> Why not buy a plain vanilla android tablet ...
Because the Fire tablets are much cheaper and to date have, for me, very few disadvantages. Their build quality and screens are much better than the cheaper Androids and the Fires are much cheaper than the better, name brand Android tablets with similar screen res etc. During those Amazon sale periods, the 10" Fires sell for only $75.
> Kindle, Fire, Firestick, Alexa all need to be registered.
I don't know about Firestick. Yes, Alexa, of course, needs to be registered.
I have had Basic Kindles and have a Voyage and they were/are not registered. There are a few features that require registration like creating folders, I forget exactly what they were -- but sideloading AZW3, PDF, and text files and displaying, changing fonts etc. and searching them have always been permitted without registration.
> From Amazon's POV, there is no reason to let users of these devices use them for anything else outside the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon sells these devices for very thin margins because they are meant to be a salesman to let users buy more Amazon products/services or at least stay within the Amazon ecosystem.
If that's so -- and I agree that it is -- why has Amazon allowed the full use of unregistered tablets and allowed mostly full use of its ereaders as long as one brings their own content?
On the Fires, I run the Termux app which allows me to have a command line Linux tablet as well as run all the Android GUI and media apps. All that at a fraction of the price of an iPad or regular Android of similar quality.
But I gather no one knows if Amazon will eventually render its ereaders and tablets unusable without joining the "Amazon Ecosystem" as per my original question.
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