Anyone excited about the new Kindles?

I love my iPod touch, but I can't imagine having to read on it on a regular basis. It's great for movies and TV, but I've read some books on it on flights and whatnot and after a certain point your eyes start to cross.

 

Well, I like it.

My parents surprised me with an early Christmas present of a Kindle Fire this weekend. I have absolutely nothing to compare it to because the last major piece of mobile technology I bought was an original Gameboy.

It took me about four hours of use to get really comfortable with the controls, but now that I am, I like it.

My son, 27 months, already knows how to turn it on, go to the Apps screen, select Angry Birds, go to the level he wants, and begin shooting birds off to the left (everything you are supposed to shoot at is at the right). Then, when he's lost, he goes back to the level screen and picks out that same level again. Over and over and over.

 

Well, if anyone around here who has a Fire would like to use it to go to HuffingtonPost.com and surf around on that site and report back with your opinion on how the Kindle functions while reading HuffPo -- and especially how the photo pages look -- your pal TigerVols would be greatly appreciative.

 

My wife got a Kindle Fire on Wednesday and had me set it up.

Which I did ... except it wouldn't hook up to our wireless Internet. And we don't have WiFi readily available. So if it doesn't have Internet, it's relatively useless to us. That is, after all, how you get material onto your Kindle.

Called Amazon support. The guy tried a couple of things, sent a report to a techie. Next day, I got a call back, and the guy said I needed to call my ISP, they needed to fix some settings.

Called my ISP. The techie there, who had apparently been through this a few times before, said that this was something Amazon tells you to get rid of you. The problem most certainly was on their end.

We sent back the Fire. Let the buyer beware.

And I'll be playing Angry Birds on my Droid.

 

I just got home and will set the wireless up tomorrow. If nobody has done it by then, I will.

 

Tigervols, i just went thrum Huffington Post, no problems. Deadspin is the only site wonky to my fire. The graphics overlay and pretty unreadable.

 

Thank, Poin.

Despite the rash of problems reported in the media over the last couple of days, I'm going to pull the trigger on one for my wife today.

 

Anybody checked out the the new B&N Nook Tablets yet?
We've ordered a few things from Amazon over the years but have always gotten most of our books from Barnes & Noble.
My wife and I both have the Nook app on our Droids, so is it worth getting a separate Nook/Kindle?

 

I don't understand the business model of the Nook, from the B&N perspective.

So you are a company whose largest fixed cost by far are massive leases/mortgages on brick and mortars all over the country, and yet you think the way to grow your company is to sell a device that you hope will cause you to drive customers away from your buildings? Yeah, I don't think I'll be buying any B&N stock soon.

 

My fiance had been asking for one for Christmas, so I looked into them a little bit further, but they are so completely basic in their functionality, I don't really see what's so great? No ability to package with a data plan, no expandable storage? Looks like something that's nice to use around the house, and that's about it.

 

What's great about it is that normal people can afford it, or can justify the expense when they can't do that for an iPad.

If you want all the bells and whistles and cameras and 64G of storage and whatnot, I'm guessing this isn't the tablet you'd want.

I look at it this way. I have a camera on my phone. I have 4G on my phone. I have GPS on my phone. I want a portable tablet where I can watch movies and read.

I get mine on Saturday. I've gone to the store to tinker with it about five times since it came out last month...