My Kindle Fire

I am one of the people who bought a Kindle Fire last November and I thought this might be a good place to put a sort of review.

I love it and use it almost every day, and use it enough that it needs to be recharged almost every day as well.

It isn't perfect. I can think of a bunch of ways to make it better. I'd move the on/off switch from the bottom to the top where it was in my old Kindle 2. I've turned it off by accident more than once just leaning it against my body if I've been using it a lot.

It does most things pretty well. I'm enjoying the games in addition to the reading. It is possible to actually see tables and photos, to double click them and then make them bigger. If the publisher put in reasonable resolution, you can really drill in, but it is the publisher and not the Kindle that controls that ability.

I use a stylus. One friend suggested that I try one, and for things like games I like it a lot. It also makes typing extremely easy. I don't do a lot of typing, and I'm not doing e-mail on my Kindle at this time, but you can put things in search boxes which I find useful.

Whether or not the Web works on a Kindle depends on whether or not the owner of the site or the blog has allowed for hand held devices. I have done that with this blog, for example.

A lot of people see the iPad and the Fire in competition, but I don't. iPads do things Fires don't do. Fires are a lot cheaper and more entry level. Some of the things iPads do are things I don't want to do. There is plenty of room for both of them in the marketplace.