Amazon revamps E Ink Kindle line It's official: the Amazon Kindle Fire will debut at $199 (£130), sport a 7in colour screen and run a customised version of Android with its own UI. It'll be accompanied by a touch-sensitive Kindle, the Touch, and cheaper alternative with no touchscreen. Both have E Ink displays. The Fire - codenamed 'Otter', by the way - …
Almost everyone is reading the headline pricing...
The US (standard, keyboardless) 'new' Kindle 3 is only $79 when sold with 'special offers' (read adverts) instead of normal screensavers. The non-advert version is being sold at $109!
$109 at 1.5$:£ gets you to around £72, by the time you add VAT (because you have to) the pricing is £87 and a bit.
What will be interesting is the pricing of the touch screen models if they ever make it to this side of the pond..
The Kindle Fire has a customised old version of Android. This leads me to ask whether it can run standard Android apps such as a PDF document reader, a Word document reader and an Excel spreadsheet reader.
My reason for asking this question is that existing Kindles can not read PDF files without first mailing them to Amazon. I do not want Amazon to read work related PDF files and this had stopped me from buying earlier versions of the Kindle ebook reader.
The fact that the Fire has a customised version of Android also leads me to ask whether the Fire obeys the copyleft restrictions on the Linux kernal. Richard Stallman would not be happy if the Kindle Fire is a closed source software product.
Paul
I have a Kindle Graphite WiFi & Kindle DX. Both stuffed with PDFs. Have never emailed files to Amazon for conversion.
Announcement material lists the supported files.
Have pre-ordered new entry model at £89 (a steal) with ETA of 13th Oct.
No music files or headphone jack on new basic Kindle.
Mike Campbell - UK
How does it deal with the huge pile of non-amazon supplied books I already have (most in epub format with no DRM). Is it necessary to use Calibre (I assume that will provide a host as it does for the existing Kindles) to manage a library?
I like the idea of the device. I don't like the idea of being tied to a particular vendor one little bit, and have no great interest in purchasing books, particularly if they're tied to DRM in any way. I do have an awful lot of my own books, y'know, folded paper things, which are slowly being scanned, proofread, and stored away.
but it's getting a bit battered and bent after a couple of years, and the interface bugs are starting to annoy me... so I'm looking at alternatives. This looks as if it has possibilities, but I have read reports about really long delays when used with many books... cheap enough to play with though.
As other have mentioned, there are two versions available – the ad-supported version for $79 or the standard one for $109. Only the latter will be available in the UK.
Based on today’s exchange rate $109 equals £69.54 – adding 20% VAT takes that to £83.45, so the mark-up is less than six quid.
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