Kindle Fire

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Last week, at Walmart no less, I was staring at a Kindle Fire . I had just returned the iPad2 to my former employer and, as I had intended before they leased the iPad2, I was in the market for a Kindle Fire. As I stood there, a gentleman perhaps my age or older (you're in trouble when you can no longer tell) was looking at all the tablets on display. He assiduously started with the iPad2 on the left and worked his way all over to the Kindle Fire on the right, asking the Walmart employee fairly solid questions about each one. It became apparent that he had done some research and was making a decision. As he pondered the Kindle Fire with the low price, a gentleman fitted into an Army Reserve shirt started pressing him back to the iPad2.

He, of course, swore by the iPad2 and thought it was the greatest thing since MREs. To a large extent, he was right but it was clear that he had a dedicated use case. Despite my interest in cheap movies, I stepped in on the side of the Kindle Fire. For every application that he called out for the iPad2, I was able to call out an equivalent on the Android ¹. My Army friend's familiarity with the iPad2 was really what it was boiling down to, and then I tossed up the browser that Amazon uses uses the cloud itself to process things and thus speeding the browser on the Kindle Fire - at a lower price. He stared at me, and I balanced that with the fact that Congress had been looking into the browser itself as related to privacy.

It was clear that I had my new Army buddy in uncharted water, and he was nice enough to respect that. We agreed that it was basically about user experience - and the iPad2, hands down, still has a better user experience than most tablets. (Having had a Kindle Fire for about a week now, you can expect a post coming on that as well) However, I pointed out that Apple's app store was sometimes used to block competitors - and that when one looked at the stores available from Apple and Amazon, Amazon was the clear winner. Amazon, frankly, has more stuff and if you're intent on buying stuff, Amazon was an orgasm of consumption.

At this point, we started talking about a lot of different things, agreeing to disagree on platforms - he religiously defended the iPad2 while I was trying to be balanced between the two.

When Lego Mindstorms first came out, I was working at Honeywell in the area we called Muppet Labs. My mentor had brought in a naked furbie at one point, so when I ran out to Toys 'R' Us at lunch and came back with a Mindstorms kit - no one thought much of it. My cat at the time, Sprocket, was at the least mildly entertained with it until he decimated it with his pouncing from the refrigerator.

Recently I've been getting the Lego Mindstorm itch again - building physical things that I can program - and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the new set has Bluetooth ability. And - yes, someone has already written an Android application for the Lego Mindstorm NXT. I'm presently deciding whether to pick up the new set and play with it over the winter - in winter it helps to have something to do other than sit in front of a computer - but here's the thing: It's priced higher than a 16 gig iPad 2.

The kid in me, always right below the surface, wants the Mindstorms. The kid in me also wants a tablet PC. In a perfect economy, I would get both. As an adult, I'd rather support Lego than Apple as far as business practices go - Lego is still supporting the concept of hacking whereas Apple has gone in the other direction - where 'Think Different' means, 'Think Like We Tell you to. It's different. Trust us.' 

So how do I get a table PC and a tablet? I suppose I could get the Kindle Fire to balance it out. If the Kindle Fire had Bluetooth so I could connect to the Mindstorm with it, they'd probably both have sold one more.

The dilemma. The dilemma.

Hacking used to be a lot cheaper.

Life was simpler when Radio Shack was actually an electronics store.

With all the buzz about the Kindle Fire yesterday, I almost got caught up into pre-ordering the little beastie because deep down I really do want a gadget that I can work and play with. When I looked at the tablet market before, I was dismayed in that while many wants would be fulfilled by almost any candidate, some of my major needs aren't. 

In the context of the Kindle Fire, it has the USB connection and it's running Android. On the page on Amazon.com it says I can read documents. That's awesome, but just about as awesome as any other tablet that does... the same thing. As an old school geek, the concept of the browser (Amazon Silk) using the cloud for shared processing is sexy.

When it comes down to brass tacks, though, I would demand a lot more of such a tablet. I would want to try out the interface to see how well I could edit and write documents; I type messages longer than 140 characters and would want an interface that could handle it. A lesson learned came from the Asus eeePC I had (and recently gave to a niece who is continuing college, allegedly). No matter what I did, and with the small hands that might have allowed me to be a surgeon, using the keyboards on those things to write anything was a masochistic act unless one plugged in a real keyboard. I'm not falling for that again.

Android and a keyboard is hit and miss., thus the Kindle Fire with a keyboard is hit and miss. If they'd fix that, I'd get one of the roll up keyboards and be happy - but I don't know which keyboard won't do something wonky when I'm using it. The last thing I need are apps opening when I'm in the middle of typing something up, and apparently that happens with some keyboards.