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I’m not going to be like a lot of the other reviewers and do a review after only using the machine for a few hours.  The “rush to publish” among reviewers has, as it always does, led to a whole bunch of superficial and generally questionable reviews.  How can you make a legitimate judgement about a product after using it for only a few hours? I used to review GPS equipment for the web’s largest GPS website.  The only way to do a proper review was to use the units for several weeks before a proper conclusion could be reached.

With ereaders this is a bit different because they are much simpler.  A typical e-ink ereader should take no more than three to four days of solid use to do a competent review.  However, a tablet, such as the Fire, is more complex and subject to a lot more variables, so I would think a week’s use would be sufficient.

Here’s an example of why an “upon release” review can be misleading.  The Fire browser goes through Amazon’s servers.  Well, as hundreds of thousands, or more, users receive their Fires one of the first things they will do is check out the browser and pound Amazon’s servers.  We are going to see a number of reviews saying that the browser is slow simply because the servers are overloaded.  To review the browser properly one needs to use it at a time when the server traffic is at a normal level, not at a just-released-peak.

Along with “rush to publish” reviews we  we also have reviews by people such as Wired’s Jon Phillips who clearly started out disliking the device as soon as it was announced and before he had even used it.  Furthermore, he, like some other people, doesn’t seem to understand the market that the Fire is aimed at.  It is NOT an iPad competitor and is not intended to be one.  Thus comparisons with the iPad are useless and misleading.

I’ll be back in a week or so with my (hopefully unbiased) thoughts.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Since Amazon is using their own Cloud Computing Services for the Silk servers, I highly doubt that load will be an issue. One of the best features of their service is their ability to automatically add servers as load increases. The company I work for runs all of our servers in the cloud with Amazon and we rarely have any issues, none with load.

    I suspect though, that Silk browsing will actually speed up as more and more people start using their Fires since more and more content will then be cached.

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