...a kindle fire. Whenever we have to meet with our education guide for our school, she gets to borrow our guides kindle. She plays some little games while I chat. She loves it so, so much. I told her maybe we could get one with our tax return. Then I quickly added that we would see, and that maybe I'd see how cooperative she would be with school (not that she is difficult about it, but sometimes she complains). Well, you should have seen her change her tune (bribery is awesome :lol: )! She's been so good. She even has a little notebook where she writes down all the good things she does each day (she goes out of her way to find little chores to do without me asking). Anyway, I don't know much about kindles. I looked at amazon and I'm thinking of just the kindle fire hd...not the hdx, because it's more money and I don't know that we need all those extra features. This is basically for her to play some games, and get some books to read (but I'm hoping I can find games and books for free? Are they free?). I don't know if it's better to get the 8gb or the 16gb (I'm sure 16 is always better, but is 8 good enough?). I was going to wait until our tax return...but I'm kinda hoping they'll be a good sale on them for Cyber Monday. I'll see. Anyway, do you recommend the kindle fire hd? Is it really worth the money? What else do I need (do we need a case)? ETA: Oh, and what does it mean "with special offers" and "without special offers"? I know the price is different, but it sounds like "with special offers" gives you ads on it...not sure I'm crazy about that.
Honestly we have cheap android tablets that we have free e reader apps (including kindle) on and lots of free games and educational apps on from the Amazon app store. They work well for us and I'm not too worried that they may get dropped and broken. I do think the special offers one has ads on it and if I was buying a kindle I would get the HD 16gb. I you go with a cheap Droid tablet just make sure it has a memory card slot.
Sommer, I don't have a clue what you are talking about. :lol: I don't even know what an adroid tablet is. But, I'll look it up.
Lol I'm on a tablet so I can't even go link hunting for you.. mine is a visual land from Walmart we also have a nexus I think it is.
We have the original Kindle Fire. I'm not even sure how may gb's it has. We have never run out of memory. I move books to my Amazon Cloud and only download them on the Kindle when I am going to read them. Actually, I use my Kindle app on my phone more than I use the actual Kindle. There are plenty of free books, though the kids' selection is not nearly as good, and plenty of free apps/games. My only complaint would be that the chargers get wacky and have to be placed strategically and propped at weird angles. Our first one was under warranty when this happened. The replacement was not. It's still usable, but it takes more work to keep it charged. The newer ones hopefully don't have that problem! I don't know anything about the "special offers".
Be careful with the cheap android versions. We bought three for our boys to use as eReaders, and they were horrible. And the warranties stunk, too. Just check all that out before going that direction - we didn't :/ IIRC, "special offers" means that Amazon ads will show on the Kindle. It's why the price is slightly lower. Without special offers means you won't see the Amazon specific ads.
We went through 2 kindle fire's in a year and a half. The charger's went out (sixcloar knows what I'm talkin' 'bout!!) and at first we had to prop it up and jack around with the angle of the charger, then it went out completely. Thankfully, it was under warranty (but barely lasted a year), so we got it replaced. Then, 6 months afterwards, the replacement's charger went wonky!! ARGH!!! So we just went back to using our Original Kindle...old school. We got it maybe 3 years ago and it's still running like a champ! It's white, and all it can do is let y read book and do a couple of games. No color, nothing fancy, but it lets us read books, which is why we wanted an E Reader. Bottom Line: I don't recommend the Fire. Sorry. Customer Service for Amazon was awesome, and very helpful, so it's not the company services, it was the product. I was pretty disappointed, since I had apps on there that helped with Patryk's therapy. :/ I refuse to pay that kind of money once a year for a new tablet.
:evil: Sometimes I really hate Amazon!! They had the kindle fire hd 16gb for $50 off (less than the price of the 8gb). I put it in my cart, I shopped around for a cute pink case for it, added that...put in the 2 year protection plan (could have gotten all 3 of these things for the same price as the regular priced 8gb)...started the checkout process and then my checkout page was just gone. Went back to the cart, which still had my 3 items in it, and the deal was already gone. How can the deal "sell out" before Cyber Monday is even over? It's not like they sold out of the kindle itself. I'm just so mad right now. :cry: ETA: you would think once something is in your cart it should be locked in to that price. ETA again: see my update below...
OK....I must apologize for my outburst above. :lol: I actually love Amazon now. I kinda complained to them.........but in a nice way. They were so nice about it....that they honored the $50 off, even though I didn't ask (I did ask if they knew when they'd be on sale again)! Whoo hoo! Now I gotta figure out how I can use this educationally. I really have no clue what all this thing can do...but I'm sure I'll learn.
Amazon has GREAT customer service. A few years ago I ordered a few things for myself for my birthday. It shipped from them and the tracking put it in my town and then poof nothing. I sent them a message asking what my next step was, next morning I had a box with everything I had ordered at my door. They had sent it all out over night.
I agree. Amazon has aMAZing customer service. We've experienced it ourselves. Meg2006, that you for sharing your experience with the Fire. My DH has been tinkering with one. Amazon sent him one to try free for 30 days. So far, he really likes it. This surprised me since he has another good tablet of his own. I bet he'll be interested to hear what you've said. His tablet (I don't recall what kind, it had an Android OS), must be 3-4 years old and still works great.
Yes, Amazon usually sends stuff in reasonable time. We haven't ordered from them lately, however. Up here, you sometimes need to figure whether you're dealing with amazon.com or amazon.ca
I bought our kids each a kindle fire last year. I have really like having them. They use them in the car when we travel. They use them to film skits they make with stuffed animals and our pets. They use them to read books. I was pleasantly pleased with my oldest dd started downloading free books on subjects related to fiction series she was reading from the library. Be fore a trip, I give them each a 15 dollar budget to buy a book or two and a game app. I have the internet password protected and they have to bring the kindle to me to unlock it for websites of purchases. You can order from amazon.com using the website from a computer then send it to the kindle if you want to keep them completely off of the internet. We have amazon.com prime. It is about 80.oo a year and it includes a collection of movies and tv shows similar to Netflix.com. YOu can watch these from the kindle and can even download them so they can be watched while driving or when no wifi is available. Beware the free apps. There are many great free games etc out there but.......... YOu will want to monitor them. Some free apps display advertising. I have seen advertising for adult dating websites etc. YOu will want to check any new apps yourself. I let my oldest dd download a few things then check them, then the other can get them from the cloud with out having direct internet access. Once a given item is in the cloud, it can be shared by any of your devices including your PC. Overall the Kindle fire is one of the best deals on the market in terms of screen quality and features for the money. The screen on the kindle fire we have is very very nice and far better than most of the generic tablets out there. WHen we ordered ours, It seems that there was an option to pay 10 bucks more to not have advertising show up on the screens (amazon.com in house stuff if I remember correctly), and I did this so the kids would not see album covers, romance covers and things like that.
Thanks for the information. It's $15 now. I did pay the extra $15 for the same reason....I don't know what the ads will be, and I don't want certain movie and book ads showing up on my 10 year olds kindle. Apparantly you can pay the $15 later to take the ads off, but I figure I'd rather do it now than later...since I know I don't want that junk on there.
I LOVE my Kindle Fire HD. Very handy net access. I like the Silk browser....nice format. I like the touch screen for enlarging things. Love my apps for games, facebook, messaging, gps, email, etc. Can use Netflix to watch movies on the train or in the hotel...or just at home. Read books, listen to music...it's all there. 95% of what I like to do on a comp...I can do on my Kindle. Can stuff it in my purse and have it in Chicago to find transit schedules, pedestrian gps, good restaurants and events, but Amtrak tickets, find plays. Very handly little doodad! Do wish it had a word processor...BUT...I just write journal entries my email, save it as a draft and deal with them at home. On Ebay, there's a company in China that makes a really cute case for Kindle with a 7 inch keyboard that runs about 25 bucks. Takes a while to get used to typing on it, but it beats the heck out of the touch keyboard, and is VERY portable. $25...can't beat that.
