I'd Like Some Cheese With That Wine -- Report on the Kindle Fire

(Avon Park, FL)  Hi 75  Lo 53 -- Dee and I went to a wine and cheese tasting at the clubhouse this afternoon. Dee enjoyed it. In fact, she enjoyed it so much that I have to do the blog today. :)


Doesn't she look happy?

It was actually quite fun. Everyone brought a bottle of wine from their home state, and a plate of crackers & cheese. There was a table for each represented state. One member of each couple sat and served their wine while the other one walked around sampling everything. Then we'd switch off and the other got to walk around.

There were about 180 people there, so we got to try a lot of wines. It was another example of the great activities here at Adelaide Shores.


If you've been a regular reader of our blog you know that we recently bought a Kindle Fire tablet to try out. Dee tried it out first and quickly determined that she’d rather use her Droid smartphone, so she turned it over  to me. I played with it for a few days, and this morning decided to return it for a refund. I thought I’d give a review of my experience, and some of its good and bad points. Maybe it’ll benefit those of you who may wonder if it would be right for you.

The Kindle Fire (from here on I’ll call it the KF) is a tablet computer. The tablet world is dominated by the Apple iPad, which costs $500 and up depending on the size of the internal storage. The KF costs $199, which is a great price for what you get. What you DON’T get, compared to the iPad, is any kind of HDMI or USB inputs, no camera, no GPS, and no SD card slot for external storage. It comes with 8 GB of internal storage, which is enough for storing books, and some music and family photos. And you have access to the Amazon App Store, with thousands of free and cheap apps.

I like the overall size of the unit. Swiping and scrolling and overall response to touches are all very fast and smooth. It’s very user friendly. Even Dee got very familiar with it right off the bat. But it is a little heavy. (That’s the first thing Dee said when she un-boxed it.) You’ll be looking for something to prop it on after holding it for awhile (like your knee or the arm of your chair).

I have a basic Kindle, with the black and white e-ink technology, which I LOVE! However, the visual look of books on the KF is much nicer than on the basic Kindle. All of your books are arranged on a virtual bookshelf with the nice color covers, whereas on my old Kindle they’re just a list of titles. HOWEVER, on the KF you’re reading on a back-lit LCD screen, which to me is not as relaxing as the e-ink screen on my old Kindle. And it’s much harder to see the KF screen outside in the sun. HOWEVER, you can read the LCD screen in the dark, and you  can’t do that on the old Kindle without a book light, because it's not back-lit.

Web surfing on the KF is pretty good, if you don’t mind using an on-screen keyboard. But keep in mind, it’s a wifi only device. So you have to have access to a wifi hotspot to get online. In my opinion this is a big minus for full-timers like us. A good portion of the time when we're traveling we have to tether our Droids to our laptops and use Verizon 3G for our internet. You can’t do that with the KF. You can use 3G on it only if you have a wireless MiFi device, but then you’d be limited to a few GB of data per month. Not good for “power users” like us. But if you have regular access to wifi, no problem. One other thing about the web browser: if you have a lot of sites you like to bookmark, you won’t like the way they’re arranged on the KF. They’re just a long list of site names (or pages full of icons), with no way to arrange them or put them in folders.

Video looks great, and music sounds great (through headphones or earbuds). And photos also look great. It looks just like a 5x7 digital picture frame when you scroll through your photos. One thing I don’t like on the user interface is, there’s no hard button volume control. To change the volume you have to hit the menu button and move a slider on the screen. Kind of clumsy. Sound quality through the two very small speakers is adequate at best, but not very loud. It's really best to use earbuds or efficient headphones.

Overall, it’s a nice device. So why am I returning it? Here’s why:

* It’s not versatile enough to replace my laptop, and it’s too big and bulky to replace my Droid X for computing on-the-go.

* It’s primarily an e-reader (and a fine one), with multi-media and web browsing as secondary features. I have a good e-reader (basic Kindle), and I have an iPod Classic (smaller than a deck of cards) with my entire music collection on it, which I take on my walks. 

* Video isn’t that important to me, especially on a 7-inch screen.

The bottom line is, after the first couple of days I wasn’t reaching for it to play with it. So I never really “bonded” with it.

Is it for you? Yes, IF:

* You want to save money over a full Android tablet or iPad.

* You do a lot of shopping on Amazon. (The Amazon Store is only a touch away, and access to it is on almost every screen.)

* You’re in the market for an e-reader.

* You have consistent access to wifi for web browsing.

* You don’t mind using an on-screen keyboard.
* You don't read outside much.

* You want to integrate your reading, photos, videos, and music on one portable device. (But I couldn’t imagine taking a KF on a walk... it's not very pocketable.)

* You don’t need/want a camera or GPS.

* You're not a "computer person," and are unfamiliar or afraid of computers.

One last point... another economical tablet of the same type as the KF is the Nook Tablet. It's aligned with Barnes & Noble. I haven't tried one, but I've read that the features and operation are similar to the KF. It costs $250, vs $199 for the KF.

Sorry for being so long-winded, but I hope this information will be helpful to some of you. Thanks for reading.