Amazon Is on Fire, Baby!
September 28th, 2011 - 11:46 am
I’ve got a first look at Amazon’s entire new Kindle lineup, from the insanely great to the what-were-they-thinking?
I’ve got a first look at Amazon’s entire new Kindle lineup, from the insanely great to the what-were-they-thinking?
All this hype about the new kindles will last about a month and then will slowly go away. Kindle is a dead platform. Right now the two big Players are Apple and thier line up of excellent products and closing fast is anything Android. Android has a long way to go but is closing in on Apple. It actually reminds me of the Beta-Max vs VHS competition. Beta-Max was a superior format but Sony kept it in house much like Apple. Android will be available to all manufacturers and simple math tells you who will be the winner.
Um… Rich? The Kindle Fire is an Android tablet.
But, anyway, as I’ve said many times before: Google makes Android but Apple makes money. There’s room for both.
Excuse my ignorance, but I still believe that kindle will fail. I hope I am wrong because the price point is attractive. I am a PC user due to economic necessity and compatibility issues with previous jon related issues. Samsung and Toshiba seem better positioned to take over the Tablet Market. Thier products are not there yet but they are headed in the right direction.
“job related issues”. Fighting a bad eye infection in my one good eye, I can barely see today.
I’m not an early adopter and definitely don’t keep up with the new tech. However, I’ve been eyeing the kindle for awhile, and have been anticipating Amazon’s tablet. I’m on a tight budget so should I go for the Fire now or wait for the next generation which will probably have improvements?
Just gotta say I am still liking my HP TouchPad. Of course, my PC is about 7 years old.
Stephen, have you seen this? Any thoughts pro or con? (h/t to Michael Kabongo on facebook)
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fires-silk-browser-sounds-privacy-alarm-bells/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=gcluley&utm_campaign=naked%2Bsecurity
[quote] Silk relies on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to behave as an intelligent proxy. The concept is to use the power of EC2 to retrieve web pages and pre-render any objects (or reduce their size) in a way that lowers the burden placed on the tablet.
All web connections from your tablet will connect directly to Amazon, rather than the destination web page. Amazon will keep this connection between your Kindle Fire and EC2 open indefinitely while you are actively surfing, reducing the latency and connection times to retrieve web pages.
[end quote]
As Glenn Reynolds would say, “read the whole thing”.
As I said over there, the full-color screen of the Fire grabbed my attention. I’ve always said (from what I’ve read & heard) that the iPad seems to be a better reader than the Kindle exactly because it has a color screen. Now we have the Fire.
At $199, even a poor schmuck like me is interested. Given that Amazon has a track record of lowering prices after a relatively short time, it could get better.
I’d say my iPad is a worse reader because of the color screen. E-Ink is just much easier on the eyes for reading books. If your primary interest is reading and your primary concern is price, I’d just get a bottom-end Kindle reader and delay getting a tablet until you see one you just have to have.
+1, don’t need multimedia whizzbangs to read stuff snarfed up from Project Gutenberg. Did I mention Amazon also has public domain stuff for free for Kindle?
I did plunk down some sawbucks to buy a book about the voyage of the Imperial Russian Baltic Sea Fleet to Tsushima. That’s a purchase I probably wouldn’t have made without a Kindle. The e-ink thing doesn’t do photos real well, but if I want a pic of the IRN Borodino I can find it elsewhere
From the photos I’ve seen the screen on the standard Kindle doesn’t look that easy to read, but since all I’ve seen are photos, and you have one at home, I shall defer to your judgment.