The Kindle Fire is my single favorite piece of tech (well, the Roku is a close second). It took some doing to side-load everything on it but now that I've got Netflix, HBO Go, Firefox, Spotify, and the GoLauncher EX on it, I'm set.

I won a Fire at a business lunch/conference and it is freaking awesome.

I screwed up the root and Android market side-loading at first, but I got tons on there now.

Only thing is typing on it does not go as well as when I type on my iPhone. Sometimes the keyboard response is bad and sometimes I type a bunch of random letters.

Netflix looks great on it, I have words and draw something, and having company documents and study material on it is cool.

I miss it when I don't have a wireless connection nearby. I almost want to get the wifi hot spot thing on my phone just so I can use the kindle.

I bought an older Kindle from a friend and absolutely love it. The only weakness is that it's terrible if you want to check end-notes.

meanmutton: The Kindle Fire is my single favorite piece of tech (well, the Roku is a close second). It took some doing to side-load everything on it but now that I've got Netflix, HBO Go, Firefox, Spotify, and the GoLauncher EX on it, I'm set.

As an Amazon fanboy, I got a Roku so I could watch my Amazon video on my TV. The "free with Prime" section is intentionally disorganized while the same shows are meticulously organized in the pay side. Some shows fall into none of the silly categories they have created and can only be located by a text search. It feels like a slap in the face for someone who pays for Prime. All I use my Roku for now is PBS shows for my kid. I don't blame Roku, mind you.

I like my Kindle Fire for school stuff, but I don't usually watch video on it. Too many other devices do it better.

I get eye strain on the kindle fire, thankfully I have a second gen kindle also for when it gets bad

Got my wife one for xmas and we both love it. Couldn't stand the touch when I went to try it out and am more than happy with just the standard one (the latest gen with no keyboard). We don't type notes :P

I like Amazon, but my god, a P/E of 200?

The smart authors (cough cough) make sure their books are DRM Free and allow lending from a user's Kindle library. I'm fairly sure that we're within months of a tipping point for e-books (and self-published authors...the good ones that is) to start outselling traditional press. It's an exciting time that's for sure.

Amazon may go bankrupt (bonus: Apple stock will crash)

Amazon too high at $164 ($226 today). But that was written by a lawyer.

Amazon will stumble sooner or later

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Sybarite: The one thing I do miss is being able to loan them out to friends.

I was once one of those purists that said I would never give up "real" books. I was a fool

I was the same way, then I received one as a gift and realized just how wrong I was. Same thing happened to my girlfriend, kept claiming "I don't want a kindle, I'd rather have a book" until she found a book she liked on my kindle and stole the damn thing. I had to buy her one so I could have mine back.

One of my favorite things about it is the weight/comfort. I recently reread The Wheel of Time series, and the kindle experience doesn't even compare to the paperback. I hate those thick floppy paperbacks. I always have a hard time finding a comfortable reading position while laying down, not to mention they only last about two readings before the binding starts to break apart. Between that, and being able to travel with 1000 books in an 8 oz package, I don't think there's any reason to look back. Also, I read a lot more now that I have one.

Omnivorous: Amazon may go bankrupt (bonus: Apple stock will crash)

Amazon too high at $164 ($226 today). But that was written by a lawyer.

Amazon will stumble sooner or later

I've never understood this belief. There's no doubt that there will be a market for something like Amazon, and that market will only get larger as the population continues to get more tech savvy. Maybe I could understand if Amazon had awful support, or a glaringly bad website (although their searching does need some work IMO). But I pretty much use them for everything besides groceries, and in the rare event I need to return something, their customer service is so excellent and prompt that I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Hell, I broke my kindle, 100% my fault, and when I checked to see if I could return it, not only could I return it free of charge, but they sent me a new one before I sent them the broken one, and had me ship the broken one back in the box, also free of charge.

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Seth'n'Spectrum: I bought an older Kindle from a friend and absolutely love it. The only weakness is that it's terrible if you want to check end-notes.

Is it the Touch? I just got a Touch and the footnotes are really easy to use. Just tap the number and when you are done tap another to return.

Now, I have yet to buy a Terry Pratchett book and most my other reading does not have a ton of footnotes

I've read one footnote heavey book and the return tap was extremely annoying. It kept pulling down the menu instead of returning.

JonZoidberg: meanmutton: The Kindle Fire is my single favorite piece of tech (well, the Roku is a close second). It took some doing to side-load everything on it but now that I've got Netflix, HBO Go, Firefox, Spotify, and the GoLauncher EX on it, I'm set.

As an Amazon fanboy, I got a Roku so I could watch my Amazon video on my TV. The "free with Prime" section is intentionally disorganized while the same shows are meticulously organized in the pay side. Some shows fall into none of the silly categories they have created and can only be located by a text search. It feels like a slap in the face for someone who pays for Prime. All I use my Roku for now is PBS shows for my kid. I don't blame Roku, mind you.

I like my Kindle Fire for school stuff, but I don't usually watch video on it. Too many other devices do it better.

I just bought the second season of Young Ones. Thanks to Amazon Streaming I'm current.

/it's a joke...1980s

Sybarite: The Stealth Hippopotamus: Sybarite: The one thing I do miss is being able to loan them out to friends.

You cant loan all the books but you can loan a surprising large percentage of them.



Yeah, but "Here, I enjoyed this book. Read it at your leisure and get it back to me whenever you're done" just seems a world different from "You have access to this for 14 days, then it will vanish and I cannot loan it to you again." Plus, most of the people I know don't have a device for easily reading e-books. Sure, you can use a computer of a cell phone, but it's not much fun.

Calibre *taps nose*

bacongood: The Stealth Hippopotamus: Seth'n'Spectrum: I bought an older Kindle from a friend and absolutely love it. The only weakness is that it's terrible if you want to check end-notes.

Is it the Touch? I just got a Touch and the footnotes are really easy to use. Just tap the number and when you are done tap another to return.

Now, I have yet to buy a Terry Pratchett book and most my other reading does not have a ton of footnotes

I've read one footnote heavey book and the return tap was extremely annoying. It kept pulling down the menu instead of returning.

Disagree, foot notes work great on the fire, but they appear to be hit or miss on my e ink kindle or my Android phone app for returning you to the correct spot.

mtb9000: I've never understood this belief. There's no doubt that there will be a market for something like Amazon, and that market will only get larger as the population continues to get more tech savvy.

"Stumble" here doesn't mean in an absolute sense, but relative to their stock valuation. Amazon is a great company with great prospects, but it's being priced like they're Pets.com in 1999. (Incidentally, that was an Amazon-backed company, so they are capable of stumbling.)

A good comparison is NetFlix, another high-flyer lifted by the tech-savvy. It was brought rudely down to earth by some missteps. NetFlix may recover their old valuation, but it's going to be the old-fashioned way, through revenue and profit growth.

One of Amazon's biggest problems are sellers on Amazon. They rip people off and Amazon backs them quite often.

I was told three times my item had shipped when in reality the company merely reserved a USPS Priority Mail tracking number without giving the package to USPS. The seller told Amazon and me that the item shipped. 5 days later USPS still hadn't received the item.

Love me some Amazon. As someone else said, the Fire is my favorite tech gadget. It finally got me on board with ebooks after having ruled them out with the earlier Kindles and some other Sony device. It probably sounds odd, but I actually prefer the smaller size compared to my wife's iPad and the $99 HP tablet I nabbed last year. I never could get used to them.

Prime seems like a steal now too. My wife and I had it when the only thing it provided was 2 day delivery on purchases. All the free video and now the books that come with it is icing on the cake.

Love Bezos' take on customer service. " if you need to utilize customer service, we've already failed at some point." I'm paraphrasing but that's a mighty respectable view of the relationship between seller and customer. I buy everything on Amazon. Have only needed to use customer service once and it was a completely painless experience.

JonZoidberg: The "free with Prime" section is intentionally disorganized while the same shows are meticulously organized in the pay side.

That pretty much that same story with free checkout of books. There is no way in the web browser to checkout a book and send it to a Kindle and searching on the Kindle is a pain. You pretty much have to find the book you want in a web browser and then type the title into the Kindle. It's even more misleading because the browser version will claim you can checkout the book for free but give you no way of doing it. I wonder how many people have accidently purchased an ebook when they were trying to do a checkout instead? I love the Kindle and use mine all the time but this part of the Kindle and Prime seems to be intentionally designed to create accidental purchases. It won't surprise me one bit if in a year or two we all get "10% the full purchase price of $100 of ebooks from this very short list of old titles no one wants" coupon as the result of a class action lawsuit.

/Amazon you've got a big money maker here, don't screw it up trying to increase sales by 0.004% through deception

EngineerAU: JonZoidberg: The "free with Prime" section is intentionally disorganized while the same shows are meticulously organized in the pay side.

That pretty much that same story with free checkout of books. There is no way in the web browser to checkout a book and send it to a Kindle and searching on the Kindle is a pain. You pretty much have to find the book you want in a web browser and then type the title into the Kindle. It's even more misleading because the browser version will claim you can checkout the book for free but give you no way of doing it. I wonder how many people have accidently purchased an ebook when they were trying to do a checkout instead? I love the Kindle and use mine all the time but this part of the Kindle and Prime seems to be intentionally designed to create accidental purchases. It won't surprise me one bit if in a year or two we all get "10% the full purchase price of $100 of ebooks from this very short list of old titles no one wants" coupon as the result of a class action lawsuit.

/Amazon you've got a big money maker here, don't screw it up trying to increase sales by 0.004% through deception

Same thing happened to me on the Roku. A software update was downloaded months ago and I went to look at the new menus and found everything so much more well organized and easy to find. I immediately tried to start a show for my son then stopped just short of accidentally purchasing a show. I didn't realize I was in the pay section. I backed out of the pay side and back into the mess of Prime videos. I bought prime before the videos and they aren't why I have the membership. If my need for Amazon as a vendor decreases, I'll drop prime no question. The video side isn't going to keep me there.

Kindle app on iPad rocks.

Shrugging Atlas: Love me some Amazon. As someone else said, the Fire is my favorite tech gadget. It finally got me on board with ebooks after having ruled them out with the earlier Kindles and some other Sony device. It probably sounds odd, but I actually prefer the smaller size compared to my wife's iPad and the $99 HP tablet I nabbed last year. I never could get used to them.

Prime seems like a steal now too. My wife and I had it when the only thing it provided was 2 day delivery on purchases. All the free video and now the books that come with it is icing on the cake.

I like Prime because more than I expect some things arrive after one-day shipping. And I've bought a lot of stuff through Amazon that I'd otherwise buy in the mall. I got a nice leather jacket that costs at least $50 more than Amazon's price. I got my Transformer Pad through them as well. And there are some nice free movies on Prime, but I wind up paying for streaming stuff more than watching free stuff (like Archer, Walking Dead, Mad Men).

And even returning things through Amazon is easy. The original leather jacket had a flaw. When I contacted Amazon about it, they sent me a replacement jacket and gave me 30 days to return the defective one before I was charged for both. Lately if I need something, the first place I look for an item is on Amazon, then compare prices from there. It's been a few times when they didn't have the lowest price.

EngineerAU: JonZoidberg: The "free with Prime" section is intentionally disorganized while the same shows are meticulously organized in the pay side.

That pretty much that same story with free checkout of books. There is no way in the web browser to checkout a book and send it to a Kindle and searching on the Kindle is a pain. You pretty much have to find the book you want in a web browser and then type the title into the Kindle. It's even more misleading because the browser version will claim you can checkout the book for free but give you no way of doing it. I wonder how many people have accidently purchased an ebook when they were trying to do a checkout instead? I love the Kindle and use mine all the time but this part of the Kindle and Prime seems to be intentionally designed to create accidental purchases. It won't surprise me one bit if in a year or two we all get "10% the full purchase price of $100 of ebooks from this very short list of old titles no one wants" coupon as the result of a class action lawsuit.

/Amazon you've got a big money maker here, don't screw it up trying to increase sales by 0.004% through deception

I may be misunderstanding your comment, but I thought that I would pass this along just in case. You can search for all the Lender's Library books in your computer's web browser. You still have to check them out on the Kindle itself, but the searching is much easier because you are on your computer instead of the shiatty web browser of the Kindle. URL for the search:

Link

mtb9000: Hell, I broke my kindle, 100% my fault, and when I checked to see if I could return it, not only could I return it free of charge, but they sent me a new one before I sent them the broken one, and had me ship the broken one back in the box, also free of charge.

Mine got an "ink" splodge. I contacted Amazon, and it was less than 48 hours before my replacement arrived. They told me not to ship back the recharging cord, but the new one had its own. So now I have a car cord and a house cord.

I didn't think I wanted a kindle, but I received one as a graduation gift. It sat around for a month before I started putting books on it, but since then, it's been almost the only thing I read. Of course, I started tracking down downloads of things I already owned in paper format, old favorites, that sort of thing- I haven't actually "bought" anything for it yet. But the idea of someday having a digital format of every book I own is very, very compelling. I try to imagine what that would be like- my house, without two dozen bookshelves and umpteen boxes of "stored" books...my house would be so empty.

Omnivorous: Amazon may go bankrupt (bonus: Apple stock will crash)





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skinink: And even returning things through Amazon is easy. The original leather jacket had a flaw. When I contacted Amazon about it, they sent me a replacement jacket and gave me 30 days to return the defective one before I was charged for both. Lately if I need something, the first place I look for an item is on Amazon, then compare prices from there. It's been a few times when they didn't have the lowest price.

Honestly the ease of returns with them for me was probably the final straw with buying anything in a brick and mortar store. In terms of the time involved for me to be personally involved with the return/exchange it's faster to go with Amazon then go wait in line at Best Buy.

My first Fire had a dead pixel that I first noticed about a month after I bought it. I called them, spoke with an actual human who at least sounded sorry for the problem, and they shipped me a new one no questions asked and simply requested I return the bad one within 30 days using the shipping package the new one came in. Aside from the phonecall the only other thing I needed to do was drop it off at a UPS store which took all of about 30 seconds.

I bought a canister filter for my salt water aquarium. Giant ass thing. Anyway, after about a week of using it I decided it wasn't going to cut it. They took it back no questions asked and refunded the cost.

Amazon is absolutely the only store/retailer/whatever about which I can honestly say I've never had a single problem. And given the amount my wife and I use them I find that to be amazing.

I feel sort of vindicated right now.

I have been buying a few shares of AMZN every time it gets down into the 170's. It is always really frustrating to see the stock price take a hit because investors feel that amazon is investing too much money into development. I thought the point of buying stock was to own part of a company that you feel is going to appreciate as an asset.

Now it is rocketing up because the big trading firms think amazon is cashing in. I will keep a buy order open at 180 for next quarter when Amazon re-invests their profits, and everyone bails because their earnings were not high enough.


What happened to judging a companies business model to see if it is a good investment?

veale728: Omnivorous: Amazon may go bankrupt (bonus: Apple stock will crash)

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Well, that explains the article.

mtb9000: Hell, I broke my kindle, 100% my fault, and when I checked to see if I could return it, not only could I return it free of charge, but they sent me a new one before I sent them the broken one, and had me ship the broken one back in the box, also free of charge.

They might be good within the US, but I found their return system to be a complete pain in the arse for me here in Australia. It also seemed like a ridiculous waste of their money.

The Kindle they sent (which was to be the second one on an account) wasn't properly associated with the account. It took me over an hour and a half to explain that to the customer service person, who kept thinking it was a wi-fi problem even though it was quite happily connecting to wifi, just wouldn't connect to the account (I'd used the "call me back" option, so at least they were paying for the international call). I was a bit frustrated that it took so long for her to agree it was broken, but it was possibly a very rare fault, these things happen, so no worries ...

To get a replacement sent immediately, I had to pay again. To get a refund on the first one, I had to wait for them to receive it AND have them agree that it was faulty. I had the money to do that without a problem, and I was sure it wasn't a PEBKAC issue, so it wasn't a real drama, but it seems a little unfair that it was so easy for the rest of you.

Then they sent a UPS free shipping form. Which was nice, but when I looked it up, there was no UPS office in my state. Closest one is in Adelaide, 1325 miles away. So I phoned them back and asked if I should send it Australia Post, and if they'd then cover the bill (which I was estimating to be around $80). It took 4 different customer service people before I got one who understood that it's possible to live somewhere where the closest UPS is a long, long way away. Which confused the hell out of me. Surely Amazon.us gets return requests from non-Americans every so often? You'd think there'd be some kind of standard procedure for this. (To be fair, I just quickly checked their returns policy ... it now clearly states what to do if there's no UPS available, but this happened 2010. There was nothing like that posted back then & the customer service operators seemed to have no clue.) Anyway, the final guy said, "okay, send it Australia Post, and we'll refund the postage - once we agree the Kindle is defective".

Then I found out that Australia Post had recently decided they wouldn't fly Kindles any more (something about batteries catching on fire and fire on planes being bad). Amazon's return policy says Kindles have small lithium batteries, so they don't need special documentation, but Australia Post disagrees (or did at the time). I thought thought I was going to have to ship the thing literally by ship ... which was going to take weeks, so I phoned to see if they could extend the return window. After another round of getting transferred up the customer service chain, explaining the problem each time, I finally got hold of someone who understood that Australia Post are unusually paranoid, ships are slow, and Australia is a very long way from the US, and who had the power to extend the return window.

Then I came up with the bright idea of using Australia Post to get it Adelaide via road, then UPS to fly it to the US. (Yeah, I should've thought of this earlier, but by now I'd spent several hours on this and wasn't thinking clearly.)

When I called UPS in Adelaide to check how they wanted it packed, it turned out they do have a small office here in Perth, even though it's not a formal drop-off point and not listed on their website, and they'd be quite happy to hire a local non-UPS courier out to pick it up from my house and bill Amazon rather than me.

Is there a word/phrase that encapsulates a simultaneous feeling of relief and frustration that it took so damn long to find the solution? There's probably something in German that covers it. Since I only speak English I was kind of limited to smacking my head on the desk a few times and yelling "aarrgh!"

Anyway, aside from the frustration and time, I know Amazon gets a discount with UPS, and probably with the phone company, so this must've cost them less than it would've cost me, but it still seems like it would've been cheaper for me to just toss the non-working Kindle. Googling it later, I found several Aussies with problem Kindles were told to do just that.

On the bright side, the replacement Kindle works just fine, and the refund was eventually processed. It was only the return process that was a pain. Now that Kindles are available from bricks-and-mortar stores here (at the time they weren't) I've been telling my friends to get one, but to pay a bit more and buy it from a physical store rather than risk dealing with international returns. But perhaps I've been a bit harsh. Since they've added notes about non-UPS returns and flying lithium batteries, they've obviously recognised that some of us had problems. It might be easier now.

The Stealth Hippopotamus: I love my Kindle. I buy books in the middle of the night and never have to get out of bed. It stays open when I put it on the lunch table. And it weighs less than a third of any George R. R. Martin book.

I tore something in my shoulder by reading a hard-cover George R.R. Martin book in bed and awkwardly trying to hold it up with one hand while I rolled over. I thought, "Ouch! Well that was dumb!" when I did it, but I thought I'd only lightly pulled something. The next day I realised that while it hurt a bit to raise my arm to shoulder level, I simply couldn't raise it any higher ... not from pain, I could easily lift that arm up by using my other hand, but nothing would happen if I tried to move it on its own. Took about a month to heal.

I'm sure I can't be the only one with a daft hardcover-related injury.