competitor to the iPad 2 yet, the Kindle Fire. At only $199 it has people
turning heads.And for good reason. There are some features of the Kindle Fire
that are unique:
* Android OS: For those familiar with iOS, you will probably continue to
enjoy an iPad, but as a recent convert to the Android operating system,
I'm a big fan
* Amazon Silk Browser: The Amazon Silk Browser promises to be
"revolutionary" in it's speed
* Free Cloud Storage: If you're a huge Amazon user, then the Kindle
Fire's Cloud storage will make it unbelievably easy to access your files
* Amazon Whispersync: The ability to sync where you are in a book or movie
across devices seems like it could come in really handy. (For instance if
you start watching a movie on the bus and want to finish watching it on
your home TV)
The Kindle Fire seems like a good choice for Amazon groupies. If you're a
Prime subscriber and already have access to streaming videos and TV this
seems like a good bet. It's close in battery life to the iPad 2 (8 hrs vs
10 hrs), but lacks some of the "universal device" extras that an iPad 2
comes with – like a camera, GPS, and 3G service.It also seems like a good
choice for international travelers and media junkies. You don't end up
paying for things you don't need or can't use on the international road
(like 3G and a camera.) Plus if it breaks you're out less than half as much
as you otherwise would be.What are others saying about the Kindle Fire? Over
at Wired, here's what they're saying:The Kindle Fire tablet … leverages
everything Amazon offers, from its multimedia sales to Amazon Prime streaming
video service and free two-day shipping and Amazon's industry-standard
cloud infrastructure.Quick hardware specs for the Kindle Fire: 14.6 ounces,
dual-core processor, 7? multi-touch IPS (i.e. infrared) LCD screen. What
it's missing: camera, GPS, 3G. It also has only 8 gigabytes of storage. But
that's a moot point: It's a cloud-driven tablet.…Video isn't the only
draw of Kindle Fire over the mainstream e-readers. It also has Silk, a web
browser leveraged by Amazon's EC2 cloud processing power. Bezos calls it
"a split browser." It promises to use that extra computation power to do
all of the DNS, TCP/IP, interactions, etc., on the back-end to make Silk
much, much faster than competing mobile browsers. It also stores, reformats
and compresses common instances of over-sized media designed for the desktop
for faster mobile delivery. An Amazon engineer calls it "a limitless
cache" to optimize the last-mile delivery between the web and the
tablet.And yes: Silk runs Flash.As a soon-to-be mom I noticed the feature of
having 1000+ children's books (and the pictures look great) which would
make transporting books less of a hassle. (But you can't let you kid chew
on a Kindle they way they can on a hardback book…)I have resisted the draw
of the iPad 2, but I have to admit that I'm now asking myself, should I Buy
a Kindle Fire? /What do you think, will you be buying a Kindle Fire
anytime soon? /
