Pre-launch “artist” rendering of Kindle Fire
UPDATED: Now that we’ve seen the announcement, these reasons are updated. One goes away!
I’ve had an interesting relationship with the Kindle. I absolutely love the design of the Kindle service, how books can be read on almost any device, and how they stay in sync (mostly) between machines.
I love how Amazon has smartly made it possible to read your library where you want to read it, so if you want to one day read a book on your iPad you can. If later, you want to curl up in bed and read it, one handed, with an iPhone, you can. If, at another time, you want to prop your netbook on the arm of a chair and read your book, you can do that, too — all with the same book.
There’s DRM in the Kindle ecosystem, but the usage model is so flexible that it is hardly ever apparent.
But I dislike the Kindle device intensely. It feels like the user interface was designed by a hardware engineer who only grudgingly recognizes that real people have to touch his gear. It’s slow, it’s cumbersome, the keyboard is terrible, bookmarking is incredibly inconvenient, and it’s completely devoid of any UI elegance whatsoever.
I bought a Kindle 2 and returned it shortly thereafter. The e-ink screen was simply unacceptable. My wife later bought a Kindle 3 and although the screen is much nicer than that of the Kindle 2, she still finds herself reading Kindle books on almost any device other than the Kindle. She likes it for battery life and portability, but finds reading on a netbook to be a much nicer experience.
As a device, the e-ink Kindle, frankly, kinda sucks.
So, it’s with some degree of trepidation that I welcome the new Kindle Fire into the world. First, let’s talk about the name. There’s something twisted going on in a world where book burning is a heinous act, naming your book-reading device “Fire”. Just saying’.
In any case, as we all know by now, Amazon is introducing the new Kindle Fire later today and before you rush out and spend your hard-earned cash, I’d like to caution you. There are some good reasons you might NOT want to buy a new Kindle Fire.
A dozen of them, in fact.
