From the beginning, Amazon's Kindle Fire was positioned as the budget tablet. Compared to the competition, rarely do the specs measure up. The one consistently redeeming virtue is the price. At $229 it retains some appeal despite its many drawbacks.
When the holiday season comes in sight, we naturally expect a new splash from electronics producers and Amazon hasn't let us down there. There are some redesigned features, including the operating system, which is pretty much Android Light. Also, some people are going to quite dig the brand new Mayday feature. As discussed below, this new feature provides free, single button access to a live service rep.
Hopes for dramatic improvements in the Kindle Fire's functions and capacity, though, will be sadly letdown. The improvements are minimal in the third-generation model. Actually, some might even think the situation worse than that. Though the system is based on the Google Android the new owners of the Kindle Fire find themselves lacking in all the great Google apps and services that the standard Android user enjoys.
Instead, the new Kindle Fire owner has to download his or her apps from Amazon. (This includes, by the way, activating the Flash Player , which does not come activated, to the annoyance of many users.) The selection of apps is paltry in comparison to that available on the standard Android. We're talking around 85,000 apps compared to nearly a million for Android. Of course that also means you're missing a lot of stuff that many people value highly: e.g., Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.
Sorry to seem to be piling on, but another unhappy aspect of the Kindle Fire HDX follows in the wake of this paltry assortment of apps. As with the earlier versions, you are constantly being up-sold. Holding the mouse over any product or service brings your friendly Amazon salesman leaping into action, drawing your attention to some similar Amazon good you might like to buy.
I find this immensely annoying and distracting. Obviously, it's a matter of personal taste. Some folks, I expect, find real value in this endless exposure to new product opportunities. For me, it just gets in the way of what I'm trying to do. Like commercial television, though, this is the monetizing strategy: you suffer through the ads to get the product at such a low price.
There is some good news for those determined to buy this product. They've succeeded at decreasing the general bugginess of early versions. That's not to say that there are not still too many glitches, but it is noticeably improved on that front. I like as well the "carousel" style display, which allows you to view apps, movies, books or anything else which the Kindle user has recently accessed. A navigation bar at the bottom of the screen allows you to browse conveniently through the content on the Kindle Fire.
Plus, we mustn't forget the feature that some will enjoy most of all: the Mayday button, with which a single press puts you in direct contact with a live service rep. This service guy or girl will introduce themselves, on a first name basis (of course), after popping up in a corner of your screen. This rep will be skilled and informed, able to deal with whatever problems you've encountered. In fact, should it prove a more efficacious solution, the representative can even take over direct control of the tablet. Those worried about corporate Big Brother may have pause at such a notion, but it can help resolve some issues much faster than trying to walk the owner through a series of involved steps. I certainly found this service impressive. And it represents a rare commitment to customer service.
Yet, for all that, there's a kind of paradox, here. After all, one of the main selling features of these tablets is their intuitive qualities. They're supposed to be very high on the user friendliness scale. So all the effort and expense put into this live rep feature almost leaves me wondering if the poignant "Mayday" is meant less to evoke the user calling out to the rep than Amazon calling out Mayday to the market. They surrender: as in, okay, this is the best we can do, here's the workaround our inability to come up with a tablet that actually fulfilled the promise of intuitive function. Sorry. I know, I'm a cynical old dog.
The bottom line with this one, as with past versions, is that it's a good buy if your intention is to restrict your usage to Amazon products and services. If that's all you want to do, this product is certainly an improvement over earlier versions. If you're just looking to save money on a tablet, you can do better .
When the holiday season comes in sight, we naturally expect a new splash from electronics producers and Amazon hasn't let us down there. There are some redesigned features, including the operating system, which is pretty much Android Light. Also, some people are going to quite dig the brand new Mayday feature. As discussed below, this new feature provides free, single button access to a live service rep.
Hopes for dramatic improvements in the Kindle Fire's functions and capacity, though, will be sadly letdown. The improvements are minimal in the third-generation model. Actually, some might even think the situation worse than that. Though the system is based on the Google Android the new owners of the Kindle Fire find themselves lacking in all the great Google apps and services that the standard Android user enjoys.
Instead, the new Kindle Fire owner has to download his or her apps from Amazon. (This includes, by the way, activating the Flash Player , which does not come activated, to the annoyance of many users.) The selection of apps is paltry in comparison to that available on the standard Android. We're talking around 85,000 apps compared to nearly a million for Android. Of course that also means you're missing a lot of stuff that many people value highly: e.g., Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.
Sorry to seem to be piling on, but another unhappy aspect of the Kindle Fire HDX follows in the wake of this paltry assortment of apps. As with the earlier versions, you are constantly being up-sold. Holding the mouse over any product or service brings your friendly Amazon salesman leaping into action, drawing your attention to some similar Amazon good you might like to buy.
I find this immensely annoying and distracting. Obviously, it's a matter of personal taste. Some folks, I expect, find real value in this endless exposure to new product opportunities. For me, it just gets in the way of what I'm trying to do. Like commercial television, though, this is the monetizing strategy: you suffer through the ads to get the product at such a low price.
There is some good news for those determined to buy this product. They've succeeded at decreasing the general bugginess of early versions. That's not to say that there are not still too many glitches, but it is noticeably improved on that front. I like as well the "carousel" style display, which allows you to view apps, movies, books or anything else which the Kindle user has recently accessed. A navigation bar at the bottom of the screen allows you to browse conveniently through the content on the Kindle Fire.
Plus, we mustn't forget the feature that some will enjoy most of all: the Mayday button, with which a single press puts you in direct contact with a live service rep. This service guy or girl will introduce themselves, on a first name basis (of course), after popping up in a corner of your screen. This rep will be skilled and informed, able to deal with whatever problems you've encountered. In fact, should it prove a more efficacious solution, the representative can even take over direct control of the tablet. Those worried about corporate Big Brother may have pause at such a notion, but it can help resolve some issues much faster than trying to walk the owner through a series of involved steps. I certainly found this service impressive. And it represents a rare commitment to customer service.
Yet, for all that, there's a kind of paradox, here. After all, one of the main selling features of these tablets is their intuitive qualities. They're supposed to be very high on the user friendliness scale. So all the effort and expense put into this live rep feature almost leaves me wondering if the poignant "Mayday" is meant less to evoke the user calling out to the rep than Amazon calling out Mayday to the market. They surrender: as in, okay, this is the best we can do, here's the workaround our inability to come up with a tablet that actually fulfilled the promise of intuitive function. Sorry. I know, I'm a cynical old dog.
The bottom line with this one, as with past versions, is that it's a good buy if your intention is to restrict your usage to Amazon products and services. If that's all you want to do, this product is certainly an improvement over earlier versions. If you're just looking to save money on a tablet, you can do better .
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