Kindle Fire, Amazon 1 star reviews

[mattpegher]

Does the Kindle fire use the whisper net at all, or do you have to be near a wifi? If it does connect to whisper net, is it limited to books only or can you use it to download video content?

 

[MagickMan]

Does the Kindle fire use the whisper net at all, or do you have to be near a wifi? If it does connect to whisper net, is it limited to books only or can you use it to download video content?

No, no Whispernet.

 

[mattpegher]

No, no Whispernet.

Damn. I know free wifi is becomming more and more prevelent but out in the boonies where I am, it isnt. Hell cant even get decent 3G at work. (and thats only 2hrs from NYC)

 

[MagickMan]

Conversely, I'm finding WiFi in more and more places. There is WiFi at my home, at my office, on the busses, at the airports (free a lot more often than it used to be), and in just about every coffee shop, fast place, or similar establishment. Even Home Depot has free WiFi now.

On top of that, tethering is becoming much more common. You can get tethering on all of the major platforms now (well, RIM if you are using the leaked BB OS 7.1, but that won't be too far from official). I know people bristle at the thought of paying for tethering, but if you pay $25 for 2GB from AT&T, and then pay $20 more for an additional 2GB + tethering...well, that's kinda the same as paying $20 for a 3G connection on your tablet, except its more vesatile.

Not to mention the fact that a tablet isn't completely useless without internet anyway - you can still read a Kindle book or play Angry Birds without active data.

I'm just not seeing free WiFi in that many places, and if I want to look something up I don't want to go trying to find a hotspot.

And tethering... it's costly ($30 for 5GB of 3G on my carrier plus the $20 tethering charge) and you have to carry your smart phone and the tablet. I'd rather carry just the phone, it's less to lug around.

 

[zeekr]

Mine updated itself to v6.2. My initial impression is that the random unresponsive and laggy behavior hasn't improved. In fact it might actually be worse. Browsing the popular video thumbnails, the page seems to load the images every time you scroll the page up or down.

/edit: At least the UI controls and carousel do seem to be improved. The responsiveness is good. It's just the screen with lots of images, like the movies and apps pages.