The Amazon Kindle is one of the most popular e-reader devices in the world today. This, combined with a collection of millions of eBooks like Romance Books and action stories has made Amazon the worldwide leader in the sale of electronic books. But the Kindle had to “get with the times” and be upgraded, due to the fact that many of its other competitors were actually doing the same thing.
Now, we have the Kindle Fire, the newest edition of the Amazon Kindle, which came out on November 15th 2011 at a price of $200. Prior to its release, there was a lot of speculation as to whether the Kindle Fire would become a strong contender in the tablet PC world and even be able to take away some market share from the iPad due to its low price and the fact that it is backed by Amazon, one of the most widely known names in the online world.
But a PC World report casts some serious doubts as to the Kindle Fire's competitiveness with regards to other tablets. As an e-reader, it does fine. Users can buy their favorite books from the Amazon Kindle Book Store, or download them from other websites, such as sites that offer free erotic books in PDF format. One thing that also distinguishes the Kindle Fire from other editions of the Kindle that came before it is the color screen, making it multimedia compatible. This allows users to buy, or freely purchase other kinds of media like movies and music.
But as a tablet, the Kindle Fire does quite poorly after being reviewed by PC World experts. First, the specifications are not so good. It only has 8GB of internal storage and 512 MB of RAM, which is about half of what other tablets usually have. Even though it runs on a special edition of the Android OS, apps can only be downloaded from the official Amazon App Store, limiting the choices for the user.
There are some issues with glitches and sluggishness of the user interface. Furthermore, one PC World reviewer noted that many of the apps looked like they were taken from their smart phone version and just blown up on the screen to fit the bigger 7 inch screen of the Kindle Fire. And some of the apps had glitches, even the popular Angry Birds, which indeed made the PC World reviewer angry. The app was launching upside down, depending on how the screen was held. The Amazon Silk web browser worked well, but the advertised speed gains from Amazon's proxy, which caches popular sites, were not even noticed.
Also, it should be noted that the device does not have any camera, nor does it have a GPS. Both would be useful if you are out and about in the city and have a tablet with you. Bottom line: if you want an e-reader, this remains an excellent device. If you want a tablet, it may not be your best choice.
Carmella Borcher is the author of this article and is an avid fan of Romance Books - particularly Erotic Books and Erotic eBooks.
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