Is nobody concerned that all your data will be passing through Amazon's server farm via their new browser?

While I'm sure they won't retain info that is personally identifiable to you, they will know every page their users visit, every site, competitor, item you buy, how much paid, etc.

They may be selling the device for $199, but Amazon will be getting much more than that in the end.

I bought a 3G Kindle (with special offers) a couple months ago and in fact it is just that, absolutely free unlimited 3G service via their "experimental" browser. It even works, very slowly, on cruise ships without any data roaming charges (usually $20 USD / MB). Lets us check our email or browse, very slowly, worldwide for free.

I will not buy the Fire but instead get the Kindle Touch. I already have an iPad so the Fire will not add much value to me. However, I hear a 2nd generation Fire will be appearing in Q1 of 2012. I will wait for that one to see if it will be better. I am just not that excited about the Fire as I was for the iPad.

What makes you feel entitled to that? I've had a Kindle since they first became available, and currently have three, all with 3G capability. I only use the cellular capability to buy books, or download from the cloud, in the absence of WiFi access.

The Fire is designed for audio and video. If it's used as a wireless device, it's going to consume a lot of bandwidth. I can't understand why anyone would expect the vendor to pay for it.

If they didn't want us to use it, they would have pushed down a software update to disable it. Or maybe force you to be on wifi with the browser.

Not really...same thing happens every time you shop on-line, whether you disable cookies or not, whether you engage private browsing or not. It a new world... :eek:

Not really...same thing happens every time you shop on-line, whether you disable cookies or not, whether you engage private browsing or not. It a new world... :eek:

With normal browsers, the data does not all pass through Amazon. Here they are the proxy so you could be browsing a competitor's site and now Amazon will have insight into what you are looking at. I find that disturbing. Even google does not act as a proxy for the web traffic in this way. The only thing that is similar is Opera Mini.

Amazon's main goal is likely to offer you things you want, in other words, to beat the competition by giving you a more attractive deal. Do you find that disturbing?

Another goal may be to sell information on your interests to other companies. Is that more disturbing?

I suppose they'd have to disclose this as part of their privacy policies. Opera mini says it doesn't disclose individual information (except as required by law or law enforcement). http://www.opera.com/privacy/

Nope.

Amazon knows more about me through my shopping habits than I do.

And, though this is anecdotal, don't Amazon's servers host all sorts of other web sites (I thought I heard they host Netflix or Quikster, or whatever it is now)? That's even more data they could mine (subject, of course, to whatever privacy they've agreed to with the company leasing Amazon's servers).

A friend and I used to joke that, based on what Amazon "suggested" to me due to past looks at and buys of merchandise, it seemed their systems could find Osama bin Laden in minutes if whoever just loaded up every "tip" about him into Amazon's brain and let it chug through it all to predict...

Yes, Osama is gone. But, the new joke I made to my friend is that with this Silk predictive browsing and Amazon's brain, Amazon could not only find Osama but know where he's going before he even decided to go there.

It's definitely going to be a successful product and a good sign that Apple will have competition to force their hand and keep improving. Already, the new Kindle products are taking up the top 12 spots or something on Amazon's gadget list. Amazon is hitting the mark with their price points (even if they are taking losses to do so).

The new Kindles actually are more intriguing to me. Text works out a lot better with the smaller 7 inch screen since you can enlarge and shrink at will. The main benefit to having the color screen to me is for magazines, which the iPad 2 does extremely well (both with PDF versions and native apps like Time, Sports Illustrated). It will be interesting to see how magazines are formatted and how they perform on the Kindle. Right now, I can read the whole page of a PDF on the iPad, zoom in quickly, and turn pages smoothly. I'm not sure you can read text at all on a 7 inch screen if formatted for printed page.

It was a little disappointing that the Fire doesn't use a color e-Ink screen which would at least give it that advantage. I'll be waiting for both the iPad 3 and Kindle Fire Pro (or whatever the 10 inch version is). Amazon could also win me over by getting magazine companies on board with the right pricing.

Bottom line for me is a wait and see on the Fire, and I'd buy a regular black & white Kindle if I didn't already have one from last year.

Imagine the outcry if Apple was selling iPad's at a loss to gain market share. But this is Amazon, so they get a free pass.

I can recall when ipods came out people laughed at the lack of wireless. I am sure the 3g version is coming for the fire, but for now wifi will suffice. I am an amzn prime customer and i missed the announcement that free streamimg was added. I will be comparimg to netflix soon, and likely dropping netflix. Netflix looks done like dinner.

If this get added to a future fire then it is huge, even if perhaps the free 3g is tied to an amazon prime membership.

Wow.

I imagine Apple's shareholders would be pissed, yes, because Apple sells content at barely breakeven and makes their money on highly margined profitable devices. Amazon makes their money on content.

Are Apple fans bots?

I'm still waiting for wireless iPhone/iPod syncing. Not laughing anymore, just whining.

How are the content rates barely break even? They seem to the same as Amazon. Indeed the number one nyt hardback novel, Heat Rises, sells for nearly three dollars more on the iBook store than the kindle store. :confused:

Why do you need an iPod if you have an iPhone? :confused:

Anyway, ordered a fire yesterday. I am not likely to switch from my iPad, but the mrs might like it.

If Amazon does buy Palm/WebOS, I'll regret having sold my TouchPads so inexpensively.

Are "apps" content in your perception? I assure you that Apple's margins are quite well served by the cut they take on every single application being distributed through the app store.

Not that you asked me, but I always had to carry both. Since I couldn't replace the battery on either, any remotely long flight and I'd be dead by landing. Slightly less of an issue when using the ipod and keeping the phone off, though after two years with the ipod, they both seem to eat charge pretty quickly.

< shrug > Apple has stated the iTunes store "runs slightly above break even". FY2010 iTunes revenue was $4.4 billion. Q42010 iPhone & accessories revenue was $8.8 billion. Similar numbers for recent quarters except greater growth in iPhone sales than iTunes.

FOR 200 DOLLARS, NO LESS!!!

(1) i have a 3g kindle... and rarely rarely have i actually used that feature. only sparingly abroad to check emails
(2) since it doesnt supplant a mobile phone... most techies would already carry modern smartphone that the kindle can tether to for data

its a great price-point. i preordered a fire the day it was announced

Update
 

Consumer Report review:
http://news.consumerreports.org/elec...ndle-fire.html

Engadget review:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/14/a...e-fire-review/

Available at best buy nov 15th
http://www.mobileburn.com/17494/news...15-at-best-buy

While I hate the site, the review is a contrast to many others

http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/14/2...le-fire-review

As is the david pogue review.

(mine is on order should be here soon)

Engadget's conclusion is typical of the reviews I've read:

The Kindle Fire is quite an achievement at $200. It's a perfectly usable tablet that feels good in the hand and has a respectably good looking display up front. Yes, power users will find themselves a little frustrated with what they can and can't do on the thing without access to the Android Market but, in these carefree days of cloud-based apps ruling the world, increasingly all you need is a good browser. That the Fire has.

When stacked up against other popular tablets, the Fire can't compete. Its performance is a occasionally sluggish, its interface often clunky, its storage too slight, its functionality a bit restricted and its 7-inch screen too limiting if you were hoping to convert all your paper magazine subscriptions into the digital ones. Other, bigger tablets do it better -- usually at two or three times the cost.


So, the Kindle Fire is great value and perhaps the best, tightest integration of digital content acquisition into a mobile device that we've yet seen. Instead of having a standalone shopping app the entire tablet is a store -- a 7-inch window sold at a cut-rate price through which users can look onto a sea of premium content. It isn't a perfect experience, but if nothing else it's a promising look into the future of retail commerce.

Having used an actual, "real" Kindle - I'm not sure I agree it looks like a fantastic e-reader. It is no better a reader than any other tablet. The e-ink is what makes the Kindle great for reading, not the name printed on the bottom. @:-)

I'll tell you tomorrow when mine arrives in the mail!!

Got mine today - and love it.

Still can't find the email client, but as soon as I turned it on, all my music, books and apps were ready for me. Slick form factor, and pretty much the death of the Playbook. $199 is a steal. If it weren't for the LTE in it, I may rarely use my Xoom anymore...

Yes, but how is book reading on it compared to e-ink Kindles?

For my money, the Nook Tablet is a way better device for travelers. The Fire only has 6mb of storage built in. That is NOT very much. It is designed to be a cloud device, and is therefore dependent on a wifi connection. As a traveler, there are just too many times I'm either not near wifi, or the connection is not reliable. The Nook has more built in storage, and also supports a 32mb SD card (which the Fire does not). I'd rather just preload whatever music, books, magazines, movies, and tv shows I want, and watch at my leisure. And the 7inch form factor is PERFECT for travel...I've always found the iPad just a bit too large.

And while I'm at it...am I the only one that has paid the extortion to GoGo while in the air, and had a connection that was sloooooow as molasses? And when I call customer service, they say "oh, that flight was very full, there must have been a lot of people on GoGo at that time, that's why it was slow." WTH???? I do not care about their bandwidth issues...if they are going to knowingly sell me a slow connection, then charge me a discounted price!

The Nook will allow me the option of ignoring a crummy wifi connection if I so choose.

8GB, not 6MB. It does not rely 100% on the cloud but you are right, if you need a lot of locally stored video content, it is not the best choice.

The main advantage over the Nook is the Amazon Prime content.

My primary use is locally stored video, so I guess my opinion is biased.

But I do agree that Amazon Prime rocks.

I am interested in seeing an answer to this question as well. I am still debating getting either a Kindle Touch or Fire, since I will mostly use it for reading on the plane.

For reading on the plane, the battery life of the e-ink Kindles is unmatched.

And would it have certain advantages over the BN product, if I am solely looking at e-readers?

first few hours
 

So, the first few hours of use now and I would say, it is NOT like reading on one of the e-ink kindles for sure. As expected it is a backlit screen and backlit screens just don't look that way. To me it is really like reading on an ipad (which i have) and so the overall after a while eye strain that might occur could still occur with this device - the fire.

the device does work pretty nicely, it isn't as snappy and polished as the ipad but it is pretty good for an android device. It IS nice to have the amazon prime and my amazon cloud content right there to access and can use it for movies/tv shows streaming, etc. The netflix player also works quite well.

Moving around the device is a bit sluggish (this is androids fault not the Fire) and the touch screen seems a little bit picky, trying to touch on the settings in the top menu requires a couple touches sometimes. For most things there is a TINY little delay.

The form factor to me is a BIT odd. Of course not as large as an ipad one tries to hold it differently, in one hand say like a phone - but of course it is MUCH larger than a phone. It also has a heft to it that you don't expect while holding it. Somehow the ipad actually feels LIGHTER (which it isn't) but maybe that is because one is normally holding IT with two hands or setting it down.

As for storage, yes it only has about 6.5GB and there is no additional storage slot, so something like the 16GB Nook color is much better in this respect (albeit 250$ and no great amazon prime content access) I'll download a move later tonite to see how big they are and get an idea for just how many one could download to the device for travel.

For me, it probably doesn't represent the best combination of form factor, readability, battery life, weight and elegant use to remain a keeper.

The best I can say is, it MIGHT be going out as a gift and not back to the mother ship.

But, I'll give it a little more time. :-)

The e-ink Kindles are outstanding to read in direct sunlight, like on the beach or at the pool. Any backlit screen - like the Fire or the Nook Tablet - gets washed out in direct sunlight.

On the other hand, if you're on a red eye and want to read and e-ink Kindle, you either have to turn on the overhead light (in which case if I'm sitting next to you and I'm trying to sleep, it's war), or you have to attach one of those little reading lights to the Kindle (or a cover that you buy for the Kindle). Those actually work pretty well, as it turns out.

Several reviews I read mentioned that the Fire had a tiny bit of lag, whereas the Nook Tablet did not. I get my Nook on Friday, so I'll report bag. Software lag drives me insane.

Yes the Fire has Amazon Prime, which I think is awesome. BUT...the Nook has both Netflix and Hulu Plus (both of which I already subscribe to), so streaming content isn't really an issue. And I can access my Amazon Cloud Player from any internet device...including the Fire and the Nook.

But the final deciding straw for me is the storage capacity of the Nook. I will mostly be using it to watch movies while I'm killing time at the lounge or on the plane. 8gb is just too small, and would force me to constantly offload one movie just to make room for the next.

Played with the Fire for a few hours yesterday - as others have said, when it was first handed to me I was startled by the heft of it - it's a lot heavier than you expect it to be, but it feels solid and well made.

I agree with another poster, although it isn't, it feels like the same weight as the iPad, but I think it's because as you are holding it, the weight density of the Fire makes it "seem" heavy.

Flipping pages in the Kindle app seemed a little sluggish, it's much snappier on the iPad2, which you would expect, but i was surprised that the lag was so noticeable.

I'm surprised that given all the people here on FT that go crazy stating they would never use Dropbox because it holds all their secure data, would use the web browser on the Fire that puts 100% of the data through Amazon. Do you really not think they are going to mine that data? I didn't see any speed increase over just hitting the same sites with the iPad, btw.

Overall, it's not bad for $200. I don't think the comparisons to the iPad are fair, unless you are the type that says "My Honda is just as good as a Mercedes", but for $200, that's a throwaway price and probably great for kids.

Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update had a bit on the Amazon Fire. At the end they said "It's perfect for parents that always buy the wrong thing for Christmas." I think everyone can related to that one. :)

I was waiting to see the Fire first, but after using it for several hours I think I'm going to pick up one of the new Kindle e-readers instead. I knew the Fire wouldn't be as good of a pure reader, but I thought the rest of it would tilt the scales. But I think the readers are perfect for when I don't want to take the iPad2.

I love the new Kindle Touch with the two-month battery life, but is it worth 2x the weight of the non-touch Kindle with one-month battery? Hmm...

Amazon said it would only mine aggregate data, not individually identifiable data. They may be lying, but that would have legal consequences when it's discovered.

They also say you can turn off the cloud function and just use it as a regular browser.

Or install Opera mini (which may have its own privacy issues).

I've read a lot of reviews and forums and have not seen any posts in which anyone saw a speed increase.

Apologists say the system needs time to cache more pages and that the Fire uses Flash which slows it down. Neither of these seems right. Amazon's PR says part of the benefit is that you're only downloading from one server. Many tested sites don't use Flash.

I'll just add a point about the browser on the FIRE. It needs to get better. While the cloud layer (ala opera, skyfire ((hmm, that one sounds familiar))) might be compelling once it gets up to speed, the browser itself I find somewhat slow and the UI to be a couple generations behind at least.

We all know how the safari browser on the ipad works, nearly perfectly (sans flash of course but don't get me started) tap tap and boom it magically zooms to show perfectly the text/area that you want to read. Or, use the new READER functionality in the 5.0 version for ios 5. compare that to the fire which when reading sites like nytimes, cnn, espn, it couldn't figure out what I wanted to read and really simply zoomed A level. It doesn't alter that page orientation to the zoom level and pinching and moving becomes necessary.

I THINk this might have something more to do with the CLOUD aspect of the browser. It isn't really as smart as the ON DEVICE browser so when one zooms it MAY requery the server for more data as opposed to simply re-orienting the ON DEVICE data.

After using it for a half an hour, I figured "well, I probably wouldn't use the browser on this device anyway." :-(

I think we are only a week away from a full clean Google Rom for the fire anyway :D