Kindle Fire

Sometimes you just have to make a move.

It should be consistent with who you are and what you like.

This household is a book reading outfit.

Linzi, our daughter, has been encouraging mom to get a kindle to do some of her book reading.
For me it is an extension of the tech stuff. So it didn't make sense to buy a Kindle that was out of date with the current technology. We have Wi Fi at home and didn't really want a bunch of advertisements to compete with the "reader" usefulness. I surprised Sue with a Kindle Fire.

General comments about it

1) The color is great on this device

2) Its a little heavier than you would expect for something like this.. but is significantly less cumbersome than a hard cover book or a large paperback book with pages falling out of their binding. It should and must compete in this arena to be of value to the "reader".

3) Its another Facebook reader..it will tap right into your existing account if you have a wifi set up at home with your dsl.

4) It cannot do two things at once.. like Iphones and Ipads. It cannot download 2 magazines in the background while you merrily read your book.

5) It has snappy performance when hooked up to its base wi fi network. If not, its a nice reader for travel. Do not expect it to "Facebook" or do other functions while traveling down the road.

6)It takes a lot more charging than the ordinary kindle.. but significantly less than an IPhone.

7) It will download your subscribed magazines using your subscription codes on the cover of your delivered magazines. We have subscriptions to both Time and People. People with its picture rich content will take about 30 minutes to download to your kindle.. but there it is .. in full color. Its pretty cool. I love the Time app. A subscriber may download as many as 5 previous issues for convenience of reading them anywhere in the house without trying to hunt down the physical magazine. Expect 20 minutes to download it to the Kindle Fire.

8) Amazon seems to always have a good deal in promo books to download to your Kindle. These are done fairly easily with one click on your computer. Then they show up magically on your Kindle ready for you to read.

9) I think that when I read in an article about the Kindle that it took 209 dollars for it to be made and that they were selling it for 199, it seemed like a great buy. We could decide where and when to get new books and products and have them effortlessly downloaded. Its sort of like the old Polaroid business model. Get them to buy the camera for cost or a little less than cost.. then make the money on the media. I have no problem with that since I can choose the media.. books.  It was also a great place to add value to our current subscriptions. It is a great place to see photos that we have in Flickr.. like new paintings.
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History

I have read one book on it so far.  "Little Blog on the Prairie" and it has worked out will for me. Sue is using it for Facebook and Huffington post especially when her Iphone is out of power. I think that she will warm up to the literary possibilities down the road.

I bought it early because I noticed that Best buy and the other chains were starting to run through their supplies for Christmas. They are all being sold for the same price.. so I bought it from Amazon and it arrived within 3 days without any extra shipping surcharges. Linzi happened to be here when it arrived. She was a little baffled with it because it was so different in form from her kindle. 

Overall its been a great "shared" Christmas present. Of course she is headed for a few other surprises from me for Christmas.