily viewed style, again with the font based on the kind and size you've chosen in settings, so it remains easily read even on a small screen.
4) Having already used the Amazon (free) Cloud to store most of my music to access from work or home, the way that the Kindle Fire accesses media on the Amazon Cloud was pretty seamless for me right off the bat. I already had a couple of hundred songs on the cloud to begin with. But, just in case you were wondering, you can use the Amazon Uploader freeware to upload all your media to the Amazon Cloud. The Fire will let you access anything on their cloud or own your own device. The same is true of your Kindle and your Audible.com library (since these are owned by Amazon. Yeah, it's an Amazon delivery device. But if you don't have issues with Amazon, it's rather nice to have it as an Amazon delivery device.
5) They also have an ap included that lets you access your storage from box.net or dropbox. So you're not hemmed in to just amazon storage.
6) The screen display is quite lovely. Very sharp. The only problem I've noticed is a bit of motion drag when streaming game play on ESPN... but then, this is true on a lot of TVs so it's not a big deal.
7) The pre-loaded "Pulse" ap is actually quite nice. It allows a fair amount of customization in that it lets you choose which sites from Gawker to The New York Times to USA Today to The Onion to DailyKos, ThinkProgress, The Atlantic, Salon, Dilbert, Dwell, etc. etc. that when you open the "Pulse" ap loads the headlines from each of these sources so that you can click to articles. Nice ap.
8) The Pre-loaded e-mail ap is also nice. Works well as far as I can see.
9) The onscreen keyboard in portrait position is fairly small but is adequate fro typing in web addresses. In landscape position the onscreen keyboard is fairly nice. The only thing that I've run into is that the backspace key isn't in the upper right but is on the lower right and sometimes I hit 'p' when I'm intending backspace. There is an ap for a "thumb keypad" that has high ratings, but I haven't tried it. Thus far the onscreen one that it provides has been good enough. As stated, there is no bluetooth so no bluetooth keyboard is available. They would have to eventually come up with one that literally plugs into the port to have an accessory keyboard as opposed to the one that pops up on screen.
10) Currently they're offering Amazon Prime for a certain amount of time with purchase, so you actually have access to the 'free' lending library... which is basically a teaser for you to join prime and pay a monthly fee for access. But, hey, at least they give you a month or so try it out to decide whether you want to pay for the service.
11) Yes, you can access YouTube and I believe there's a YouTube ap somewhere. There's also Angry Birds aps (and lots of games aps, but I don't tend to play games much.
12) Kindle works just like Kindle. The fire is backlit, so it's not the same as e-ink. Which is a bummer in that e-ink hels avoid the eye fatigue of backlit devices. But for all the pretty color... you've got backlit. So it basically works like Kindle for IPad or your computer. You still manage font size, spacing and whether it's black on white, white on black, or lesser contrast sepia toned. You can store what you're currently reading on your device, but it also stores on the cloud, so you can delete it to save storage space on your device but it's still on your cloud and you can download it again at any time... ala the way that Amazon has always handled Audible. So once you own the book, you own it. You just don't have to keep it on your device all the time.
Anyway, I've been quite happy with it. And, other than the obvious -- the size, lack of camera, and 3 or 4G -- it does most things most ordinary users would ask of an Ipad... for less than half the price of an Ipad. (Which isn't to say that the Ipad doesn't do more... because it does. It's just how many of us actually use everything than an Ipad can do? For most normal users? Fire does everything you want for reading, web browsing, e-mail, etc.)
Comparing Fire to my dads (wifi) Ipad (1) the pros and cons:
Fire Cons
* Well, the most obvious con is that the Fire is smaller than the Ipad. It simply is. Now, it makes the Fire easier to carry around, so it's pehaps a pro as well, but the screen size is smaller. So if size matters to you. Ipad bigger / Fire smaller.
* Fire has no bluetooth. So no bluetooth keyboards and no bluetooth speakers.
* Fire's speakers don't have a lot of volume, are a bit tinny and on one side of the module so it's a bit mono-directional. (Earplugs work fine though).
* Fire has no camera, so no Skype or taking pictures.
* Fire has no GPS, so it can't track you on maps.
* It has a pre-loaded Facebook Ap... that you can't delete off the device unless you root it. And I'm not doing that, so I'm stuck with a facebook ap in the menu.
Fire Pros
* Everything else... at half the price of an Ipad (wifi).
1) Basically, everything I can do on my father's Ipad I can do on the Fire. The Fire is for all intents and purposes Amazon's overlay over an Android, so Android aps work on the Fire. I've noticed no dirth of aps. And all the aps I've ever used on my dad's Ipad are available for Fire.
2) LiveJournal doesn't have an ap per se but the mobile Live Journal works just great and keeps me from having to do the pinch and zoom of going to LJ through the regular site. Since the mobile LJ works a tad differently the size of the font is set by my Kindle settings so even though the screen is smaller, everything reads really easily.
This is true of nearly all websites. You can set the font size in settings so you can have ample font size making most every web site fairly easily read.
NOTE: Odd Kink... because Amazon's "Silk" browser is routed through the Kindle servers (which supposedly speeds it, but I haven't noticed the browser being slow even when I have the "acceleration" off on sites I regularly visit). But, anyway, because silk is routed through the Amazon servers it handles secure transactions strangely, meaning if it's having to send a password to something ... it won't. All you have to do is click the settings button at the bottom of the screen and turn off the "acceleration" and the password will go through. So basically, if I'm on LJ or BuffyForums or something, I have the acceleration off and there's no problem posting. And I've noticed no change in speed. (There's also an ap for forums that functions like mobile LJ called 'tapatalk'... but I haven't tried that ap. I haven't had a problem with forums in the regular mode so I haven't tried tapatalk.)
3) The included e-mail ap works nicely. It allows you to use multiple e-mail accounts and it displays them in an easily viewed style, again with the font based on the kind and size you've chosen in settings, so it remains easily read even on a small screen.
4) Having already used the Amazon (free) Cloud to store most of my music to access from work or home, the way that the Kindle Fire accesses media on the Amazon Cloud was pretty seamless for me right off the bat. I already had a couple of hundred songs on the cloud to begin with. But, just in case you were wondering, you can use the Amazon Uploader freeware to upload all your media to the Amazon Cloud. The Fire will let you access anything on their cloud or own your own device. The same is true of your Kindle and your Audible.com library (since these are owned by Amazon. Yeah, it's an Amazon delivery device. But if you don't have issues with Amazon, it's rather nice to have it as an Amazon delivery device.
5) They also have an ap included that lets you access your storage from box.net or dropbox. So you're not hemmed in to just amazon storage.
6) The screen display is quite lovely. Very sharp. The only problem I've noticed is a bit of motion drag when streaming game play on ESPN... but then, this is true on a lot of TVs so it's not a big deal.
7) The pre-loaded "Pulse" ap is actually quite nice. It allows a fair amount of customization in that it lets you choose which sites from Gawker to The New York Times to USA Today to The Onion to DailyKos, ThinkProgress, The Atlantic, Salon, Dilbert, Dwell, etc. etc. that when you open the "Pulse" ap loads the headlines from each of these sources so that you can click to articles. Nice ap.
8) The Pre-loaded e-mail ap is also nice. Works well as far as I can see.
9) The onscreen keyboard in portrait position is fairly small but is adequate fro typing in web addresses. In landscape position the onscreen keyboard is fairly nice. The only thing that I've run into is that the backspace key isn't in the upper right but is on the lower right and sometimes I hit 'p' when I'm intending backspace. There is an ap for a "thumb keypad" that has high ratings, but I haven't tried it. Thus far the onscreen one that it provides has been good enough. As stated, there is no bluetooth so no bluetooth keyboard is available. They would have to eventually come up with one that literally plugs into the port to have an accessory keyboard as opposed to the one that pops up on screen.
10) Currently they're offering Amazon Prime for a certain amount of time with purchase, so you actually have access to the 'free' lending library... which is basically a teaser for you to join prime and pay a monthly fee for access. But, hey, at least they give you a month or so try it out to decide whether you want to pay for the service.
11) Yes, you can access YouTube and I believe there's a YouTube ap somewhere. There's also Angry Birds aps (and lots of games aps, but I don't tend to play games much.
12) Kindle works just like Kindle. The fire is backlit, so it's not the same as e-ink. Which is a bummer in that e-ink hels avoid the eye fatigue of backlit devices. But for all the pretty color... you've got backlit. So it basically works like Kindle for IPad or your computer. You still manage font size, spacing and whether it's black on white, white on black, or lesser contrast sepia toned. You can store what you're currently reading on your device, but it also stores on the cloud, so you can delete it to save storage space on your device but it's still on your cloud and you can download it again at any time... ala the way that Amazon has always handled Audible. So once you own the book, you own it. You just don't have to keep it on your device all the time.
Anyway, I've been quite happy with it. And, other than the obvious -- the size, lack of camera, and 3 or 4G -- it does most things most ordinary users would ask of an Ipad... for less than half the price of an Ipad. (Which isn't to say that the Ipad doesn't do more... because it does. It's just how many of us actually use everything than an Ipad can do? For most normal users? Fire does everything you want for reading, web browsing, e-mail, etc.)