I’m supposed to be receiving a Kindle Fire for Christmas. I didn’t ask for one, but I’ve been wanting a Kindle for a while anyway. And I’m excited! But I have no idea how Amazon’s whole Cloud thing works. I don’t even have a smartphone (I’m using a Motorola Rizr). So, while I would consider myself above-averagely computer savvy*, *I’m stupid when it comes to mobile technology.
I did the Amazon Prime trial a while ago and only used it once or twice. I canceled it before paying because I don’t need fast shipping often enough to recoup the cost ($80 annually). I didn’t investigate their streaming when I had it, so I don’t know if it’s any good. Is it worth it to get Amazon Prime? Or would Netflix be a better investment? Does Netflix work on the Fire? Can I just copy over files from my computer onto the Fire? Do I have to go through Amazon’s Cloud? Can you copy over files from your own computer onto the Cloud? How big is their Cloud? Is it free?
With the suspicion that I would be getting one with Christmas, I have been researching similar issues.
I can tell you that Netflix will work with the Fire (it was announced last week).
The Cloud, I believe, is free if you have a Kindle.
Beyond that I have no idea. I am VERY curious to find out if it’s possible to move files from the PC to the Fire. This is a key issue for me, and if it’s not doable, I don’t want one. Painful as that is to say…
Hook the Kindle to your PC with a USB cord, and copy files over.
Email the files to your special kindle email account, and it automatically syncs them to your Kindle.
I’d be extremely surprised if they changes this for the Fire. It’s always been a big selling point of the Kindle that you can put your own .pdfs or whatever on them. But I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow, when my Fire arrives.
Please do, Athena. I’ve been thinking of buying a tablet PC, but the Fire - if it lets me transport and read arbitrary PDFs - may do everything I really care about.
If you scroll about halfway down this link, it has a section titled “Read your documents” that states “Kindle makes it easy to take your documents with you. You can e-mail documents - including Word, PDF and more - directly to your Kindle so you that you can read them anytime, anywhere.”
Sure seems like it does what you’re wanting it to do.
I have been on this Earth for 33 years, and I still don’t think I’ve seen every way a marketing department can distort and strangle the truth into a creative and misleading lie. So I’m skeptical as to their blurb, you might say.
As your elder (:p) I can tell you I think you’re a bit too skeptical on this one. The Kindle’s been marketed as as device that you can put your own files on since it came out, and they’ve lived up to their promise. Now, I can tell you from experience, sometimes the .pdf layout isn’t the greatest on the small screen, but that has more to do with the individual .pdf and not necessarily the capabilities of the Kindle (ie, showing a 9" x 8" graph on a 4" screen ain’t gonna be pretty).
But I’ll still play with it tomorrow and let you know.
I have a Kindle 2 that does this, so I can’t image the Fire wouldn’t. I can email Word or PDF files to my kindle and read them there. There is a nominal charge, (.15 per megabyte?) but it converts them for you.
There is a new “Lending Library” for Kindle that requires Prime membership. It lets you borrow one book per month for free (“free” as long as you have Prime, of course) from a selection of over 5,000 titles. But some authors and publishers are pretty pissed that it is supposedly a violation of their contracts, so we’ll see how that plays out.
Their streaming video content is not quite up to the volume, but close to that of Netflix and when divided out, a touch cheaper ($6.50/mo vs $7.99/mo for Netflix).
The onboard memory is only 8GB, of which about 6.5 is available to you, but anything you purchase from Amazon will remain accessible via the Cloud anytime (well, anytime you’re within range of Wi-Fi), and you get 5GB of free Cloud storage for whatever you want, and you can buy additional space at $1/GB/year.
It runs Android Gingerbread, but not a full-featured version like you would get on a smartphone. You don’t have access to the Android Market, but rather the much more limited Amazon App store.
It’s basically designed primarily as a dedicated gateway to Amazon’s products. The bottom line on it can be summed up nicely by this quote from CNET’s review: “When you look at the gap between what tablets are capable of doing, and what people actually use them for, you’ll find that most people just want to be entertained.”
Thanks, DCnDC! That’s a lot of good information. I am not bothered by the overall volume of what’s available for streaming; I’m more concerned that I LIKE what’s being streamed (quality is way more important than quantity). When I did the Netflix trial a few months ago, I was not at all impressed with what they had available for streaming–sure they had a lot of stuff, but most of it was total shit. I’d ideally love to see the Daily Show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, South Park, Futurama episodes/movies, Family Guy, Penn and Teller’s Bullshit, maybe Mythbusters or Deadliest Warrior, and movies released within the last couple years… does Amazon Prime have any of this stuff available?
I’m also curious to know: while using a Fire, would I be able to go to a site that plays videos (like SouthParkStudios) and watch them?
Dunno about AP, but you can watch every episode of South Park ever made* on their website.
*except for a couple of the episodes recently aired - they are available for a week or two after airing, then become unavailable for a month or so until they are available again. Some kind of contract thing.
Ah, missed that line. Well, there still might be other people who do not yet know about the glory of SPS, so maybe one of them will read that and become enlightened.
Did you also notice my comment about the Lending Library? I read about it recently and that is making me want to get a Kindle myself (cuz hey, eBooks are pricey), though the controversy around it makes me think I might sign up for Prime and then get a rude surprise if they pull the service later on.
Yeah, that does look interesting. If I have a Kindle I’ll be reading many more than one book a month, though (and paying for very few of them, as long as I can upload to it–and it sounds like I can). I wouldn’t be upset if they yanked the feature. I’d consider the free books a small bonus on top of the streaming.
I’m curious why the authors are upset. As long as they get paid for the rental, why do they care? Or, are they not being paid? That wouldn’t be cool.
Whether I could watch SPS on a Fire.