This is just about the least surprising news ever. I have the Kindle App on my transformer, and it sucks donkey balls. Even ignoring the general slowness and instability, it doesn’t even correctly perform basic tasks like using the systems brightness level. Every time I open it, it turns my screen as bright as possible. If they can’t even manage to get a simple app right, there’s no reason to think they can do an ecosystem.
I like my Fire just fine.
Granted, all I’ve used it for so far is Netflix and a few games, but that’s all I really need.
In re the Kindle app for Android, have you set the view options in the app for the brightness you prefer? It doesn’t use the system brightness setting because it’s usually (IMO) too bright for long-term reading.
Menu | View Options, and you get text size, line spacing, margins, background color, and finally brightness.
This.
We bought two Kindle Fires as early Christmas presents, as ebook readers. That they come with some enhanced features (audio, video and web capabilities) make them much more fun. But Fire is an ebooker reader. It’s not an iPad. If we wanted a tablet computer we would have purchased one.
We haven’t experienced any problems. I have mine set up with our home wifi network. We’ve downloaded quite a few free ebooks and free games to get comfortable with them. I’ve upload files from my computer through a USB cable. I’ve even experimented with using Amazon’s Kindle email with PDF documents where PDFs are converted for free by Amazon to the ebook format used by Kindle. It sucks. Now I just upload my own PDFs and documents directly.
The web browser works just fine. Really fast.
As we get more comfortable, we will be streaming videos and buying books.
I do recommend if you get a Fire, make sure you buy a protective case for it, preferably leather. We bought the rooCASE for the Fire. It’s a leather zipped case and the Fire actually is contained within a leather cradle inside the case (attaches to the zipped case with a big velcro back. You can remove Fire from the zip cover while still enclosed in the cradle. That make it less of a chance you will drop it. And we bought a stylus at a flea market. I recommend using a stylus. You don’t suffer from fat fingers or smudges on the glass.
I played around with one at work and was pretty unimpressed. It just seemed very awkward and not at all intuitive.
The link in the OP links to the original NYTimes piece. Make sure you read the comments on both links. You’ll find a large number of people who do not experience the problems described, or who say the problems are exaggerated. I’ve found this with other reviews of the device - the comments are significantly more positive than the review itself. Also read the customer reviews on Amazon’s site. The Kindle Fire is getting a solid 4 out of 5 stars from over 5,000 reviews. Half of those reviews are a full five stars, and another 1,000 are 4 stars.
Basically, customers themselves seem to like the product and find it to be a good value overall. Tech pundits and the Kool-Aid wing of the fanboy brigade (primarily Apple-oriented, but also fanboys of other Android tablets) have a different opinion.
I am not saying that the Fire is a perfect product or that none of the complaints that have been made have merit. However, much of the negative press it’s been getting lately seems to be greatly exaggerated. Some of it’s even comical. The usability expert quoted in the Times article, Jakob Nielsen, says about the Fire:
(bolding in original)
Yet, his review of the iPad doesn’t mention weight. (The iPad weighs more than the Kindle Fire.)
I feel like the majority of people who are complaining about it were expecting too much. It’s not an iPad, it was never supposed to be an iPad, get over it.
Agree with both of these.
I like my Fire a lot. Is it a replacement for my iPad? Hell no. Apples & oranges. The Fire is first and foremost a reader with some tablet-y stuff built in, not a tablet with a reader. If you want an Android tablet, go buy one; the Fire ain’t it.
I’ll look, but I didn’t see it.
But really, that’s just a minor annoyance. For an APP to take a long time and/or crash, going from an article back to the main article list in a magazine is ridiculous.
I bought a Kindle Fire and will be giving it to my brother and his family at Christmas, so I hope the problems are exaggerated. I hope that they like it, because at two hundred bucks, the Kindle Fire was a more affordable gift than an iPad that starts at five hundred.
I also agree with this. My husband got a Fire as a slightly more advanced e-reader, and we both really like it, but we use it as an e-reader on which we play Angry Birds.
I’ve grown to love my Fire. I was a bit disappointed at first but then I realized my expectations were too high. I was expecting an iPad like thing.
I have a Kindle 3 that I use to read mostly. I use the fire to browse in internet, have news pushed to, and watch Hulu. It does this all well enough.
Do I still want an iPad? Yes I do. Do I want to pay 4-8 hundred dollars for one? Not in the least. This does everything I want for a price I’m willing to pay.
I just bought one, and I like it just fine. My wife will get her hands on it today and see if she likes it or not. I do have a problem in that mine has 4 dead pixels, and two are right in the center of the screen so it’s really noticable when watching a video. So it’s going back, but probably for a replacement, not a refund (depending on what the wife thinks of it).
Duckster, what type of stylus do I need for a Fire? I’d like to reduce the smudges if I can.
We bought two stylus’ (styli?) at a flea market. Spent five bucks apiece. Spend some time on the Amazon site looking for “Fire stylus” for ideas. If you spend more than five bucks, it’s too much. Unless, you really want that personal one that’s also a can opener, a utility knife and a laser you can use for blinding obnoxious iPad users laughing at you. 
I played around with a friend’s. Seems perfectly fine. Quite good for the price, in my opinion.
If there were not an iPad, I could see myself buying one. As it is, I’ll just save up for the tablet I really want. But I bet lots of people will make a different decision.
I do think it’s just brain-dead stupid that there’s no way to password protect the purchasing side. They come pre-registered to your account with access to your credit card, and if you de-register, then you can’t use the apps you bought. These things could be perfect game/movie/book systems for kids. Except that you can’t let a kid use it without giving them carte blanche to make charges on your credit card. :smack:
True this.
I haven’t had any problems with my Kindle Fire. I absolutely love it! I don’t know what people are complaining about. I just know that I’m happy with mine. Maybe some of the drawbacks I read about in this review are what people are finding objectionable.
Can someone who owns one of these comment on how well Facebook chat works on it? Thinking about getting one for my daughter but mostly for web use. She spends alot of time on you tube and chatting on Facebook.
My Dad bought 5 of them, sold 4 of them for profit, and kept his last one(having paid less than $100 for it in the end).
I’ve used, he’s used it, and it’s actually quite nice. I like the device. It’s not amazing, but the price is quite reasonable. It works fine.
Additionally how is the video playback on this thing? Netflix and Youtube? I’d hate to get her this thing and have the video playback be all jittery and pixelated.
I just got mine tonight but I streamed part of a movie from Amazon and it looked and sounded gorgeous. In fact I 'm posting from itright now.