Kindle Fire 7 ad

As most of the developed world now knows, yesterday marked the debut of Amazon’s new range of Kindle Fire tablets. And yesterday I had a demo of just how fast Amazon’s delivery can be – and how keen the company is to get you Kindled up ASAP.

I ordered a new Kindle Fire 7 as a test-bed for TeleRead’s coverage of the new Kindle ecosystem going forward. (And for my own ereading pleasure, of course.) Actually, my parents pre-ordered it for me, as Amazon hasn’t ventured into Hungary yet. They live in the wilds of Hampshire, in a country cottage 20 minutes from the nearest town, where the loudest noise at night is often fox cries. Yet last night, at 9.30pm local time, they had a knock on the door, and my new Kindle Fire 7 was delivered to them. Yes, despite predictions of low stock levels and long waiting times at launch, my Kindle Fire 7 was delivered, after hours, to the remote countryside, on the actual launch day.

I may have been really lucky with the pre-order. Amazon’s UK site is now showing the Kindle Fire 7 as in stock from October 20th onwards. I’m not sure what waiting times other eager buyers elsewhere will be looking at. But never fear: I’ll be giving you feedback on the user experience and tips and tricks with mine. Once it arrives in Budapest by post from the UK, that is …

 

3 COMMENTS

  1. @Paul and @Chris: As publisher of TeleRead, I eagerly await impressions of the Fire from both of you. We’ve always been keen on divide issues, so a 7″ $50 tablet from a name brand like Amazon definitely has my attention. My own Fire will come later this month. We’ll see how useful it can be for not only copyrighted books but also the reading of nonDRMed free content from sites such as Feedbooks (also commercial) and Project Gutenberg. Meanwhile I’d encourage folks to submit Fire questions that Paul and Chris can answer.

  2. Yes, like David I’d be interested, for the sake of the budget-challenged (aka miserly tightwads), to know if sources such as Project Gutenberg (public domain books), Librivox (pd audiobooks), and Youtube (free videos) are available easily, only after great labor, or not at all. A great deal isn’t so great if most of what you’ll consume costs money.

    I get ticked off at Apple for not allowing Amazon and others to sell directly through their iOS apps without paying a hideous 30% fee to Apple, but at least Apple doesn’t do anything to prevent consumption from free sources like those above. There are iOS apps, many of them free, that give direct access to free sources. Because Apple makes most of its money on the hardware, it’s not so uptight about earning money on content.

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