Anyone else have a Kindle Fire?

[Doc]

My wife got me a Kindle Fire for Christmas. I was lukewarm to the idea. I thought an e reader could be kewl but was not sure if I'd like one. The Kindle Fire is an e reader plus so much more. Lots of Android apps work on it. Weather, Map Quest along with most of the popular games. Plus I can read newspapers just like I can on any web browser.

The WiFi works flawlessly. I have four books in my queue and still have over 30 dollars left on my 40 dollar gift card. The interface is a breeze to use. And I like it's size.

I really thought I wanted an iPad but after using this kindle I can't think of anything I wanted to do with the iPad that the Kindle can't also do. I mainly wanted it to read books and it is perfect for that task. A very slick little device. And, I can share books with others who have a Kindle. A big plus. One drawback to e readers used to be you could not borrow a good book from a friend. No problem. Now Kindle users can do that also. I'm a happy camper.

 

[XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq]

No Kindle fire but my wife has been using the Kindle app on her iPad a lot. She really likes it. She gave me so much crap when I got my Android phone and I spent a bunch of time playing with it and not interacting with her - now she is twice as bad with her iPad. It's kind of funny.

 

[rlk]

Wife's sister received a Kindle Fire for Christmas. I got to play with it yesterday for a minute or two. I was impressed.

Bob

 

[loboloco]

I have a Kindle Touch. I am really enjoying it.

 

[fogtender]

There was a blurb on the news that they were being returned en mass. But didn't hear the whole story, my daughter bought one and loves it!

 

[Dargo]

There was a blurb on the news that they were being returned en mass. But didn't hear the whole story, my daughter bought one and loves it!

I think the mass returns are because, for the same price, you can buy a Color Nook that has a processor that's about twice the speed and a much, much faster graphics setup. Then, if you have a micro SD chip, you can turn the Color Nook into an Android tablet or even a iPad for zero additional expense. The Nook has the option of booting off a 32gb SD card and running off the software therein contained. To return to stock, just remove the micro SD chip.

No big deal if you only plan to use it for reading. However, most people eventually seem to want to add some apps, games etc., and the Kindle Fire would be like running a 486 computer now, speed and capability wise. IMHO, like me, others are seeing what all you can do with the Color Nook for no additional cost that you can't do with the Kindle Fire. My wife is surfing the web right now on her 'modified' Nook after she used it to go to our local library's site and downloaded a few books for a day trip we are taking tomorrow. From my understanding, there's no problems with the Kindle, it's just that you can apparently get a V8 for the same price as a 3 cylinder.

 

[Ice Queen]

I have a Kindle, it was my Christmas present to me, but I have read a couple of books on it, but I don't think it does anything else.

 

[akonobi]

Amazon has since updated the Kindle Fire and so far I have no complaints. Really it's about content. B and N just doesn't do it for me. Plus, any e-reader's speed is dependent upon the speed of the wi-fi you're connected to at the time.

 

[Doc]

Amazon has since updated the Kindle Fire and so far I have no complaints. Really it's about content. B and N just doesn't do it for me. Plus, any e-reader's speed is dependent upon the speed of the wi-fi you're connected to at the time.

I agree 100%. I've used mine now for a week and have no speed issues. I have been very happy with content. Content was what swayed me to the Kindle over the Nook. I liked the SD card slot for the Nook but didn't like that most of the memory is reserved for purchases from B&N. I figure either device will work well as a reader, and that is my primary reason for getting the Kindle. I also like that I can run the kindle app on my iPhone and Laptop so I can read any of my purchases on any device anytime. Very Kewl.

 

[Dargo]

Amazon has since updated the Kindle Fire and so far I have no complaints. Really it's about content. B and N just doesn't do it for me. Plus, any e-reader's speed is dependent upon the speed of the wi-fi you're connected to at the time.

Huh?! I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about concerning wi-fi. My wife has read over 300 books on a Nook and wi-fi has nothing to do with it except for when she downloads books from the library. Then the only limit is my 30mb/sec speed at my house. You either got your fingers mixed up typing, which I've done plenty, or someone has fed you just plain incorrect information. On content, only recently has Kindle been able to 'borrow' books from public libraries. Otherwise, "content" is limited to a few million books in our library network; about 30% which now will will work on a Kindle. I have never purchased a single book and my wife usually goes through 2 or 3 a week. She's limited by our library system to only 'borrowing' 10 books at a time.

 

[Doc]

How does the borrowing work? Can you borrow from friends or just the public library? Do you have to go to the library to borrow a book or can you do it remotely? Hoping for answer on both the Kindle and the nook, just to compare.

I do not have a decent library close by so I'm hoping you can check out ebooks remotely.

 

[tiredretired]

How does the borrowing work? Can you borrow from friends or just the public library? Do you have to go to the library to borrow a book or can you do it remotely? Hoping for answer on both the Kindle and the nook, just to compare.

I do not have a decent library close by so I'm hoping you can check out ebooks remotely.

First off the book needs to be listed for borrowing by the publisher. You will see that on the listing in the Kindle Store. The borrowing period is 30 days and the lender does not have access during this period. I assume library loans work similar. 30 days and one at a time.

 

[tiredretired]

Huh?! I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about concerning wi-fi. My wife has read over 300 books on a Nook and wi-fi has nothing to do with it except for when she downloads books from the library. Then the only limit is my 30mb/sec speed at my house. You either got your fingers mixed up typing, which I've done plenty, or someone has fed you just plain incorrect information. On content, only recently has Kindle been able to 'borrow' books from public libraries. Otherwise, "content" is limited to a few million books in our library network; about 30% which now will will work on a Kindle. I have never purchased a single book and my wife usually goes through 2 or 3 a week. She's limited by our library system to only 'borrowing' 10 books at a time.

Kindle Fire has limited on board storage to save money and utilizes cloud storage from Amazon. To access files one would have stored on Cloud such as videos or music to save space one would need a constant wi-fi connection for playback and a reasonably fast one for HD video playback.

On thing that the Kindle Fire has done is open up a great and overdue good quality low end tablet war. Stay tuned. The next gen Fire is rumoured to have an nVidia graphics and Apple is rumoured to be coming out with a $299 iPad with a 7.75" screen. As for Nook, well they have a great price point at 199 as well but they will have to put on their game face and step it up too as the competition gets hot. Gonna be fun.

 

[Dargo]

First off the book needs to be listed for borrowing by the publisher. You will see that on the listing in the Kindle Store. The borrowing period is 30 days and the lender does not have access during this period. I assume library loans work similar. 30 days and one at a time.

Only about 30% of available books can be read on a Kindle as of now; it used to be 0%. You can borrow up to 10 books at a time for 21 days, but you can 'renew' twice; so that really gives you 63 days if you needed one that long. That's at the public library's site. I've never been to the B&N site or Kindle site. The processor and graphics are much faster on the Nook. Again, if you're just reading a book, it doesn't matter. However, if my wife is using FoxFire on her Nook and browsing the net just like a laptop, it would make a huge difference. She can go to the library's site and download the books without linking to any computer or anything.

Like I mentioned, I've never bought a book. When I told my wife that I mentioned that she has read about 300 books on her Nook, you'd think I told her that her ass was big. Apparently it's far more than that. It generally takes about 5 to 10 seconds to download an entire book. I almost wish I hadn't made hers into a regular tablet for her. Now she seems to play that stupid 'Words With Friends' or whatever it's called on it as much as she reads books on it. One of her friends has her Nook "over-clocked" and it almost seemed as fast as my iPad 2! I remember over-clocking chips way back when computers ran 486 chips and the early Pentium chips, but if you went too far you generally overheated the chip and cooked it. There's tons of people selling ready made SD chips on eBay that turns your Nook into a tablet and over-clocks the chip to what you want. They have an "advised" maximum to over-clock, so I assume they've burnt a few through trial and error. I guess playing with that stuff is part of the fun for some. I just sort of wanted to get my wife a $200 iPad so she could get her own books and get her own apps and games. I had a spare 32gb chip for a camera sitting around, so she now can download pretty well most all the apps she wants.

 

[Dargo]

How does the borrowing work? Can you borrow from friends or just the public library? Do you have to go to the library to borrow a book or can you do it remotely? Hoping for answer on both the Kindle and the nook, just to compare.

I do not have a decent library close by so I'm hoping you can check out ebooks remotely.

I can't answer for the Kindle. Once I decided on the Nook (actually took online reader forums advice and advice from friends), I've never looked at a Kindle. But with the 'hot rodded' and open Nook, with a wifi connection, she can borrow from my computer, online sites or the library. Not knowing anything about viruses etc. for the readers, I've told her to only borrow from my collection or the local library. Our library literally has hundreds of thousands of titles available. She's never complained about not being able to get a book.

 

[akonobi]

Huh?! I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about concerning wi-fi. My wife has read over 300 books on a Nook and wi-fi has nothing to do with it except for when she downloads books from the library. Then the only limit is my 30mb/sec speed at my house. You either got your fingers mixed up typing, which I've done plenty, or someone has fed you just plain incorrect information. On content, only recently has Kindle been able to 'borrow' books from public libraries. Otherwise, "content" is limited to a few million books in our library network; about 30% which now will will work on a Kindle. I have never purchased a single book and my wife usually goes through 2 or 3 a week. She's limited by our library system to only 'borrowing' 10 books at a time.

What I meant concerning speed is the speed of the browser on the Kindle fire. Thanks for making me clarify. As far as content is concerned I stand by my earlier statement that B&N content can't compete with Amazon's.

 

[Dargo]

What I meant concerning speed is the speed of the browser on the Kindle fire. Thanks for making me clarify. As far as content is concerned I stand by my earlier statement that B&N content can't compete with Amazon's.

Like 90% of Nook owners, I've never been to B&N's site, so I couldn't intelligently answer that question. I don't know anyone who bought a book reader to "buy" books with. People I've spoken with tell me that both Kindle and Nook have slow browsers when compared to a laptop or iPad 2. There again, for the price difference, I think it's a fair trade off for both of them.

 

[jwstewar]

Different but yet along the same lines, we bought our 2 oldest kids (10 & 11) 7" Acer Iconia w/ the Nvidia chipset. Nice little units. Nice crisp screens and very responsive to the touch. I configured them to get on our network and hooked them up with the Android Market & the Amazon App Store. So far they are very happy with them. Don't know about as readers yet though. Hopefully that will come soon. Knowing that there would be a fight if she didn't have her own, we bought our 3 year daughter one of the 7" Pandigital Planets from Kohls. After discounts and rebates it was something like $91. When I opened this one, I thought the screen look good, but once I saw the Acers, I realized this one wasn't great. But for a 3 year-old that will throw it around, it is OK. The screen isn't near as responsive as the Acers with my sausage fingers, but Addyson's little fingers work great with it. It isn't compatible with the Android Market but Pandigital has their GetJar market to get Apps and I was able to get the Amazon App Store working on it. So far, for the price and for a 3 year-old, I don't think we could beat it.

You might think it seems bad to get something like that for a 3 year-old, but she thinks she is as old as the other 2. The older 2 wanted better MP3 players, the tablets, and digital cameras for Christmas. We got them for them, but we also got all of them for Addyson as well - albeit ones that typcially cost about half as much. Though in the case of the MP3 player, the older 2 like Addyson $27 Sylvania touch screen better than their Sansa Fuses.