Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This will be a review that will be updated as I continue to use the Kindle. SHORT BACKSTORY: I own a 1st gen Kindle, and despite its original design flaws, I have put it to great use. I am a Prime member. When I saw a tablet(ish) device with a modded version of Android, made by Amazon, with a dual core processor and a smaller, more portable form factor than the iPad for sale at the easy on the wallet price of $199, I pre-ordered immediately. FIRST IMPRESSION: The packaging it comes in is very simple. The Kindle came in a brown cardboard box, which I expected to open and see a Kindle box, but rather opened and saw the Fire itself. Underneath was the Micro USB charger. I immediately plugged it in and fired it up. First thing it asked was to connect to WiFi (it showed every network within at least a 300 ft radius (my office floor is shared with a few others). Connection was hassle free. Then it asked me a few questions, registered quickly with Amazon, and then updated the software. After that 5 minute process, I was free to explore. OS: Intuitive and easy to navigate. A lot of cool little nav helpers come up to explain the various navigational aspects and preloaded apps. It immediately showed all the books in my library. TOUCHSCREEN: Seems very responsive. Keyboard typing was easy enough, especially when laid out landscape. I know other Android devices can bring up different keyboards, so I'll be looking into this. PROCESSING: Haven't opened up anything super intense, but navigating between apps is smooth and doesn't stutter. INTERNET: Took about 6 seconds to fully load a Reuters news page. I've read Silk gets faster with more use, so I'll expect that, but for now, it's definitely fast enough. CLOUD CONNECTION: Awesome. I love everything about it. All my content was readily available and I know my usage of this will go up now that I have this device. MEDIA: I quickly threw on an episode of 24. It looked very crisp and had no trouble whatsoever with streaming. I'll dive into Hulu and Netflix a little later. That's all I've gotten through at the moment. I put this at 5 stars because it MET MY EXPECTATIONS. I read all about this device before buying it, so I knew exactly what I was getting for $199 dollars. It has met all of my expectations of a small form factor tablet that is intuitive, media friendly, and has great processing capabilities. I did not expect an iPad, so there is no comparison in my mind. My next update will go a bit more in depth into EMAIL and Document capabilities as well as exploring some apps. I hope you enjoy this as much as I am! ------ UPDATE #1 EMAIL NICE: Email setup is a breeze for GMAIL (including IMAP) and they present a unified inbox view which is nice. However, they don't thread the emails, but that's not a huge issue. BUMMER: Native Email app doesn't support MS exchange, had to download an app. Again, it's not a big deal, but would have been nice to get work emails on this. Sent a PowerPoint Presentation to my personal email and opened it on the Fire. It displayed perfectly in hi res...I am a happy camper at this moment :) UPDATE #1.5 APPS: This is my first Android(ish) device and as such my first experience with the Amazon appstore. App store is coming up shallow (in variety of apps) esp. in the finance apps department. That is just my initial response and I may not be entering the right search strings (for finance, I tried Bloomberg, finance, finance apps). I'm SURE as more and more Kindle Fire's come online, the developer community will focus on improving and optimizing more apps. Free APP a day program is very cool and I will be sure to set a reminder to look into this every day. I would gladly take any suggestions for finance (news, stocks, charts etc.) apps or any others. UPDATE #2 Loving the Pandora app. And the Cloud player! And just discovered that you can upload UNLIMITED MP3 files to the Cloud just by upgrading to the 20GB plan ($20 annually...). For me, that's over 60GB of music available anywhere + 20GB of anything else. Awesome. UPDATE #3 Now that I've spent a great amount of time with the Fire, I can honestly say that I'm very happy with the purchase. It functions fantastically as a tablet device. It could rival the iPad due to the plethora of media streaming options, portability, CLOUD capabilities, flash availability, and basic functionality (but don't set your expectation on this, it IS NOT positioned to be an iPad competitor). I downloaded the TouchDown Exchange app for receiving work emails. The Accuweather app is much more functional than the native Weather Channel app. Thompson Reuters News Pro is a great reader, especially for financial news. Netflix and Hulu + both work very well and I have had no issue in streaming content for both. YouVersion still needs some refining, but it looks great on this tablet. I am starting to realize that the lack of 3g will be a bummer moving forward, but it is not a blocker yet. If the developer community picks up the popularity of the Fire, I will be excited to see a plethora of new apps coming online. Again, overall, I am pleased at how functional this is as a tablet. FINAL UPDATE No issues so far (3rd day of ownership). This thing doesn't leave my side (at home or the office). Amazon's free app a day program is awesome; today downloaded an email app that is normally $10 for my favorite price...free99. My biggest gripe at the moment is that they don't have multiple keyboard options (outside of landscape or portrait). This was available on other tablet devices with Android OS and would make typing a bit easier. But please...for $200, this thing kicks ass. UPDATE (as of DEC. 19th) The FIRE is working great. I stand by my initial 5 star rating. Not thrilled with Amazon's app store, but like I said before, it will get better as more developers come on line. All of my previous comments still stand. Amazon's free app a day program should not be overlooked as its utility has been fantastic. The BEST thing about this is its form factor. I didn't realize how important this was until I found myself carrying my Fire with me everywhere. With the amount I use it, I'm happy that it is light and almost pocket sized. Battery life seems to be about 5 hours with heavy use, 7.5 with reading. I charge this thing every night along side my iPhone, so it's not a burden. This makes a great gift for any electronics fan looking for a reader and mobile media player.