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Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

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Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

#82

Post by abuzzooz »

gbog wrote: post #59
AndreiVajnaII wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kindle Touch's killer feature would be better PDF support. The Nook Touch looks totally unusable for PDFs.

It seems to me that PDF is not a format suitable for much more than printing on paper. A very important feature of Kindle is to allow choosing font size. It make it an ideal tool for elders. But PDF documents have a fixed layout that won't allow resizing font conveniently, or you have to break it in pieces.

You are right. But, I have an extensive library of PDF files that I'd like to read. I expect many people do too. Most are technical documents with equations, graphs and other images. I would love to have an e-ink based reader that will render such documents correctly.

But, Amazon are probably more interested in selling their content, so I understand the lack of PDF support.

Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

#83

Post by freejack »

achompas wrote: post #62
fab13n wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business model to compete with Apple has been known for extremely long: offer lesser products at lesser prices. Everyone else failed at the "lesser price" part. Amazon can pull it off, because they don't need to make money with the tablet: as long as it sells ebooks and movies, it remains profitable for them. Since there's nobody to challenge them on this market, they will get the volumes to drive the BOM prices…

Since there's nobody to challenge them on this market, they will get the volumes to drive the BOM prices down, too. Barnes & Noble is in this space too, and they have hundreds of stores that will serve as points-of-sale for the Nook. Don't forget them. EDIT: apologies to the European HNers. Still, those B&M stores in America are incredibly popular, making it easier for Barnes & Noble to find new Nook users.

B&N doesn't have the operational chops that Amazon does. Its going to take more than Brick & Mortar to make a dent in the tablet market. B&N will fight with Dell for table scraps while Amazon and Apple each capture sizeable, material share. I wrote a bit about why I think Amazon is going to kill this on my blog earlier today - http://www.byte.org/2011/09/28/amazon-coming-into-its-own/ - tl;dr: Amazon is one of the few tech companies with the ops and distribution chops in the same league as Apple.

Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

#84

Post by shrikant »

estel wrote: post #33
Lewisham wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great price point. It's basically in impulse zone: "This book is 6 dollars cheaper at Kindle price... if I buy 12 it pays for itself..." but note there's no physical keyboard. Without a touch screen, it looks like it won't do note-taking, which is a bummer.

I'd be interested to see what % of Kindle users make use of the Keyboard. I'm pretty sure that I've only ever touched it for inputting URIs when web-browsing from abroad.

I'm a fairly heavy user of the keyboard to highlight and annotate lines/paragraphs/sections of books. Some of the keys have completely faded :(

Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

#85

Post by lleims »

Someone else from outside the US thinking about pre-ordering it?

On one hand it's just 127 pounds or 147 euros, but on the other I don't know what kind of experience those using it outside of the US will have: no Cloud Drive, no movies/tv shows, etc etc.

Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

#86

Post by iam »

smackfu wrote: post #49

Main Amazon pages don't seem to be updated, but this URL is: http://www.kindle.com Interesting stuff: * Will still sell current Kindle as "Kindle Keyboard" for same price. * New non-touch Kindle is 2 ounces lighter than old Kindle, but has half the battery life. * The new touch Kindle is 1 ounce lighter than old Kindle, with same battery life. * Kindle Fire is 6-7 ounces lighter than an iPad 2. * All the prices that…

Great, now we can buy the cheaper version, jailbreak it, and remove ads. Brilliant!

Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

#87

Post by yusefnapora »

yardie wrote: post #21

Exactly what is the differentiation between a tablet and e-reader? This thing is aimed squarely at the BN Nook Color. Why is it being compared to the much more expensive and feature-full iPad?

I think that the iPad comparisons are due to the content available (movies, tv, music) and especially the App Store. If you want to do anything with the Nook Color that's not included in the tin you need to root it. The kindle browser sounds nice too. I can see a lot of people who balk at the iPad's price tag snapping these up.

Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

#89

Post by jolan »

They're sure getting their jabs at Apple in everywhere they can:

"There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp."

"System Requirements: None, because it's wireless and doesn't require a computer."

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