Graeme Thickins On Posterous

I picked up a KindleFire last week, a couple days after Amazon started selling them.  I had pre-ordered one at my local Best Buy store.  I didn't really need one, of course -- I've been a happy iPad user since Day One.  (And the same for the iPhone since its Day One. It's no secret I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Apple fanboy.)  The iPad has changed my online life. I could not live without it.

Well, the experiment didn't last long.  I was not impressed.  After a couple of days, I boxed it back up to return it (deleting the few apps I downloaded and all my personal information, like email and contacts.)  Sure, I could have kept the Fire just to have around -- it was cheap enough -- but there was honestly no way I could justify doing so.  It would have just collected dust.  I'd rather put my $200 towards an iPad 3, the one we hope will finally have the "retina display," and some say we could see that launched as soon as Spring.

Consider this my KindleFire review, and I confess it's an abnormally negative one as my gadget reviews go.  But there just were not a lot of positive things to say on this one. Not after having an iPad for a year and a half.

The following is a rundown of my mostly bad experience with the KindleFire:

• It started right after opening the box.  The open-the-package experience is supposed to delight you.  (We Apple fans have come to know that well.)  I couldn't even pull the instructions out of a slot in the box; the card appeared to be glued in.  Then, I had a hell of time getting the clear plastic removed around the device itself. (I try to keep the integrity of all the packaging.)  Steve would never that kind of stuff happen.

• I immediately saw that quality hardware design was not a priority when I plugged in the end of the power cord to the unit. It was too small and flimsy, and it wiggled -- not feeling like a solid connection at all.  And it's at the bottom of the unit, not on the side, which just plain sucks.  Also, the cord didn't seem as long as it should be.  Again, Steve would never have let a product like this out the door.

• The KindleFire is heavy, presumably because of the battery -- too heavy to hold comfortably in your hand for any length of time.  Maybe it's okay for book reading on your lap while sitting in a chair, or on the plane, but not holding it in your hand.  That gets old fast.  And I decided the 7" size isn't for me, either.  Even if it were lighter, you need pretty long fingers to find that size to be comfortable in one hand.  Steve said the 7" form factor for tablets was not good; he was right.

• The startup process went without a hitch, including connecting to my home wifi network and getting connected to my Amazon account. (It had to do that first, but my account would already have been connected if I'd bought the unit from Amazon.) 

• I then proceeded to connect to the "Store" to download some apps. I grabbed Seesmic, which was the only prominent Twitter app I noticed.  It worked well, if you don't count having to look at their God-awful icon, so huge on the screen.  I was told later there's a HootSuite native app, too, but I've never been a fan. The Twitter app itself (my preference on the iPad and iPhone) is not available as a native app, only a mobile web app, but I downloaded it and played with it a bit.  I came to learn from reading Fred Wilson's review that a lot of the apps for the Fire are web apps, not native ones as we're used to on iOS (at least not yet).

• I watched a YouTube video, but was not impressed with the smoothness of the experience (might have been the video itself).  I also tried streaming a black-and-white documentary film, which worked okay.  I didn't pay to download any movies or music from the Amazon "Store" -- which of course is the whole reason they want you to buy a Fire.  I have a ton of music already on iTunes, which I of course cannot listen to on this device, but I was hardly going to spend more money just to have music on another device.  I noticed the first screen in their music section was trying to sell me albums, not singles, and the prices I recall seeing were $4.99 or $5.99.

• The only news-reading app that comes installed on the unit is Pulse, which is okay but not my favorite.  I did a search for others, but no dice -- no Flipboard (which I'd heard), but also no Zite or News360, and these three are the ones I really like and use often on the iPad (News360 on the iPhone, too).  So, that bummed me out.

• But the worst was yet to come. Trying to retweet articles I was reading in the Twitter app and the Seesmic app, and add comments to those tweets -- which is something I do like breathing -- was a horrible experience.  The touchscreen editing just plain sucked.  Took me forever to insert words, or edit the wording on the tweet. Not sure if the smaller size of the screen was the main culprit here, or the slow responsiveness of the Android OS, or what.  Maybe it's the UI of the apps I was using that needs to be addressed.  But no way was I seeing that I could use this machine to do what I do a lot of on the iPad.

So, that was that.  Back she's going -- $200 returned to me that I will gladly put towards an iPad 3.