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| My early-2015 "ColorFest" - A new lime-green Kindle Fire, along with Chromebook and Mouse |
Wow - I haven't done one of those song-title-tribute headlines for quite awhile, and for that matter, I haven't been posting much at all lately. With that in mind and risking that I might have a little rust showing, my recent upgrade to a new Amazon Kindle Fire had that Billy Joel classic rattling around in my head.
Readers of my blog may recall that I've been an Amazon Kindle owner/reader since its inception. (See
"Observations: Amazon's Kindle Stirs Up E-book (and Printing and Imaging) Excitement" from 2007.) And while I have had lots of experience using both the E-ink and color ("Kindle Fire") versions (and even do a significant share of my reading on the Kindle Cloud Reader running on my Chromebook), it's those lollipop-colored versions of the Fire that have recently gained my affection. The colors, and also the clever pricing that Amazon offers. This time, the new Fires came with an irresistible deal to spread the purchase price over five months, meaning that my new one at $49.99 would require a monthly payment of $10.00 for five months, automatically charged to my Amazon Visa meaning a 5% cash-back credit coming my way too! The State of Idaho (finally, starting on the first of May this year) gets their share with Amazon now charging 6% state sales tax, added to the initial payment, when my new Fire shipped, was $13.00, and now with four $10.00 payments upcoming. How painless can it get? (Of course I did the mental comparison that the payment would be less, sometimes far less, than my monthly e-book purchases.)
The new Fire is officially, in Amazon-speak, an "an All-New Fire 7 Tablet with Alexa, 7" Display, 8 GB, Punch Red - with Special Offers." I love the punch red! In the painless department, the new one asked me if I wanted to "restore" the Fire I was replacing, and I said "sure", which meant starting out, it had exactly the same setup, including apps, that I was accustomed to. A few password updates and I was in business with my "James's 4th Fire", according to Amazon. And so far, it's noticeably faster and a pleasure to read on, as well as being an adequate email and social media checker.
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| The "restore" option was a huge plus (and nice surprise) |
As far as what others are saying about the new Fire 7? Brian X. Chen of the
New York Times wrote a review entitled, "
What You Get (and What You Don’t) From a $50 Amazon Fire." It is a realistic view of the product, i.e. don't expect a top-of-the-heap tablet for $50. Which I didn't, and I am happy!
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| Amazon's Fire 7 - and by their count my new one is "James's 4th Fire" |
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