Amazon Kindle Fire

[DaddyHoggy]

I'm presuming that at $199 (therefore probably at least £200) this is a loss leader by Amazon to make it incredibly easy to buy digital content and thus make a profit overall (the same approach HP take when selling printers...)

http://www.gizmag.com/amazon-kindle-fire-tablet/19981/

[Disembodied]

I'm presuming that at $199 (therefore probably at least £200) this is a loss leader by Amazon to make it incredibly easy to buy digital content and thus make a profit overall (the same approach HP take when selling printers...)

http://www.gizmag.com/amazon-kindle-fire-tablet/19981/

That's a possibility, although if so it's the opposite approach to the one they took with the original Kindles. It'll be interesting to see how this impacts on the Kindle ebook reader (which starts to look seriously overpriced at its current US price of $189). I know they've got a cheaper, £89 e-ink Kindle, without the keyboard, in the pipes ... maybe this is a sign that they're abandoning the idea that a dedicated ebook reader will compete against the tablet market? The reason they've never actually published how many Kindles have been sold is supposedly to avoid unflattering comparisons with the numbers of iPads sold:

"How many Kindles have you sold, Jeff?"
"Loads. Loads and loads."
"Exactly how many is that?"
"Ooh, bings, Heaps, masses, buckets, hunners ... no, not hunners! That's too close to a number. Don't quote me on that or I'll eat your face!" (I paraphrase. Slightly. )

[drew]

Useless as an ebook reader though. Backlit screen, nuff said.

I'll be sticking to my 'legacy' Kindle, thanks.

And as for the one without a keyboard... well, duh.

Cheers,

Drew.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Looking at the topic title I thought maybe somebody set a warehouse on fire. Well, save the marshmallows for the next one, singin' cumbya and all that.

[DaddyHoggy]

The screen of the Kindle Fire is apparently 1024x600 which for a 7" across the diagonal is 169dpi according to the reviews - I thought this was quite low, but having checked the current e-Ink Kindle is 167dpi and the DX is only 150dpi, the advantage of these as Drew has indicated is not having the backlit screen means it reads more like a proper page (and being eInk is very low power).

1024x600 is an odd screen size if they're going to be persuading you to buy/rent films. 1280x720 would at least got you into the realms of pseudo-HD.

Since I'm not a great fan of Amazon or Apple I'm quite happy for Amazon to offer an alternative to Apple's end-to-end control of a Market space with one of their own - even if it just drives down the respective costs to those who have already fallen into their "One device to rule them all" trap.

[Disembodied]

1024x600 is an odd screen size if they're going to be persuading you to buy/rent films. 1280x720 would at least got you into the realms of pseudo-HD.

That is a pretty bizarre choice, given that streaming video will be the main function of most tablets (I imagine). Of course, it's always possible that Amazon, like many other corporations, are making multimillion dollar decisions largely at random. It's not like they've ever been what you might call "smart" or "skilled": they introduced (or glommed on to) some basic ideas about e-shopping but it took them ten years to start turning a profit; they were kept going only by the sheer inertia of all the money they managed to suck in during the dotcom boom 1.0. It's more by chance than anything else that they squeezed through that bottleneck. Jeff obviously fancies himself as the next Steve Jobs but I don't think he's twigged that there's maybe more to it than just tucking your poloneck into your jeans.

I don't think Apple have too much to worry about from this, myself. The iPad is a lot more expensive but you get a lot more for it. There's probably room in the market for a bottom-end device but Amazon's is looking more like an oversized iPod than an undersized iPad. Plus there's the Apple Kool-Aid effect. Amazon has a huge customer base too but I don't think there's that hypnotic quality about their stuff.

[Wyvern Mommy]

1024x600 is an odd screen size if they're going to be persuading you to buy/rent films. 1280x720 would at least got you into the realms of pseudo-HD.

that's what is now sold as "wide SVGA", in other words, the original SVGA size of 800x600 widened to 16:9 (actually 16:9.375), so actually given the small size, close to the optimal screen ratio.

[DaddyHoggy]

1024x600 is an odd screen size if they're going to be persuading you to buy/rent films. 1280x720 would at least got you into the realms of pseudo-HD.

that's what is now sold as "wide SVGA", in other words, the original SVGA size of 800x600 widened to 16:9 (actually 16:9.375), so actually given the small size, close to the optimal screen ratio.

Close to optimal for what? Certainly not HD "ready" - which for a device which is main function will be to give you streaming/purchasing/renting of Amazon's vast catalogue of films is fairly pointless - since anything - including Broadcast quality HD is at least 720p - so the device will have interpolate the res of any HD content with all the nasty effects that invariably accompany such effort/compression.

[Wyvern Mommy]

1024x600 is an odd screen size if they're going to be persuading you to buy/rent films. 1280x720 would at least got you into the realms of pseudo-HD.

that's what is now sold as "wide SVGA", in other words, the original SVGA size of 800x600 widened to 16:9 (actually 16:9.375), so actually given the small size, close to the optimal screen ratio.

Close to optimal for what? Certainly not HD "ready" - which for a device which is main function will be to give you streaming/purchasing/renting of Amazon's vast catalogue of films is fairly pointless - since anything - including Broadcast quality HD is at least 720p - so the device will have interpolate the res of any HD content with all the nasty effects that invariably accompany such effort/compression.

talking screen format, not screen resolution....

of course a bigger screen would give a better resolution, but it also would be ... bigger.

[DaddyHoggy]

Why bigger? The 7.0" Archos manages 1280x720...

http://www.monstermarketplace.com/whole ... p-archos-7

[Wyvern Mommy]

Details
Archos 7 Tablet PC Archos 7 tablet PC is not only a portable tablet PC, but also good at multimedia playback, It features 7.0 inch TFT LCD, resistance touch screen, 800x480 pixels, adopts ARM926EJ CPU, 600MHz, 128M RAM, DSP+CPU dual cores, runs much faster.

no comment

[DaddyHoggy]

Details
Archos 7 Tablet PC Archos 7 tablet PC is not only a portable tablet PC, but also good at multimedia playback, It features 7.0 inch TFT LCD, resistance touch screen, 800x480 pixels, adopts ARM926EJ CPU, 600MHz, 128M RAM, DSP+CPU dual cores, runs much faster.

no comment

D'oh! You're quite right - it can playback 1280x720, that's what happens when you do a "Find" on a page rather than reading it fully!!

480x800 is the same res as my wife's 4.3" HTC Desire S, which is well over 200dpi...

[DaddyHoggy]

We may be getting there with small (4.5") HD screens though: http://dailygadgetreview.net/2011/05/19 ... creen.html

[DaddyHoggy]

Ah, it took a while, but the new Nexus will be 1280x720p

http://www.gizmag.com/samsung-galaxy-ne ... ich/20211/

(As an aside, does anybody know why Android OSes have such odd names?)

[JazHaz]

Can someone port Oolite to Kindle?