James E. O'Brien

If you are looking for a great gift idea for someone who really enjoys reading, watching movies, listening to music, and surfing the web, may I suggest a Kindle Fire from Amazon?

The Kindle Fire is truly an amazing little unit!  I was stunned at how brilliant and crisp the display is, and how fast and functional it is. Having never played with a Kindle fire, I easily navigated through its many features and configured it to connect to a secured wireless network without even looking at the documentation. The Kindle Fire is so easy to use; anyone from a child to a great-grandparent can use it.

Check out the Kindle Fire at Amazon.com!

The Display

The Kindle Fire has a 7 inch multi-touch display, with 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 pixels per inch and 16 million colors. The clarity and quality of the display makes the Kindle Fire a perfect device for personal movie viewing. Since the Kindle Fire as two processors and 8 gigabytes of memory (2 GB is used by the system, and 6GB is available for the user), movies and videos are play smoothly.  And that is great because Amazon offers over 100,000 movies and TV shows available to stream any time you want! Not to forget, the Kindle Fire is a perfect device for watching Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube.

Check out the Kindle Fire at Amazon.com!

As an e-book reader, the Kindle Fire is brilliant. The pages are crisp and easy to read, even without my reading glasses. Since the Kindle fire is about the size and weight of an average paperback book (much thinner though), it is comfortable to use for reading while you are sitting up or lying down. Whatever your reading style is, you are really going to enjoy the Kindle Fire.

The display is protected by a tough shatter-resistant multi-touch glass that has been treated with anti-reflective treatment. In short, it can handle more abuse than your cell phone can, and it’s easy on the eyes.

The Wireless Technology

As I mentioned earlier, the wireless configuration was easy to find and easy to configure. What I didn’t mention was that the wireless technology in the Kindle Fire is surprisingly strong. It quickly located wireless signals, and held a strong signal everywhere I went throughout a three-story house.

The Kindle Fire supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or hotspots that use 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or enterprise networks with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; it does not however, support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks. Although, that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, just that it is not supported.

You can enjoy your Kindle Fire at your favorite coffee shop, the airport, on the airplane, at work, at home, and anywhere else you find a wireless signal.

Battery Life

The battery life in the Kindle Fire was the only thing I could find to complain about. It’s not that much of a complaint, really. I was just hoping for a little more juice than the 7.5 to 8 hours of continuous video playback, less if the wireless is on. Still, that’s a minor complaint. To make up for it, the Kindle Fire can be fully charged in as little as four hours using .the supplied power supply or a USB port on a computer. Of course, you can use the Kindle while it is charging.

Audio

The Kindle Fire has a standard 3.5mm stereo audio jack for headphones, and also has top-mounted stereo speakers for playback without headphones. The Kindle Fire also supports the most common audio formats such as non-DRM AAC, MP3. MIDI. WAV, MP4, OGG, and VP8. You can store music on the Kindle Fire’s 6GB OFD storage, or use the free cloud storage that Amazon provides as part of the package when you buy a Kindle to store your music. Not to mention, there are thousands of Internet-based music sites and radio stations you can access.

Check out the Kindle Fire at Amazon.com!

Summary

The Kindle Fire is a brilliantly well designed device, and you are going to love it. It’s small and light enough to take anywhere, and big enough to use comfortably. It’s versatile and sturdy, how could you possibly go wrong. At $199, it’s a great deal!

Oh, it also comes with a 1 year limited warranty, and an optional 2 year extended warranty. Sweet!

Make someone really happy this Christmas, and get then a Kindle!

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