Topic: Kindle Fire

[PyroMenace]

I know we've talked about tablets before and we've discussed or argued whether they have a place in the mobile computing market. I know that some of you were if not pro tablet, were pro kindle. What do you think of the new Kindle tablet, the Kindle Fire?

News of this just dropped today. Having been tempted by an iPad 2 but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the chunk of cash since I don't do a lot of mobile computing or web browsing, this sounds even more tempting. Its hitting the tablet market where its most needed, something more midline to the iPad but still has lots of functionality and options and runs at half the cost.

[Cools!]

The price is good. I want to know how good the screen and battery life is for reading. People associate Kindle with books so unless they can prove that it can do "as much" as the iPad (for example, lots of apps) it's going to be hard for it to compete with the iPad. And as a pure reading device with extras, the screen and battery life has to be really good.

As far as the device itself goes, it looks a bit "chunky" and I don't like the material (plastic I'm guessing) that they have for the back, it feels a bit dirty already even on the release versions, though since it's going to be in some sort of cover anyway that's not a big deal.

[Quemaqua]

Looks pretty cool. The lower price point is definitely a big deal. I haven't really seen that much of what Android has to offer, so I'm kinda' curious. Especially since I've been considering Kindle as a release platform for a first ebook.

[gpw11]

The best thing about the Kindle Fire is that it's probably going to start a full fledged tablet price war.  Expect to see Android tablets for quite a bit cheaper in the future (I'd guess).  Thing that would worry me about it is that it's running Amazon's own version of Android.  Heavily modified user interface (not unlike what samsung, HTC, whoever else does) but also some out of the box software limitations.  It only has the Amazon App Store, which usually means it doesn't have any other google apps on it (don't think you can just download them either as they're probably only in the Market).  Not a huge deal, but something to think about. And XDA or someone will obviously have a way around this in weeks and have Honeycomb running on that bitch.

As for e-reading, I don't think it'll be any better than any other tablet.  Shorter battery life (8 hours from what I've heard) and non e-ink screen.   A lot of people like reading on tablets, and it'll be great for them, but it's not going to bring any of the e-reader die-hards over.

[iPPi]

Yea this one seems more restricted than normal Android tablets.  Granted, the community will likely find a way to root and unlock the bootloader so you can load the full Android onto it.

The price point is incredibly appealing.