It is a great Tablet for $50.
It has Gigabytes of stuff I do not need.
I need a file manager and a good Browser.
Can anyone advice me how to edit preferences?
Post Scriptum. I left this forum due to political disagreements. But SDMB has best computer experts. From now on I am not here to talk sex, politics, and especially sex politics. Just mostly electronic stuff.
The file manager you want is ES File Explorer, which is available in your Amazon App store and free.
The only way to get around the crappy Silk browser is to sideload the Google Play Store so you can get non-Amazon-approved apps. They really want you to have to use Silk.
There’s a good tutorial on that on HowToGeek; lemme dig that up and I’ll be right back.
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Here’s how to get the Google Play Store, and the ability to load any Android app (not just the Amazon-approved ones), onto your Fire: https://www.howtogeek.com/232726/how-to-install-the-google-play-store-on-your-amazon-fire-tablet/
Keep in mind that leaving Amazon’s walled garden puts a bit more of the security diligence on your shoulders.
Your Preferences are accessed via the sprocket/gear icon on your home page. If you were requesting advice re: what those settings should be, that’s a matter of personal (wait for it …) preference. Myself, I’ve left most of the defaults in place. YMMV, and if specific queries present themselves, feel free to post them.
Oh, and here’s PC Magazine’s December 2018 advice on which Amazon Appstore apps you want: https://www.pcmag.com/feature/288380/the-26-best-amazon-fire-tablet-apps
Enjoy!
I own two Fire tablets that I use frequently. The advice regarding ES File Explorer is sound. I don’t use them for web browsing much, so I can’t speak to that. They’re great for reading and for games.
Thank you! Do I have to register my device in order to get ES File Explorer?
Thank you! Studying now.
ES File Explorer/Manager is pining for the fjords. Try Solid Explorer or CS File Explorer or FX File Explorer.
IMO Total Commander is the best file manager. It supports bluetooth, windows networking, FTP, Dropbox, zip and rar files, etc. etc. and includes a text editor.
Do I have to register my tablet?
Thank you! I hope I can download it without registering my tablet.
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No–not if you install the Google Play Store. Then you can get all your apps using that instead, using your Google account. That’s what I did on my Fire.
If you want to actually use Amazon-related stuff on the device (including some of the pre-installed apps), you’ll need to register your device.
Oh, and if you haven’t bought a tablet yet, I would suggest waiting until the Black Friday sale. It will go down in price to like $33, or you can get a model with a bigger screen for the same price.
Your article is from January 2019. ES File Explorer was removed from Google Play in April 2019 and remains removed.
Given the state of my Trio tablet, I did buy Fire Tablet.
[Walter Sobchak] Hunh. I did not know that. [/Walter Sobchak] And yet it does remain available in the Amazon Appstore (I just checked). I can see how that makes it less advisable, but I’ll likely keep it installed on my Fire for a while due to inertia; my Fire tablet is never connected to a network I don’t own, so I’m not super concerned about that security risk. But if it’s been abandoned by the developer, then yeah, probably not such a good choice for a new tablet.
I was still using it after April, but getting really tired of how it would constantly bloat to above 500 MB (caching stuff, I assume) with no way to turn it off (and you had to delete data to clear it, not just cache) and stumbled across the removal while searching for alternatives. I used ES mainly for batch renaming files, for Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi file transfers between Android devices (not all if which necessarily have Wi-Fi direct) and for FTPing with desktops. I finally just bit the bullet and found other apps for each (but no one app could do it all.) Even keeping more than one app for some purposes, all six of those apps together weigh in at less than 150 MB–less than a third of what ES would bloat up to be. I replaced ES with:
Solid Explorer
CS File Explorer
FX File Explorer
FTP Server
Rename Photos and Videos
Wi-Fi Direct+
Did you see the computer simulation of the robot Republican screwing the robot Democrat? 
Sorry - Leviticus made me say that.
Working at Da Jungle they of course hand us the things set up for some specific tasks. We can’t screw with the software but we find them overall ----- not great. Battery life is iffy sometimes and the things look to be more temp and climate sensitive compared to others out there. But for the bucks — whadda you expect? Its a good tool but not really what I would call professional grade.
Another vote for Total Commander. (I still use File Explorer on some devices, but an old, side-loaded version pre-stupidity.)
I’ve used Fire 7" for a few years. The most common app I use? Open Sudoku.
The next most common are really a group: various smart device management/blue tooth things.
I rooted mine right away. You never know when/if rooting is possible based on OS, etc.
Remember that $50 is an upper limit. $40 or less is a common sale price. According to camelcamelcamel, it was on sale for $40 in late October. Set up a price watch there. With Black Friday and such coming, it won’t be long.
I used ES for a long time, then they started getting ads and bundled crap. No more.
I use (on regular Android, not sure if it’s significantly different on Fire OS) X-Plore. It takes a little getting used to: you swipe to change between your two windows, and moving or copying goes between those two. So you don’t pick where to send your files, you open 2 panes and then move between those two.
For browser, sideloading is easy.
One thing I liked on ES that none of the other managers I’ve tried have–select interval. You want to do something to a block of files in a larger set of files? Select the first, select the last, click “select interval”, it selects everything between the two. Not worth 500 MB just to have that, though.