Tuesday, January 29, 2013

What You Always Wanted To Know About The Kindle Fire

By Peter Allon


Odds are, if you're reading this, you are thinking about purchasing the Kindle Fire. You are likely a Kindle owner interested in upgrade, or maybe you are looking into the Fire as an e-reader and tablet. As far as pricing, it will not get better than the Kindle Fire. Amazon made available their custom Android tablet in November of 2011 at a cost under $200. It absolutely was a thought out move right before Christmas. It rocketed the Kindle Fire to the #1 spot on Amazon's Best Sellers list.

The very first Kindle was introduced in 2007. The system was around the size of a medium paperback book developed specifically for reading. When Amazon made available the 3rd generation of Kindle, which mainly mirrored the 1st with the same E-Ink technology found in black and white only, Barnes and Noble launched the Nook Color. Consumers started customizing their Android powered Nooks to not only read books, but to play 3D games and run apps in color. The Nook Color completely revolutionised the 7-inch tablet market.

It seemed to be a no-brainer for Amazon to reply to Barnes and Noble with the Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire sports a custom version of Google's Android Gingerbread os. The highly well-designed and user-friendly interface, called the Carousel, makes it a straight forward device for anyone. The Kindle Fire is the first Kindle with a fully functional web browser. It's not just any old browser either. It's name is Silk and provides users a very computer-like Internet experience.

Since Amazon has been a web-based retailer of books and music, they've used the Kindle Fire to monopolize entertainment. With the Fire, they rolled out a free month of membership for their Prime program allowing users ability to access well over 20,000 videos and TV shows. Users can purchase virtually every type of content for the Kindle Fire including Android apps. There's a large library of this content which can be found for free, consequently it fits any budget.

The Amazon Kindle Fire downloads content in just seconds through a Wi-Fi connection. It includes ample storage capacity, however, any constraint is quelled using the free cloud storage supplied through Amazon. The content delivered to your Kindle is duplicated online using your Amazon account. The focus on reading has not faded. Kindle books are now in full color, and you don't need an external light to read the display.

You may be wondering "what's wrong with the Kindle Fire?" Why so inexpensive? Amazon engineered the Fire to compete with the big boys like the iPad as well as other popular tablets. The retail price alone causes it to be a competitor. The functionality is fabulous. The downfall would have to be in the restrictions put on the Kindle Fire by Amazon. Customers can only download and install apps from the Amazon App Store unless you sideload them by linking the Fire to your personal computer. Amazon conveniently does not include the cable needed to do this with the Fire. Thankfully, if you own a 3rd generation Kindle, the cord provided with that device works or you can get one separately on, that's right, Amazon's website.

The largest provider of Android apps, the Google Android Market, won't work on the Kindle Fire without major manipulation that will void the warranty. Furthermore, anyone who has used an iPad will spot the lag in the Android Os. Then again, the performance has been significantly improved in the Android 4.0 OS. Some will determine this makes the Kindle Fire a substandard device. Others will determine that such small things make it worthy of its low price. Provided you can get around those few things, then the Kindle Fire may be the device for you.




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