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The Mobile Gadgeteer

Matthew Miller & Joel Evans

Amazon Kindle Fire: Much more open than I thought

By | November 17, 2011, 8:13am PST

Summary: Amazon has been known for locking down the Kindle ebook readers, but all that caution has been thrown to the wind with the Kindle Fire.

James posted an article earlier this morning explaining that he thought the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are not as open as he had hoped. Now that I have been using both devices for a day (big, multi-page review coming here tomorrow) I have to disagree with James and personally think the Kindle Fire is MUCH more open than I ever thought we would see, especially right out of the box.

In the past one major reason I always bought Kobo or Barnes & Noble Nooks for reading was the more open nature and support for EPUB and other standards while Amazon was pretty locked down with their Kindle content. Thus, I was expecting to see the same thing on the Amazon Kindle Fire. However, by simply plugging in the Kindle Fire to your PC or Mac you will see the internal memory appears as a drive where you can drag photos, documents, and other content right onto the device. In addition, by following these steps detailed by my buddy Sascha Segan in his guide titled, How To Run Almost Any Android App On the Kindle Fire, you can turn your new Kindle Fire into a very functional Android tablet.

I now have both the Kobo and Nook ebook reader applications and books on my Amazon Kindle Fire so with this one device I can read all the books I have purchased over the years on a single device. Granted, I can do this with my Apple iPad too, but the Kindle Fire is only $199.

For the serious geek, both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet have also been rooted and you can hack away to your delight as well. I doubt the mainstream consumer will care about doing this, but these tablets are both quite open IMHO.

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Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle.

Disclosure

Matthew Miller

Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases most of his devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “keeper” or “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.

Biography

Matthew Miller

Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. He is one of three hosts on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and runs the Nokia Experts website. Matthew started using mobile devices in 1997 with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 90 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, Mac OS X (iPhone), Google Android, and Windows Mobile operating systems. His current collection includes a Nokia N85, Nokia E71, Nokia 5800, Nokia N810, Apple iPhone, HTC Advantage, T-Mobile G1, Palm Treo Pro, HTC Fuze, MSI Wind, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew co-authored Master Visually Windows Mobile 2003, was a member of the Nokia Nseries Blogger relations program, and is a member of the invite-only Microsoft Mobius mobile device evangelist group. He can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".

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ylxptnl 10 has
cdfwekrwe79-24379043240511652723861285963677 23rd Nov
gnhfzr,mchywmte81, ikdrs.
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As an owner of both Kindle Fire and iPad 2...
jmiller1978 Updated - 17th Nov
I do like the Kindle in terms of format as it is easier to hold than the iPad but I find without a micro-USB cable, getting content on to the Fire is pretty frustrating.

You have to jump through too many hoops to get stuff transferred like emailing documents to your "kindle.com" adress instead of just accessing them from Amazon's own Cloud Drive. Trust me, when you have to email PDF's that range from 15MB-40MB, this is a very time-consuming process even when the same PDF's are sitting in my Amazon Cloud Drive.

Why Amazon couldn't have included a micro-USB is beyond me because had it been a mini-USB, I would have been set. I swear my mini-USB cables are multiplying like rabbits but now I have to go purchase a micro-USB cable.


Another area I dislike the Kindle Fire is it's lack of customizable options. For instance, I do not want everything I do, read, watch on the bloody Carousel. I also want control over the lockscreen wallpaper.


Outside of these complaints, is it worth it for $200? Absolutely! Is it an iPad-killer? Not a chance.
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@jmiller1978
If you have the docs on Dropbox, you can access them after sideloading the Dropbox app
http://apocryph.org/2011/11/15/how-i-got-dropbox-installed-on-kindle-fire/

Someone on the Dropbox forum mentioned that the included Quickoffice integrates with Dropbox as well. I'd forgotten about that. It is also integrated with Google Docs and several others.

I feel your pain on cables. After the mini-USB cables taking over the house, I've now got microusb cables multiplying as well...
Thanks!

Out by Silicon Valley, buying a microUSB cable is not a problem. happy Now I wish there was a way to get BlueTooth running on the Fire.
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What should I buy if I want to read books and have no tablet. I dont have an I pad or kindel. Should I buy the older version of kindel or the new fire? With all the reviews I get lost
@moroziris you should buy books.
@moroziris Well, I've just read and alternately listened to Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs on my iPhone, but I wouldn't recommend it as the best solution.

Surely if all you want to do is read books, ignoring hmx's Luddite solution, all you need is the basic Kindle. Having said that, I also bought two copies of the hardback edition of Steve Jobs' biography, on the basis that a first edition is the best solid example of the writing craft, since we will never have a signed copy.

I'm sure there are lots of people, maybe a few tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands who only want a book reader. For them the E-ink display is the perfect low energy approximation of real paper.

It's when the maker of the Kindle claims the experience is far poorer on a glossy screen, then goes ahead and releases a device - with a glossy screen, you know you're dealing with a company, and a CEO who haven't even considered the user experience. The reason of course is that they haven't designed the Fire with the user experience in mind, but that isn't a viable excuse. In essence what Amazon has released is a shopping cart with your credit card glued to it, that pretends to do some other stuff, but does it so badly it sucks like a drain. When people work this out, they will justifiably feel cheated.

So, frankly, the iPad opens up so many more avenues, it's a complete no-brainer. And the only real competitor for the current iPad would be a 7 inch iPad - which may or may not happen.

On this point, I've actually changed my mind. I used to think that it would be plain crazy for Apple to cannibalize the market for its own product. And that was surely true when iPad was new and establishing itself not only as the market leader, but actually defining the market it created. The same can still be said of iPad 2. With no credible competitors, and the failure of what in any normal market would have been quite decent products, why do it?

But now, as the market matures and evolves, maybe in the next 12-24 months Apple could release a 7 inch iPad and then define the sub 10 inch market as well. One thing though is absolutely certain, Kindle Fire hasn't a hope in hell of doing so. Indeed I believe it will sell in embarrassingly low numbers - though Bezos will of course never have the courage to release them.
@Graham Ellison

early sales of the Fire have been so strong that Amazon bumped the order from 5 million units to 10 million. Half a billion people can afford an iObject, three billion more can afford a Fire or similar item. Three and a half billion can't afford either
Although I am only 64, I just don't get all the hoopla over these ereaders. I love to read and go through at least two books a week. Why should I buy these books when I can just visit my local library and read and return to my hearts content for free? The library is paid for with our tax dollars!
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@thefox220 The e-readers may not be for everyone but I use the Kindle app on my ASUS transformer and I only download free books. One of the big things I like is the sync. I could have it on my phone or tablet and get to the same page. Plus I never need a bookmark that could fall out.
The biggest benefit from the library is I don't have to worry about returning them and I don't have to leave home to get them. However I still use the library also for some things, as you said we are paying for it.
@thefox220 I download ebooks from my local library for free. Same benefit of not having to remember to return them (they expire in 2 weeks) and i can read them anywhere on my iPhone and iPad. Works very well. Application my library uses is called Ovedrive and it has Kindle and Adobe PDF formats, your choice. BTW, library is the Salt Lake City Public Library.
@thefox220 : For same reason you use your computer to type documents in Word. Sure you could use the old manual typewritter, but the computer makes typing documents easier and much less time consuming.

Same with eBooks. How long does it take you to go to the library or book store to get your book and then you have to drop it off when you finish? I just bought my wife a Kindle Fire and so far she loves it. It operates through your wireless network .... oh, you don't have a wireless network? Forgetaboutit!
@thefox220 Okay, there's a part of me that agrees with you, but I'm 53 and I haven't borrowed a book for 20 years. I do buy hardback and paperback books, but I've started buying more and more e-books and audio books. I went to sleep many nights earlier this month listening to Dylan Baker reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs on my iPhone, having downloaded both as soon as they appeared on iTunes. I also bought two copies of the hardback edition from Costco the next morning.

I actually have six other books on the go at the moment, and that's where technology is an absolute life saver. There are also many times when I want to dip back into a book I've read, and reference a particular passage, detail or fact. But short of defacing the work or filling it with page inserts, I find it very difficult to do so. With an e-book, I can make as many notes as I like, and even copy/paste whole pages into other apps for reference.

If your taste is fiction, mysteries, sci-fi, chick-lit or romance, I guess you won't find these functions useful, but when you're conducting business research, they're vital.

I found it very interesting to note that one of Steve's ambitions before he died, was to reduce the same burden on students. I have no doubt that Apple will continue his work in this area. Libraries have tried to evolve. And I genuinely hope they survive, but they are on the decline for a very good reason. As Dylan told us, the old world is rapidly changing. Humans are evolving.
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@thefox220 The e-readers may not be for everyone but I use the Kindle app on my ASUS transformer and I only download free books. One of the big things I like is the sync. I could have it on my phone or tablet and get to the same page. Plus I never need a bookmark that could fall out.
The biggest benefit from the library is I don't have to worry about returning them and I don't have to leave home to get them. However I still use the library also for some things, as you said we are paying for it.
@thefox220 besides downloading free books, you can use the Overdrive app to check out ebooks in ePub format from the library as well.
@kwok@... Thanks. The ePub format would be my only consideration for an e-reader. DL free books, doubtful if I could find many that I would be interested in that I haven't already read. Does an e-reader automatically bookmark if it times out? I hate it when I fall asleep and drop my book without a bookmark in it.
@thefox220
Yes, it remembers where you left off. Even if your loan runs out and you later re-loan the book it remembers where you were last.
I borrow several ebooks a month from the library. The selection is not very good but I have read books that I might not otherwise have read and enjoyed them. The selection is only going to get better.
I am a heavy reader and I LOVE my kindle.
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I am able to connect my wife's Kindle to our Ubuntu Linux machine with its usb cable and just copy pdf files over to it, and it does a decent job of rendering them. I haven't experimented with other file formats much, but the pdf's were a nice bonus since they were continuing education materials she could take with her.
Future article idea: Compare the i-PAD to the Kindle Fire and also a representative Android tablet. I know the Kindle Fire is a great deal, but what about if money is no object?
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ylxptnl 10 has
cdfwekrwe79-24379043240511652723861285963677 23rd Nov
gnhfzr,mchywmte81, ikdrs.

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