Just bought a Kindle Fire; first foray in tablets

CuriousMike

Diamond Member
Feb 22, 2001
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I've been pretty out-of-touch with smart-phones and tablets; my family is all geared towards desktops and our non-smart-phones.

I recently took some birthday money and purchased a Kindle Fire with tempered expectations.

Really, I bought it as a toy.

As such, and so far, it's proven to be a winner.
Since I don't "know any better", it feels pretty responsive, the screen looks good and it surfs the web fairly well ( as I type this from my desktop.)

One of the things that has passed me by but I'm now fully engaged in is cheap apps.

Holy crap is it easy to buy games/apps when they're $0.99.
So far, nothing is tremendously standing out on its own -- but grabbing it for an hour of entertainment at night is proving to be really easy.

OK, Splashtop just finished downloading. Time to see if I can "stream" movies from my home PC to this guy.
 

Bman123

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2008
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I really liked the kindle fire when I got to mess with one, the screen is nice and it felt pretty darn snappy
 

zerogear

Diamond Member
Jun 4, 2000
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And it's a really good size to read books, 9"-10" tend to be a little on the heavy side to read books for an extended period of time. I think Kindle Fire is actually a very nice tablet, especially at that price.

OK, Splashtop just finished downloading. Time to see if I can "stream" movies from my home PC to this guy.

For streaming movies, you might want to check out Qloud Media or Plex, they transcode on the fly and stream it to the device. Should really work better than Splashtop if you're watching a movie.
 

CuriousMike

Diamond Member
Feb 22, 2001
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When I took the Fire out of the box, I thought a) it seemed small and b) it was heavier than I expected.
While using it, it definitely is "big enough", and the heft might make it easier to hold?


I spent about 10 minutes with Splashtop, and it seemed to be "90% there."
It's a PITA driving around my remote desktop with the touch screen.
As far as the video, I was playing a 720p movie and it would "drop a frame" every 20 seconds, but the audio never hiccuped. Running the movie in a window and it never "dropped a frame."

Thanks for those other suggestions... I'll check them out.