Wife and I just bought Kindle Fire any good?

[clipperjay]

My father in law's birthday is on the 5th of Jan and we were stuck on what to buy so we settled on a Kindle Fire for reading books, a few PDF's and films. Didn't want to spend too much so HD was a bit expensive for us. But we managed to get it for £119 with a 10.00 discount from Tesco's there is a voucher code that discounts 10.00 if you spend over £50. So just to let you chaps know it works. 
So any advice on the Kindle Fire peeps?
Jay

[Thom89]

Jay, my son just bought a kindle for his mum for Christmas, not realising it wasn't back lit, we took it back to John Lewis yesterday, and I made up the difference to upgrade to a kindle fire hd... Well all I can say is she loves it! She's read a book cover to cover in one day! She hardly spoke all day
She was always adamant that she would never change from books to a gadget... We'll see!
Other features only back up the usability of the device, and also frees up lots of room in a suitcase when we go on holiday
We have an iPad2 which does pretty much the same job, but the size and price of the kindle, seem to make it a better option than an iPad mini
Battery lasted from 9.00am ish, to 3.30ish, then it was used plugged in till she finished the book, so not bad really, considering...
So far, it's a 10/10

Thom

[leigh_harty]

My mum got an HD for chrimbo... The touch screen function waz 'spazzy' and generally didnt work. Needless to say it was returned when tesco re-opened and a samsung tab2 took its place

Lets hope its a 1 off 

[DubFan]

My mother in law got a Kindle Fire HD for Christmas.
She's previously had an iPad and just didn't seem to get the whole "app" thing. She didn't understand that to do things you had to open an app, or download an app for that purpose.
But the Kindle is organised by Content type, so it's simpler for a non-techie/older person to understand. IE you have a page for Books, a page for Movies, a page for Music, etc.

The one big downside is that you can't do ANYTHING until you have got it set up with your Amazon account and this meant we had to set up an Amazon account from scratch (she still didn't like the idea of putting her card details into the interweb). This means that straight out of the box, you can't use it. So for a older person/parent, you will have to guide them through the setup (unless they are tech savvy).

[clipperjay]

great advice thanks not sure I understand about back lit thing Thom? I thought it lit up and job done unless you meant a external light on the back. not sure tbf. ill muck about with it then take it from their. I.vw got loads of mobi files already that I can stick onto the sd card but farther in law is getting more savvy as we got him a laptop last year and he can email eBay download etc.

[Jay]

The Kindle fire is good for the money, but if you cough up an extra £20 you get the Nexus 7 16G with twice as much storage or Kindle fire HD 16Gb and a technically better device (newer & faster CPU etc on the Nexus) - though you loose the Kindle's ease of use, but you gain so much more with it being a Nexus device (updates direct from Google). But I suspect the people who are getting the Kindle Fire's (& HD) are nontechnical and don't care much for tech specs.

I'm still not sold on Android tablets though   

[DubFan]

great advice thanks not sure I understand about back lit thing Thom?

I presume he's talking about the original Kindle e-reader, which is not backlit and not a tablet.

[clipperjay]

Hi Jay yeah if it was for me Nexus 7 or Samsung derivative, but like you said my father in law is about 60+ so keeping it simple and cheap is the way forward I can always root it later for apps and stuff, so not too bothered its not cutting edge after all its primary role is for reading. I'm not a fan of the lack of SD as its the 8gb, but still an average e-book is 150mb in size so no problems being hardwired memory.
Not sure if you can run a SD USB driven mem on it? If you can and it recognizes external mem formats for movies then its got another use?

 Dubfan

Thanks for clearing that up thought the white paperweight one was improved over the old one with built in back light.

TBF I just saw the deal and went for it
Funny we saw the Archos 80 go for about 50 odd pounds and thought that would be good for the kids, but wasn't impressed with the resolution and battery life on it? Guess you get what you pay for in the end as usual

[Jay]

Not had a look at what you can do with the Kindle Fire's after rooting them, what you'll want is a USB OTG mod if possible. USB OTG (On The Go) is a standard feature of the S3 and the USB OTG cables are 3 for £2 on Amazon and you can plug in any USB drive and access it using any file browser, it also works with BlueTooth devices so you can pair multiple BT devices with the phone, or a mouse... keyboard... 

[Thom89]

great advice thanks not sure I understand about back lit thing Thom? I thought it lit up and job done unless you meant a external light on the back. not sure tbf. ill muck about with it then take it from their. I.vw got loads of mobi files already that I can stick onto the sd card but farther in law is getting more savvy as we got him a laptop last year and he can email eBay download etc.

As far as I know Jay, the basic Kindle can't be read in the dark, unless there is an external light source, we started to look for covers with an inbuilt light, decent ones were getting towards the price of the Kindle!
We decided to upgrade tp the Paperwhite, but then saw for a few quid more, you could get the Fire, problem being that John Lewis had non in stock, so what the hell, we went for the Fire HD
All works perfectly, very pleased

Thom