OK, have had my Kindle Fire now since yesterday and like it quite a bit.
Just a few comments:
- Book reading is good, maybe a little better than the iPad because of the higher resolution at the smaller screen. What I miss, however, is the "specials" section I have on the iPad/iPod Kindle reader app that gives background information on the book, and the iPad's 2 column reading more when in landscape orientation. Hard to believe that Amazon would make the Kindle apps on iDevices better than their own reader.
- Web browsing is much better on the iPad, thanks to the bigger screen. Maybe if you are very young (which I am not) and have 20/20 vision (which I do not), then you will like the Fire, but I simply consider the screen too small.
- Apps - Jury is still out on this for me as I still have to complete my application for a US debit card so I can buy apps. YES - international users can not buy apps. So up to now I was limited to finding .apk files on the internet that might or might not work. I guess I might root the device and link it to the Android marketplace, but I am now trying out the US debit card route (
www.usunlocked.com looks quite promising, although it will of course add quite a bit of surcharges on my purchases - 25 cents per transaction means a 25 % surcharge on 0,99$ apps). That, combined with the rather small storage size of 8 GB (my 32 GB ipad is full to the brim with downloaded applications and I have a hard time to decide what to throw out to load new stuff) still has me in a holdup.
Of course, I wanted to have an e-book reader (specifically a sturdy one after breaking the screen of my kindle keyboard) to complement my iPad/iPod as my kids always use these during travel and I am left with my paperback books. Form factor is great for reading.
Best regards,
Andy