I was fortunate enough to receive a Kindle Fire for Christmas and although my time on it has been limited, I thought I’d share a few of my experiences. You may wonder why I consider two months of ownership to be “limited,” but trying to pry the device out of my wife’s sweaty hands after we downloaded the free Angry Birds app was much, much harder than I expected.
Honestly, she's killed enough pigs to feed a small country.
First off, if you’re a sucker for buying books and music and such, stay away from this thing, especially if you find touching buttons labeled “Buy Now” to be even slightly pleasurable. I’m not kidding. This device was designed to make you want to buy stuff. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that! I hope to one day see my book sitting next to that little button.)
The surest way to safeguard your bank account is to buy just a few books and then immediately smash your wireless router. You’ll have to keep buying new routers every time you want to purchase more books, of course, but you’ll still save money in the long run. Trust me. Once you adopt this strategy, however, you’ll have to pay attention to where you go when you’re got the Kindle with you. Visiting places which offer free WiFi is right out.
There are many free books and apps to be had at Amazon, so it’s not like you’re always spending money. My kids have gotten very good at finding little games for free. There’s nothing quite so scary as sitting in front of your computer at work and seeing all these “Amazon thanks you for your recent purchase” emails pouring into your inbox, which get sent even if the purchased product is free.
The Fire doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the iPad does, but I don’t care. It does what I need it to do and it’s easier to carry around. I can surf the net and watch Youtube videos. I can check my email and Facebook and Twitter (although I’m so bad about keeping up with the last two, it doesn’t really matter). I can even work on my WIP using a $15 app which lets me edit Word files. I wouldn’t recommend using any tablet for a first draft (unless you have lots of time and patience), but for editing, it’s not too bad. Oh, I almost forgot -- I can read books on it too.
I have to go now. There are more levels of Plants vs. Zombies to complete.
Website of Ken Rahmoeller -- fantasy author, chemist, and lover of all things Hogwarts (Photo Courtesy of Scarluuk)
My husband got both and IPad and a Kindle Fire for Christmas. He's a gamer, so he mostly uses the IPad and has tons of games on it. That leaves me to use the Fire and I love it. I don't like casual games like Angry Birds, I just read on it. And it's a great reading experience. I love paper books, but ereaders are definitely superior in a number of ways.
ReplyDeleteI still like paper books too, but the convenience of carrying around tons of books at once can be seductive. Also there's the fact that you can play music while you read. At least I think you can. Not sure if I've ever tried that.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean you enjoy the less casual games?
I want a Kindle Fire but the Fire isn't available here, and I would have to actually leave the house occasionally to justify the purchase :-)
ReplyDelete