Amazon's (Mis)Fire

Amazon's new Kindle Fire is a huge disappointment. I'm not going to prognosticate; as far as I know, there are millions of clueless souls out there who will shell out their hard-earned cash for a product that is almost totally useless. Any other tablet out there can do anything that the Fire can do, and even the cheapest, most limited hardware out there can do a whole lot more than the Fire. Without a front camera, GPS, bluetooth, card slot and Android Market, what's the point? Really? Somebody please tell me!

I could understand a full-color Kindle that otherwise only does what any other Kindle can do. But something that runs Android should be able to do at least a majority of the things that other Android devices can do. This one can't. It's a one-trick pony that can't even do its one trick particularly well, certainly no better than any other device. With its LCD screen, it doesn't even have the advantage of outdoor readability as does a regular Kindle. Even at $199 there are cheaper tablets that can do absolutely anything the Fire can do, and a whole lot more besides.

Bottom Line: Attempting to confine a huge market into a small proprietary space is rarely successful.

The Real Dope: This is yet another attempt to take an open market and turn it into a closed, proprietary one. The hardware of the Fire is so amazingly limited that it is unlikely to have any long-term effect on any market. It's not worth hacking for full-fledged Android because the result will be so limited by absent hardware. Somebody at Amazon has lost their mind.