Glenn Fleishman reviews the Kindle Fire for The Economist: "The Fire is not an iPad killer. But nor does it need to be."

  • Nimdae

    I actually wanted to read this article, but I can’t on my netbook.

    I use Chrome on my netbook. I have flash disabled. This has greatly improved performance of the web on my netbook. However, Economist hangs my browser (most likely due to some terrible javascript).

    Why does Economist require a computer that is capable of playing Crysis?

    • not a doktor

      Why does Economist require a computer that is capable of playing Crysis?

      Well I guess they’re not being digitally *sunglasses* economical.

    • Marktech

      I use Chrome on my netbook. I have flash disabled. This has greatly improved performance of the web on my netbook.

      I used to use Chromium on my netbook and desktop (I used an extension to opt in to flash).  Oddly enough, the only site which always caused problems for me is post-Disqus boingboing, both on the netbook and on my desktop; if I had more than a very few boingboing tabs open, they would just suck up memory and die.

      From the review, the Kindle Fire does sound tempting despite having only 8GB internal storage; that’s if we transPondians are ever allowed it.

  • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

    ROB! Enough with your Apple fanboi-dom already! We get it already “device x isn’t as good as Apple device Y”.

    /sarcasm

  • Nicholas Goodman

    Nice.

  • davegroff

    I’m interested in the Fire as well. One of the comments in the original post wonders if one can change fonts — they point out the previous Kindles did not allow this kind of user control. That would be a concern to me, as one of the attraction of an Android tablet is openness. 
    Have any mutants played with the Fire? (Loaded question, I know)

  • hnice

    I have one. This review hits it on the head: it’s a pretty robust media consumption device. Between Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon’s video / music / books, there’s really nothing the iPad can do that this can’t in that department. Browser performance is fine. Also, games are not bad, and those apps that make it into the Amazon store (or that you can sideload) work comparably. To the extent that you’re handing your ipad to your kid so they can watch Dora, Fire does the job.

    The question really is, is the incremental functionality — GPS, camera-related things, some of the content-creation stuff, the larger screen — worth an incremental $300 to $600 to you. If so, iPad. If not, Fire.

    Also, the speakers are pretty limited. There’s a full-on negative comment. 

  • Martin Cosette

    As a Canadian, the Kindle Fire is just a big tease. For Amazon, Canada is no different than a country such as South Africa; they offer the bare minimum.

    They will probably sell the Fire here only when a second generation will come out in the States.  They will just send the unsold first-generation Fires up here…

    Canada: so close, yet so far!

  • lavardera

    so isn’t this just somebody else’s android tablet re-branded?