Blatantly ripped off from BGR - who had excellent live-blogging coverage of the Amazon event - when compared to TechCrunchs very lame attempt.
I was happy to see that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos released not just the Amazon Fire Kindle, but three other gadgets – all with great prices. I was unhappy to see that only one of them is available in Thailand and most other countries – the lamest one.
Such is the way life is lived in Thailand – we never have the latest and greatest – but we’ve peace of mind. Sometimes. You know – when there isn’t any fighting in Bangkok, and you aren’t visiting the south where monks, teachers, and kids are regularly murdered, and sometimes beheaded.
Anyway, getting back to the point… Amazon whacked a big grand-slam with these 4 ereaders and I am sure that sales of our ebooks will take off faster than the speed of light – again. In fact, this is probably the tipping point where ereaders become very mainstream and there is just no excuse to be carrying around a paperback book any longer. I’ve given you 50 reasons ebooks are better than books a while back, and there are now four more Kindles to make it 54.
Disappointing, but expected:
- no international shipping of the Kindle Fire or two of the other three new models
- no microphone, no camera on the new Kindle Fire – it is NOT competing with the iPad – at all
- only 8 hours battery life on the new Fire – and that is reading books
- only 7.5 hours battery life if you’re watching video on the Fire
- no dual headphone jacks for 2 people to watch the same rented video
Other than that, I’m really excited about the new offerings from Amazon. Sure I haven’t seen how any of them work, but it doesn’t really matter. As long as they get a B+ from buyers that will talk about them online – Amazon has just increased my paycheck by a substantial amount – I’m sure of that.
Kindle
Latest E-ink technology – still black and white. Good battery which lasts like a month. Smaller than Kindle WIFI of yesterday. Has WIFI – no 3G. Amazon is shipping this little beast internationally – but who will want it when looking at the other three? It is $79 – which is a VERY nice gift price for the holidays, and thank Buddha they removed the stupid plastic button keypad that was worthless to begin with. There are some buttons at the bottom. It has an on-screen keyboard to use with the arrows and other buttons. It’s a great price if you’re poor and want an ebook reader. What it is not is the next Kindle – the Kindle Touch.
Kindle Touch & Kindle Touch 3G
There is a new Kindle Touch for just $99. It is also black and white E-ink tech, and has an infrared touch screen to make it more pleasant to interact with. What’s cool is, the old one was $139 with the silly keypad buttons. This one is also the same size as the new Kindle – 6.5″. There is a WIFI and a 3G version. Here in Thailand I’d just get the WIFI – we STILL don’t have 3G with any reliability… and may not for years.
Kindle Fire
7″, Color, 169 dpi touch-screen, Gorilla Glass, ereader, movie player – 2 speakers at the top of the device, WIFI and free 3G. The new Kindle Fire is a really nice device – whether you need it to read ebooks, watch movies, or maybe for mp3′s – but I’ll bet the on-board speakers suck. One big weakness is that battery life is just 8 hours – if reading a book. That isn’t going to cut it – but maybe, just maybe, there will be other battery options to extend the life of the batteries before long. Otherwise I’d need 3 Kindle Fire’s to travel from Thailand to East coast USA (24 hour flights). It is supposed to do 7.5 hours of video though.
Does that make sense? Maybe the 8 hours of book reading was an error on the site?
Anyway – there is a LOT to digest. Head over to Amazon.com and type Kindle Fire into the search and start reading.
This is a VERY good step toward encouraging many new people to buy ereader devices. Now they are cheap enough and, in the case of the Kindle Fire – do a lot more than just pull up ebooks to read. This is not a giant multimedia device like the iPad. It is not a $500 device, like the iPad. It is not anything like the iPad – but, it will have a lot of applications from the Android store to keep kids and tinkerers happy.
New Amazon Kindle Fire Color Multitouch Tablet – eReader:
New Amazon Kindle Touch eReader:
New Amazon Kindle eReader:
Related posts:
{ 0 comments… add one now }