Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First, let me say that I am an avid Kindle user and have been from the days of Kindle 1. Over the years since the first Kindle, I have purchased vast quantities of Kindle books. Currently, I own 5 Kindles (6 with the Fire HD). They are: the Kindle 1 (by far the best display of all the later e-ink kindles with an SD card slot and a user replaceable battery, which later editions omitted), returned a Kindle 2 for display issues, kept a Kindle 3 (Keyboard), own 2 Kindle touches, the original Fire, and now the Fire HD. All are used by my family. So when I ordered the KF-HD it was with high expectations of really wanting to love this thing. I use the original Fire all the time and love it. Here's what I found about the new Kindle Fire HD: Out of the box the hardware is impressive to say the least, and having used it extensively since receiving it, I find it this Kindle has too many problems to justify keeping the unit until they fix some MAJOR engineering mistakes and software inadequacies that are embarrassingly idiotic. The first Kindle Fire works great. This one, well, leaves much to be desired. Here are the Pros and Cons, as I have experienced them: Pros: 1. Fantastic sound with the Dolby turned on. If this feature is off, the speakers sound worse than the original Kindle Fire. You can get this same sound on the original Kindle Fire using good external speakers or a good set of headphones. 2. Whispersync with Voice (concurrent with a very big con, see below). 3. Text to Speech. 4. Very crisp and clear display (with a concurrent con, see below). Cons: 1. The HD video display when viewing videos is either slightly on the orange to green side for skin tones (as compared to the original KF). The original Kindle Fire had much more realistic flesh tones on videos. All videos, at least in my opinion. 2. The power cable attaches to the side of the unit, rather than at the top or bottom, making it impossible to charge and watch or read anything in landscape mode while charging. This is a major inconvenience. Given a choice between an HDMI cable output and a charging indicator, give me a charging indicator and let the Cloud do its job so it's unnecessary to plug in the Fire to a TV. 3. No charging indicator light. How basic is this?? All other Kindle's have indicator lights! Was this an oversight? Or,engineering stupidity at it's best...you decide. 4. Power switch and volume control are flush with the casing, impossible to see and/or find in the dark-unless you turn the unit on its side and push til you find a switch. 5. Consistently has problems connecting with a wireless connection, giving the error of "authentication failure", making it necessary to connect using the "Settings, Wireless, Connect" from the settings menu (works fine after that). 6. Whispersync for Voice and Audible.com do not communicate well at all! I bought several books (free) with free associated audio books from audible.com. What a nightmare! Audible.com does not automatically link your Amazon account, and when it does, it picks the first 3 devices to use on your account there. If the first 3 do not list your kindle fire HD, you cannot download the books wirelessly to your device from Amazon's Manage Your Kindle page or Audible.com's My Library page. Further, unless you deregister your device and then re-register it, you cannot change the order of the availability of your devices. However, when you do download the book and follow the link for "professional narration", it will link in for a purchase. You must then open your book in the Kindle Fire HD, and touch the bottom of the screen on the Chapter 1 page (beginning of book) for it to first download a sample audio, and then the purchased audio from Audible.com. MAJOR HASSLE. Without seamless integration of these two services, Kindle books and Audible.com, it becomes a big frustration very quickly. Did I mention that Audible.com charges $14.95 PER MONTH for membership? Not user friendly in a recession/depression environment! How about a "no strings attached" membership? Finally, Audible.com only permits 3 Kindle devices to be on your account. For my household, with 6 Kindles, this doesn't beget customer satisfaction, or a desire to become a member of Audible.com. Additionally, some of the free books linked to Whispersync for Voice I had previously purchased. Unfortunately, those editions would not link to Whispersync for Voice, meaning I had to re-purchase (albeit free) the book (different edition) to link to and then purchase (again with a free promotion) the audio book from Audible.com. For a paid version of a Kindle book that also has an audible version available but no link to Whispersync (those links are listed on the book product page) means you have to use a particular Kindle book with the particular companion Audible.com audible book. Bummer. 7. Ads. Ads. Ads. For $199 I expect an Ad-free environment. Not here! You have to "opt-out" for an additional charge ($15). BAD MOVE for Amazon. Even then, once you opt-out, the continual "suggestions" are annoying and intrusive to the extreme. This does not exist on the original Kindle Fire. 8. No SD card slot, a continuing Amazon deficiency (especially when dealing with content when you are out of Wi-Fi range), and no user replaceable battery. This is where my Kindle 1 shines. I keep categories of books on different SD cards because (obviously) the drive in K1 is inadequate to the task of taking my entire library along. The Kindle Keyboard (4 GB storage) houses my complete library, but not the Kindle Touch (2GB storage). You may ask, why is this important with the cloud drive available? Because ever since Amazon ripped my paid-for copy of George Orwell's 1984 off my Kindle without my permission, I do not trust my purchased content exclusively to Amazon's cloud drive. I back it up immediately to the computer. 9. No Favorites section below the Carousel without going through the "Favorites" Star icon. Great when you can find it, annoying when you can't. 10. Inconsistent displays on the Carousel. Not all items are displayed, they mysteriously disappear and reappear. When you tap them to open sometimes they do, and other times they just shake in place without opening. Other times, when trying to remove them from the Carousel, once you "tap and hold", the concurrent menu allowing you to remove the item from the device, the carousel or add/remove from Favorites does not appear at all. The "shimmy" effect of a vibrating icon on the Carousel is very disturbing (at least to me), making me wonder if it's trying to crash (aka a computer crash). 12. No YouTube. No YouTube app that works. 13. Email display is horrific both in portrait and landscape modes. Once an email is opened you have to scroll to read side-to-side, with a column list of your emails on the left (in landscape mode) which cannot be changed. 14. Android Apps for Kindle Fire purchased for the original Kindle Fire may or may not (mostly not) work on the new Kindle Fire HD. When I asked about this, Customer Service told me they were "working on it." Right out of the box this is inexcusable. It's like saying, "You can't have all your Kindle books which you purchased on this device because it is not going to work yet for those items". 15. Huge screen glare problem. Just gotta love seeing my face and the room around me while doing anything with this Kindle! The "anti-glare screen protector" recommended by Amazon is anything but anti-glare, and (conveniently) no other anti-glare screen protectors offered will fit the KFHD. 16. The "recommended" case by Amazon only allows the KF to be installed one way and the display to face one way when using the stand, so you can't watch a movie even if you flip it over to view a movie in landscape mode while charging. Unfortunately, due to the location of the power cable (when plugged in), this makes it impossible to watch a movie using the case as a stand while the power cord is plugged in. The stand use of the case is unstable. If you read in bed, as I do, I find this to be a massive problem. The RooCase for the Original Kindle Fire accomplished both tasks for the original KF nicely. 17. Camera only works with Skype (and Facebook with a lot of fiddling with an app to make it happen). My advice is PASS ON THIS PURCHASE. WAIT FOR KINDLE FIRE HD 3. Mine is going back, and I would advise anyone wanting a Kindle Fire to buy a refurbished original KF from Amazon (if any) or go to eBay. This one is too expensive and too buggy--perhaps released too quickly before fixing engineering and software glitches. For me, the Cons far outweighed the Pros to the point that this device is not for me. Hopefully my observations will help someone in their purchase decision. I really did want to keep this device; however, given the financial times and the inherent problems I have experienced with the KFHD, it is not worth the effort if you already have a Kindle Fire Original. Finally, given the above, I could not also justify buying an 8.9" screen for the larger KFHD either. Buy an iPad instead if you want a bigger screen and easy email handling (yes, I have and use an iPad). For the convenience, I hope one day Amazon adds Text to Speech to the original KF, but til then my Kindle Keyboard keeps on keepin' on. Fine for me. The newer editions are (for me) a waste of time and money. REVIEW UPDATE: Even though I sent mine back, I decided to try one more time because I got a new one as gift. Because of continuing hardware problems, I am now on my 5th return of this item to Amazon (LOVE their customer service) by their request. KFHD #6 still has issues which cannot be resolved. NOTE WELL: MY REVIEW IS A COMPARISON OF THE NEW KFHD TO THE 1ST GEN KINDLE FIRE ONLY. Several comments to my review have been rude and mean, which has kept me from updating this review until now (Jan 2013). My 6th KFHD has solved the video color problem very well, but the previous 1,2,3,4,5 ones had speakers blow out when connected to a bluetooth device (ipod classic and an ipod touch). Bummer. I have not connected this one to a bluetooth speaker (Bose), nor will I in the future. STILL have email problems. Started using the paid email app which approximates the display of the amazon email app on the original KF. However, my ISP uses a Barracuda Spam Firewall Filter that sends an email for me to connect to my quarantined inbox to check if any emails need to go to the inbox rather than the quarantine box. The Barracuda link goes to a web page, but the web page only loads half-way and will NOT allow me to access the quarantine inbox. The old KF had no problem with this. None. The new one does not allow this function. AMAZON CUSTOMER SERVICE HAS ADMITTED THAT THIS IS A BROWSER GLITCH ON THEIR PART AND THEY HAVE NO INTENTION OF FIXING IT. 3 customer service agents have told me it is a known issue that Amazon will NOT solve. End of discussion. So if your ISP uses Barracuda, BEWARE. AS COMPARED TO THE ORIGINAL FIRE, THIS ONE IS STILL A DISAPPOINTMENT for me. As for you, only you can decide.