Posted on 09/28/2011 3:55:09 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA
Putting to rest the endless speculation, Amazon on Wednesday officially introduced not one, not two, but four new Kindle devices. The company aims to lock up the e-reader market with an entry-level $79 Kindle, and to do what countless tech companies have failed at: building a color tablet device at a reasonable price that can compete with Apple's wildly successful iPad.
The Kindle Fire is that gadget.
It's designed mainly as a media consumption device rather than a touch computer and it undercuts Apple's iPad by hundreds of dollars—$199 compared to $500 for an iPad. It will go on sale November 15.
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The Fire uses a dual-core processor and the latest version of Google Android software and looked zippy in hands-on demonstrations. Apps will also be available for the device, but Amazon is clearly focused on tying its own services into the tablet.
“This is an end-to-end service,” Bezos emphasized in his presentation in New York City. He touted not only the book store but the Amazon Prime service, which offers streaming movies and programs for an annual $79 subscription. So far, Amazon has lined up some big content providers, including Fox for movies, but still lacks the catalog depth of competing Netflix. According to Amazon, it is still interested in having a Netflix app on the Kindle Fire, as well as other popular competing services, such as Pandora. Such apps are not available yet, however.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Flash is trash.
Try to do something on your laptop while standing in the middle of the room...
Attract muggers?
Ahh I can hold my laptop in one hand and type with my other and use the touchpad also.
From the Amazon Website:
Content Formats Supported Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8.
So, the answer appears to be yes, but you can only store Amazon content on their cloud service. Otherwise, the Kindle Fire has only 8G of internal storage.
does it have a slot for an sd or microsd card?
I would buy one but ironically I am being seasonally laid off until next spring here in Alaska around that release date, and thats just spending money frivolously IMHO.
Besides using a highly-customized version of a very old version of Android, the device's high reliance on "cloud computing" to access Amazon-bought media and its paltry 8 GB of storage makes it a bit less attractive than I thought. Indeed, I see the Amazon Kindle Fire as a direct competitor against the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, not as a competitor against the iPad.
No, it doesn’t have an SD/MSD slot, but there is a micro USB port. Possibly you could use a flash drive to store media and play it on the Kindle Fire.
Sorry to take so long to get back to you.
My iPhone screen is too small to accurately view my knitting charts, many web sites, and other documents. I have “aging eyes” with trifocals.
My MacBook Pro was a bit heavy and awkward to haul along with me, along with the knitting projects du jour, when running errands that required waiting, traveling, teaching a class, etc.
And, the battery life on the iPad is much longer than either the MacBook Pro, or the iPhone. And, I can read my eBooks on it much more easily when traveling, on the couch, or in bed.
But, you seem happy with what you have, so your needs must be different than mine.
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