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Sunday, December 11, 2011
Perhaps the Amazon Kindle Fire isn’t that hot…
As the tablet wars heat up Amazon.com is hoping that their latest proprietary eBook reader, the Kindle Fire, will be competitive with the dominant tablet computer, the Apple iPad. The Kindle Fire just started shipping last month. According to an article in the New York Times, some Fire buyers are not that thrilled with the product:
“The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success with many of its early users. The most disgruntled are packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer.
A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky.
All the individual grievances — recorded on Amazon’s own Web site — received a measure of confirmation last week when Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, denounced the Fire, saying it offered “a disappointingly poor” experience. For users whose fingers are not as slender as toothpicks, he warned, the screen could be particularly frustrating to manipulate.
“I feel the Fire is going to be a failure,” Mr. Nielsen, of the Nielsen Norman Group, a Silicon Valley consulting firm, said in an interview. “I can’t recommend buying it.”
All this would be enough to send some products directly to the graveyard where the Apple Newton, the Edsel, New Coke and McDonald’s Arch Deluxe languish. But as a range of retailers and tech firms could tell you, it would be foolish to underestimate Amazon…”
Well, well, well. Count on Amazon to fix these problems…
To read the rest of the article click HERE:
Vick Mickunas
p.s. Follow me on Twitter: @BookNookVick
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