From the beginning, Amazon's Kindle Fire was positioned as the budget tablet. Compared to the competition, rarely do the specs measure up. The one consistently redeeming virtue is the price. At $229 it retains some appeal despite its many drawbacks.
Now T'is the season for flashy flourishes and the Kindle Fire hasn't disappointed on that account. With a slightly redesigned operating system, based on Android, and a free Mayday feature - single button press access to a service rep - they're certainly going for the flash factor. The 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX hit the market on October 18 followed by the larger 8.9-inch screen version on November 7.
If though you're looking for dramatic improvements in functions and capacity, you'll be disappointed. There's not a lot of enhancement with this third-generation model. Indeed, some might even think they're getting ripped off. The software here is based on Google's Android system, but absent all of Google's apps and services.
Rather, these new Kindle Fire owners have to download any apps from Amazon. (This all reminiscence, by the way, of the whole mess around activating the Flash Player , which does not come activated, to the perturbation of many new owners.) And it's not just a convenience problem, but also a selection one: compared to nearly a million apps for the Android, Kindle Fire only has around 85,000 available. Nor is it merely numbers; many of the most popular Android apps, such as Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube, are not on offer.
And this brings us to another problematic matter, which can't be glossed over. Like its predecessor, this version of the Kindle Fire is calibrated to a relentlessly fevered sales pitch for Amazon products. You can't brush your mouse over anything without the Amazon hawker springing into action, pointing out some nifty similar Amazon product you should be buying.
I find this immensely annoying and distracting. Obviously, it's a matter of personal taste. Some folks, I expect, find real value in this endless exposure to new product opportunities. For me, it just gets in the way of what I'm trying to do. Like commercial television, though, this is the monetizing strategy: you suffer through the ads to get the product at such a low price.
There is some good news for those determined to buy this product. They've succeeded at decreasing the general bugginess of early versions. That's not to say that there are not still too many glitches, but it is noticeably improved on that front. I like as well the "carousel" style display, which allows you to view apps, movies, books or anything else which the Kindle user has recently accessed. A navigation bar at the bottom of the screen allows you to browse conveniently through the content on the Kindle Fire.
Then there's that Mayday feature mentioned earlier. At the press of a button you get access to a live service rep, which appears in a corner of your screen. This rep can answer all your questions and actually take control of the tablet if that's a faster way to resolve difficulties than simply explaining how-to to the owner. This is a fairly cool thing and it is impressive that they've committed so heavily to customer service.
The irony of course is that the whole idea of such tablets is that they are supposed to be highly user friendly, operating in intuitive ways. So, one can't help wondering if there isn't a certain kind of confession in the provision of this service. "Well, we couldn't quite get it right, but here's our workaround." Or, maybe I'm just too cynical.
At the end of the day, I'll say the same thing about this newest version Kindle Fire as I have about its forerunners. If you're into big time, long term loyalty to Amazon and its products -- and nothing is wrong with that -- you'll find some appreciated improvements in the newer version. If your priority, however, is a good budget tablet, you can do better .
Now T'is the season for flashy flourishes and the Kindle Fire hasn't disappointed on that account. With a slightly redesigned operating system, based on Android, and a free Mayday feature - single button press access to a service rep - they're certainly going for the flash factor. The 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX hit the market on October 18 followed by the larger 8.9-inch screen version on November 7.
If though you're looking for dramatic improvements in functions and capacity, you'll be disappointed. There's not a lot of enhancement with this third-generation model. Indeed, some might even think they're getting ripped off. The software here is based on Google's Android system, but absent all of Google's apps and services.
Rather, these new Kindle Fire owners have to download any apps from Amazon. (This all reminiscence, by the way, of the whole mess around activating the Flash Player , which does not come activated, to the perturbation of many new owners.) And it's not just a convenience problem, but also a selection one: compared to nearly a million apps for the Android, Kindle Fire only has around 85,000 available. Nor is it merely numbers; many of the most popular Android apps, such as Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube, are not on offer.
And this brings us to another problematic matter, which can't be glossed over. Like its predecessor, this version of the Kindle Fire is calibrated to a relentlessly fevered sales pitch for Amazon products. You can't brush your mouse over anything without the Amazon hawker springing into action, pointing out some nifty similar Amazon product you should be buying.
I find this immensely annoying and distracting. Obviously, it's a matter of personal taste. Some folks, I expect, find real value in this endless exposure to new product opportunities. For me, it just gets in the way of what I'm trying to do. Like commercial television, though, this is the monetizing strategy: you suffer through the ads to get the product at such a low price.
There is some good news for those determined to buy this product. They've succeeded at decreasing the general bugginess of early versions. That's not to say that there are not still too many glitches, but it is noticeably improved on that front. I like as well the "carousel" style display, which allows you to view apps, movies, books or anything else which the Kindle user has recently accessed. A navigation bar at the bottom of the screen allows you to browse conveniently through the content on the Kindle Fire.
Then there's that Mayday feature mentioned earlier. At the press of a button you get access to a live service rep, which appears in a corner of your screen. This rep can answer all your questions and actually take control of the tablet if that's a faster way to resolve difficulties than simply explaining how-to to the owner. This is a fairly cool thing and it is impressive that they've committed so heavily to customer service.
The irony of course is that the whole idea of such tablets is that they are supposed to be highly user friendly, operating in intuitive ways. So, one can't help wondering if there isn't a certain kind of confession in the provision of this service. "Well, we couldn't quite get it right, but here's our workaround." Or, maybe I'm just too cynical.
At the end of the day, I'll say the same thing about this newest version Kindle Fire as I have about its forerunners. If you're into big time, long term loyalty to Amazon and its products -- and nothing is wrong with that -- you'll find some appreciated improvements in the newer version. If your priority, however, is a good budget tablet, you can do better .
About the Author:
To keep up on all the Kindle Fire updates, watch for Mishu Hull's valuable posts .
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