Amazon shook things up last year with the introduction of its own media tablet, the Kindle Fire. I was one of the early adopters and mine is still going strong. Not a full-fledged tablet but more of an enlarged media player, the Kindle Fire integrates extremely well with Amazon's ecosystem. Want to read Kindle books, watch Amazon Prime movies or run apps from Amazon's Android app store? Then the Kindle is just what the media doctor ordered.
And today's the day to buy one as you can score the original 7-inch Kindle today only for $129. That's $30 below the regular selling price and $70 below the original price. Just be sure to provide a promotion code (coupon code) of FIREDEAL at Checkout:
The Kindle Fire runs a variant of Android's Gingerbread (2.3) operating system. It includes its own "cloud-enhanced" web browser called Silk which is designed to provide a tablet-optimized viewing experience.
One thing I got hooked on early on was Amazon's Free App of the Day. Within a few weeks, I had built up a pretty large selection of apps. And when I purchased a Samsung Galaxy SIII phone, I was able to port over just about all of these apps to the phone without any problems or any additional charges.
Also, the Kindle eReader app is pre-installed on the Kindle Fire so you can bring over books from your existing Kindle library, or set up a brand new one. Amazon WhisperSync automatically synchronizes your reading position across multiple Kindle devices, just as with the e-ink Kindles.
For media playback, of course you'll find Amazon Video on Demand on board, so you can rent any of Amazon's VOD titles. Amazon Prime customers can also choose from a selection of over 20,000 titles that you can stream for no additional charge. And recently Amazon has built this selection up to rival (if not surpass) Netflix. When my wife wanted to watch season two of "Downton Abbey," it was nowhere to be found on Netflix but we were able to view the whole season for free with Amazon Prime. But if you're a Netflix fan, you'll find that here too, as well as a number of other audio and video streaming apps.
As far as app and game selection, the Kindle does not have access to the full Google Play Store, used by other Android tablets, but it does have access to Amazon's own app store for Android. These are "Fire-certified" apps that Amazon pre-screens to be compatible with their devices. The selection may not be quite as robust but there are still plenty of apps from which to choose (thousands) including all of the popular casual games: Plants vs. Zombies, Words with Friends, Angry Birds, Where's My Water, Minecraft, etc., etc. In fact, on a recent trip my 8-year-old son wanted to bring along the Kindle Fire instead of his Nintendo 3DS, mostly due to the huge selection of (inexpensive) games on the Kindle. That should tell you something about its gaming potential.
Note: if you are buying this as a gift and do not want to have the Kindle set-up for your existing Amazon account, then be sure to specify that at check-out. This way it will be delivered unconfigured, allowing the recipient to log in using their own account credentials.
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