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Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

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Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#71

Post by miles_matthias »

potatolicious wrote: post #55
miles_matthias wrote: post #21

I couldn't agree with this more. My grandma recently bought one and I spend all of Christmas getting it set up for her and teaching her. She's gotten really frustrated and would probably return it if it hadn't been free from her company. This part especially is what I agree with: "Yet, the drive to quickly release a product in a hot field is almost irresistible. Amazon believes growing marketshare is more important t…

> "I do need to correct the author on one point though - I did find a native email client on it." Which is nigh unusable. I set up my email account on it and went to bed with it at 70% charge. I woke up with the Kindle Fire at 20%. It drained 50% in about 8-9 hours doing nothing more than email. Yes, idle email checking uses power, but I have never seen it that bad on any device. The battery is no slouch either based…

Yea I didn't say it was good, but it's there. I had a similarly terrible experience with their mail client.

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#72

Post by phaus »

jsankey wrote: post #59

The return rate will be high and Amazon will suffer for it. The Fire currently has over 8000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 3.9. Over 5500 of those reviews give the device 4 or 5 stars. Something tells me the average Fire customer does not have such high expectations.

While they must be included for accuracy, I found that well over half of the 1-star reviews were written by people who knew that they wouldn't like the Kindle Fire, yet ordered one anyways. There were an awful lot of people who complained that it wasn't as nice as the iPad 2 that they explicitly stated they also own. What logical person buys a low-end tablet when they already have what is arguably the best tablet ever made?

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#73

Post by rokhayakebe »

matwood wrote: post #64
rokhayakebe wrote: post #15

I bought one. I love it. I CANNOT wait for a 8, 9 or 10 inch one because I will be the first one to get it (assuming it's still cheaper than the Ipad). I have no idea what people are talking about when they say they are disappointed. Seriously how much hardware + software do you want for $199. Last time I read a book and finished it was a few years ago. I just finished a 500 page book on the fire, and it has certainl…

How is it with reading PDFs? I read a lot of books on my iPhone without any problem, but PDFs just don't scale right. I'm starting think about getting some sort of tablet and good PDF handling is high on my requirements.

The problem with PDFs I have tried is that you have to zoom it for each page. I think a good option would be to have to pdf on something like Scribd and they would convert it to an html5 friendly content, then you just view it on the browser. I haven't tried this yet, though.

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#74

Post by tks »

matwood wrote: post #64
rokhayakebe wrote: post #15

I bought one. I love it. I CANNOT wait for a 8, 9 or 10 inch one because I will be the first one to get it (assuming it's still cheaper than the Ipad). I have no idea what people are talking about when they say they are disappointed. Seriously how much hardware + software do you want for $199. Last time I read a book and finished it was a few years ago. I just finished a 500 page book on the fire, and it has certainl…

How is it with reading PDFs? I read a lot of books on my iPhone without any problem, but PDFs just don't scale right. I'm starting think about getting some sort of tablet and good PDF handling is high on my requirements.

With the caveat that I don't have a lot of experience with the iPad's pdf support I'd say the Fire's support is solid. I recently read an entire e-book in pdf format on it. The main limitation is that there isn't a lot of screen real estate so if you want to read it on a full page scale you need to tolerate a very small font (this was not a problem for me). A cool upside is that when you get a Fire, Amazon creates an email address that you can send emails with attached pdfs and documents which will then automatically be downloaded onto your Kindle.

Overall nothing mind blowing but if you like e-readers I think you'll be satisfied with the pdf support.

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#75

Post by phaus »

beatle wrote: post #46
tghw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Terrible" is hyperbole at best. And while they may not care, my point is, Amazon can (and, I hope, will) improve it. All of these complaints about a $200 tablet remind me of Louis CK's bit on airplanes and cellphones, "Everything's amazing, and nobody's happy."

You keep mentioning the price. The price is not an excuse to ship a crappy product. The iPod Touch starts at $200 and it's a great product.

Most people these days don't want an MP3 player, they want a tablet. Many people also look at the iPad and think "I could buy a damn good laptop that suits my purposes for $500, why would I pay $500 for an iPad?" At the same time, these people still wanted a tablet, they just refuse to pay so much money for one.

Basically, the market demands a cheaper tablets. Unfortunately for consumers the average $500 tablet contains about $300 worth of parts and labor. This means that in order to meet the demand, sacrifices must be made.

Because most people would rather have a $200 tablet than no tablet at all, the Kindle Fire was born. Like it or not, the Kindle Fire represents the most advanced hardware you can get at that price. While it has its shortcomings, the device is well built and reasonably powerful.

The software, on the other hand, is a completely different issue. I think that Amazon shouldn't have tried to reinvent the wheel. Grid style interfaces are pretty much perfect so I don't understand why they thought they could do better. While I don't agree that the software experience is terrible, I do hope that they fix the responsiveness issues.

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#76

Post by esrauch »

miles_matthias wrote: post #21

I couldn't agree with this more. My grandma recently bought one and I spend all of Christmas getting it set up for her and teaching her. She's gotten really frustrated and would probably return it if it hadn't been free from her company. This part especially is what I agree with: "Yet, the drive to quickly release a product in a hot field is almost irresistible. Amazon believes growing marketshare is more important t…

> She's gotten really frustrated and would probably return it if it hadn't been free from her company.

Is this actually a problem with the Fire though, or would she react the same way to an iPad?

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#77

Post by dfxm12 »

angstrom wrote: post #38
tghw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Terrible" is hyperbole at best. And while they may not care, my point is, Amazon can (and, I hope, will) improve it. All of these complaints about a $200 tablet remind me of Louis CK's bit on airplanes and cellphones, "Everything's amazing, and nobody's happy."

You have a right to bitch if you're told you'll be flying a DC-10 and they seat you in a single engine Cessna.

Where did you get the idea that the the Fire is a top of the line type device?

The Cessna costs a fraction of the price of the DC-10. The Fire is a fraction of the cost of an iPad...

Even if you have no idea how to compare tech specs, or if you are brain-dead to marketing tactics, anyone should be able to look at the price tag and think to themselves, Well, the Fire costs a lot less than the competition. It's probably not going to have all the bells and whistles, but it is going to get the job done.

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#78

Post by bane »

phaus wrote: post #72
jsankey wrote: post #59

The return rate will be high and Amazon will suffer for it. The Fire currently has over 8000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 3.9. Over 5500 of those reviews give the device 4 or 5 stars. Something tells me the average Fire customer does not have such high expectations.

While they must be included for accuracy, I found that well over half of the 1-star reviews were written by people who knew that they wouldn't like the Kindle Fire, yet ordered one anyways. There were an awful lot of people who complained that it wasn't as nice as the iPad 2 that they explicitly stated they also own. What logical person buys a low-end tablet when they already have what is arguably the best tablet eve…

What logical person buys a low-end tablet when they already have what is arguably the best tablet ever made?

Perhaps one that just needs a smaller form factor to toss in their coat pocket when heading out to the coffee shop.

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#79

Post by phaus »

bane wrote: post #78
phaus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they must be included for accuracy, I found that well over half of the 1-star reviews were written by people who knew that they wouldn't like the Kindle Fire, yet ordered one anyways. There were an awful lot of people who complained that it wasn't as nice as the iPad 2 that they explicitly stated they also own. What logical person buys a low-end tablet when they already have what is arguably the best tablet eve…

What logical person buys a low-end tablet when they already have what is arguably the best tablet ever made? Perhaps one that just needs a smaller form factor to toss in their coat pocket when heading out to the coffee shop.

I can see this, but when they are lounging around the house with their iPads do they think that it's a piece of crap because it can't do everything as well as a macbook pro that costs 2.5 times as much? The Kindle Fire comes much closer to delivering the experience of an iPad 2 than the iPad 2 comes to replicating the experience of using a real computer.

Re: Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

#80

Post by vijayr »

phaus wrote: post #72
jsankey wrote: post #59

The return rate will be high and Amazon will suffer for it. The Fire currently has over 8000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 3.9. Over 5500 of those reviews give the device 4 or 5 stars. Something tells me the average Fire customer does not have such high expectations.

While they must be included for accuracy, I found that well over half of the 1-star reviews were written by people who knew that they wouldn't like the Kindle Fire, yet ordered one anyways. There were an awful lot of people who complained that it wasn't as nice as the iPad 2 that they explicitly stated they also own. What logical person buys a low-end tablet when they already have what is arguably the best tablet eve…

sometimes reviews at amazon are annoying. I was reading reviews for a men's gps watch. somebody gave it 4 stars and mentioned that (s)he would've given 5 stars, if "the product had women's model too". It doesn't make any sense. it is clearly mentioned that the model is for men - why write the review at all? people have weird expectations
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