So I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. In that time I’ve been playing with it for a lot of that time. I have not been disappointed by it but really that doesn’t tell you much about it. So I’m going to run down the major things in my book.

Reader Quality: I have nothing bad to say about this, admittedly, I’ve been using this app on my phone for a while so I’ve been used to it, most of what I’ve read has been A Clash of Kings, so really I can’t so much about poetry formatting and such. This may be the most important thing about the Kindle Fire.

Video Quality: It’s not the best, it’s good but it’s not great, if I had to make a guess I would say it’s just fine at SD quality. It will not supplant my computer as a video player but it will be great for time a bus or train. I’ll use it but my computer or Xbox 360 will still be the device of choice. I used Galaxy Express 999, Squid Girl, IT Crowd, How Beer Saved the World, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to test this with the Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Youtube. I will say that MLP had the best quality but it also is Flash animation. Of the two Crunchyroll was weaker than Netflix. These are just the Android apps that were listed in the Amazon App Store.

Kindle Comics Reader: So it was a big deal when Amazon and DC announced that graphic novels would be available exclusively on the Kindle Fire, my choice of books to read was Sandman vol. 1. I had wanted to read this before I got the Fire and so I tried to get the digital copy. Sadly, this was only available on the Fire. So yesterday I picked it up. This app was a bit of a letdown. It is very possible to read the entire page at time, however this may require some squinting and other books might make this more difficult. The zoom is not aggressive but it is not the good. You can zoom on a single panel and this will be plenty readable. However, the zoom doesn’t make it that much bigger.

Sound: My biggest problem here is that you really have to use the higher volumes, it isn’t particularly loud but this device isn’t meant to replace your stereo but it would be nice to have a bigger range of volumes.

App Selection: If there was one complaint I would like to make about this device is that lack of the Android Market, or the lack of Google Apps in the Amazon App Store. I would really have liked to have Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc. with an app on the Fire, sadly this was not to happen. I hope that in the future that these are added. I think that they wanted this device to be more for entertainment than business and communication. Also there is no official Twitter app, this is just sloppy really but there are 3^rd party apps for Twitter (I went with TweetCaster).

Final Comments: The Kindle Fire is a fine machine for $200, it was not meant to beat the iPad but to be a different level of device. It serves the vast majority of my entertainment needs. Also I would like to note that I have not been in an area where I don’t have wifi since Christmas so I cannot say much about connectivity and such, this is a preliminary review and I will tell you more once I test more in my daily life.

So Quickster has gone the way of the dodo.  Well If nature thought about making the dodo, told the world the dodo was going to exist and how cool it would totally be with the wings and whatnot, and then said, “well the dodo may not have been thought out as well as I would have hoped and maybe we’re just going to not have the dodo”.  What does this mean? I will be damned if I can tell you.  What I do know is that it has confirmed the second guess I have been having for a while now.

Now I am not a business analyst and I can’t tell you what Netflix did wrong from that perspective, but what I do know was that Netflix seemed to have a good deal going for them and then decided that they could make some questionable decision regarding money, services, and customers because they had no legitimate competition.  Or so they thought.  Now you got streaming coming out of the woodwork and a few very promising mail to home DVD/blu-ray providers and Netflix is scrambling because their impenetrable fortress was a well-put together house of cards.

What does this mean to you? I have no freaking clue.  You have to make the right decisions for you, based on what technology and resources you have available.  What it means for me though is that I am looking very hard at Amazon Instant Video as well as the Kindle Fire.  Seven hours of streaming per charged up battery is not too shabby.  Talk to me about what you think your entertainment decisions will be.

DM
All Geeks Considered

Amazon has taken the gloves off this week for the fourth quarter Christmas season by revealing a goody bag of readied technology.  On the list includes, a 79$ kindle, relatively low cost Kindles with touchscreens, and the new tablet Kindle Fire.

The lower prices and touch screens are of no real surprise.  E-readers via Nook and Kindle have been competing in an epic arms race since being created and this is not going to stop anytime soon.  What I am interested in is this “iPad Killer” called the Kindle Fire.

Amazon states that it is the culmination of 15 years worth of technology development and it seems very promising from initial looks.  Cloud based technology leads it off, something that many devices have been getting behind recently.  It possesses a 7-inch color touchscreen, an e-reader app that makes full color magazines available, full integration with Amazon Prime streaming, a relatively active app store, and access to your Amazon digital music purchases via cloud.  It is an impressive list.

Will it challenge the iPad? No, probably not, at least to start.  However, it is easy to track how vigorously competitive Amazon has been with the Nook. I would not count them out of the tablet race yet.  They have a promising starting product and the means to support it vigorously.  Make no mistake; Amazon is here to challenge Apple for best tablet out there.  Give it a little time and I think you will see.  What do you think?

DM
All Geeks Considered