Pros and Cons of the Kindle Fire: You Decide

As with all things in life there are two sides to everything. The Amazon Kindle Fire is no exception. And to some not all pros and cons carry the equal weight. Lets take another look at the Kindle Fire from Amazon.

Unlike many of the tablets on the market today, the Kindle Fire only has a 7 inch wide-angle HD display. Most other tablets come with a 10 inch display. But Kindle Fire display size makes it less bulky and portable enough to carry in a small purse or inside jacket pocket. Furthermore the Kindle Fire display is double the size of your cell phone display. Is size everything?

The Kindle Fire pro on storage is hardly the 8 gig of internal storage but rather the unlimited cloud storage available on Amazon's network servers. Having said that, 8 gig of internal storage is enough for 80 apps, plus 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books enough to keep one occupied for hours.

The top-mounted stereo speakers are a plus but the Kindle Fire only supports the 3.5 mm stereo audio jack connection. Blue-Tooth support for stereo sound would have been nice. However to be honest I have never used Blue-Tooth headphones with my iPad.

As for supported content formats, Kindle Fire supports a wealth of media and application formats including Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, and VP8. As I read this list the one missing file extension that sticks out is .mov. Only you might know the significance of that omission.

Over 100,000 movies and TV shows, including thousands of new releases and your favorite TV shows, are available to stream or download, purchase or rent. Furthermore Amazon Prime members have access to over 10,000 streaming tv shows and videos along with the other benefits of being an Amazon Prime member. Which by the way comes free for the first 30 days after purchase of you Kindle Fire. The con is that Amazon Prime will cost you $79 /year to continue that access.

The missing 3g support may be a show stopper for some. However the Wi-Fi support allows the Kindle Fire to connect to any local wi-fi network or hotspot. Yes, the is the inconvenience of requesting the hotspot's password but you will only need to do that once. Furthermore, Verizon's My-Fi allows you to create your own hotspot where ever you like for $20/month and allow up to 5 connections to you Wi-Fi hub.

The absence of a microphone and video camera may be significant to some. But I am not sure its a show stopper for many.

Lastly is the buzz of about privacy fears. That Amazon is splitting Amazon's Silk web processing with its own servers requires that the log your ip, MAC address, and URL's or as much as 30 days. We live in an age of micro-marketing fueled by tracking your every dime spent in your local grocery store, department store, and on the internet. Why do you think the cashier asks if you have a store card (Best Buy, CVS, Rite Aid, and so many more) when checking out your purchase? Do you think Apple is not paying attention to your purchases on iTunes or URL traffic from the web browser on your iPad. What makes you think your cell phone or internet provider isn't doing the same?

For many, the final decision will be based on the price point.

The Kindle Fire is hard to ignore at $199.