Official Black Friday TABLET & E-READER Discussion Thread

[KBsDarling]

DD is going back and forth between wanting the with ads or not...She is getting the kindle as a gift but the rest of the amazon spending will be on her for books/music/etc...She is mighty tempted by the 10$ off 20$ codes that have been posted about....My little GDer in training!

[Jen8112]

If the ads are actually helpful and can save you money then I say go ahead and the the $79 one.

[Rtty]

http://www.gottadeal.com/DirectDeal/62488 Looks like a very good deal to me!!!

[alarmrx2]

I have had 2 off name brands of ereaders, I would advise everyone do NOT buy any e-readers or tablets that is not from one of the main sellers. I intentioally bought the cheapest I could find last year at Christmas (which was more that they are now), just to see if I would use an ereader. That one lasted maybe 3-4 months. My replacement one, a different brand BTW, hasnt lasted 2 months. And I am not that hard on them.

Dont be tempted by the BF sales on the off-brand sales. If you research the brands you will find that a lot of paople were unhappy with them. JMO

[bpr]

I have had 2 off name brands of ereaders, I would advise everyone do NOT buy any e-readers or tablets that is not from one of the main sellers. I intentioally bought the cheapest I could find last year at Christmas (which was more that they are now), just to see if I would use an ereader. That one lasted maybe 3-4 months. My replacement one, a different brand BTW, hasnt lasted 2 months. And I am not that hard on them.

Dont be tempted by the BF sales on the off-brand sales. If you research the brands you will find that a lot of paople were unhappy with them. JMO

Good post. I agree. For a few dollars more, you can get something better most of the time.

[emilygracesmom]

The Kindle Fire I preordered was delivered today. I ordered it for my DD for Christmas. I don't think I can wait until then to open it and mess around with it.....as a matter of fact, I will probably have it opened shortly after getting home from work!!!

[Jen8112]

The Kindle Fire I preordered was delivered today. I ordered it for my DD for Christmas. I don't think I can wait until then to open it and mess around with it.....as a matter of fact, I will probably have it opened shortly after getting home from work!!!

Well you need to make sure it works.

[emilygracesmom]

Well you need to make sure it works.

Oh it works alright....and quite well at that!!! I'm totally sold on it. Very quick response, bright, clear graphics, good sound....iPad has some fierce competition. It may only be half the size, but it has all of the performance at a third of the price. If anyone is on the fence about the Kindle Fire, pull the trigger. You won't be sorry!!!

[jakesmommy403]

My mom just picked up a Nook Color for my husband for Christmas, and we're in love with it! He won't even be expecting it. :) Smooth, beautiful picture, really nice. She ordered it for $199.99 online from Best Buy and they included a 2GB micro SD card and 30 free eBooks with it for free. I'm jealous! Lol

[jediliz]

Oh it works alright....and quite well at that!!! I'm totally sold on it. Very quick response, bright, clear graphics, good sound....iPad has some fierce competition. It may only be half the size, but it has all of the performance at a third of the price. If anyone is on the fence about the Kindle Fire, pull the trigger. You won't be sorry!!!

but it doesn't have expandable storage and most tablets (excluding the overpriced iPad) have that. And in order to access the Cloud, you need wifi. You could side load video, etc, via the usb...but would the format work? And you are limited to Amazon's app market....you don't get the full market access for Android. I'm not sold, not even with the Netflix and Hulu Apps.

[jendeere]

The Kindle Fire I preordered was delivered today. I ordered it for my DD for Christmas. I don't think I can wait until then to open it and mess around with it.....as a matter of fact, I will probably have it opened shortly after getting home from work!!!

The one I ordered for DD's birthday arrived today too! I'm going to check it out as soon as she gets going on her homework!

[emilygracesmom]

but it doesn't have expandable storage and most tablets (excluding the overpriced iPad) have that. And in order to access the Cloud, you need wifi. You could side load video, etc, via the usb...but would the format work? And you are limited to Amazon's app market....you don't get the full market access for Android. I'm not sold, not even with the Netflix and Hulu Apps.

As for expandable storage, I'm no where near maxing out my iPhone, iPod, computer or anything else. So I think the 8GB will be plenty sufficient for my DD's needs. We have wifi at home, work, school, and every McDonald's across the nation. From just my brief looking around at apps, it seems there are more than enough on Amazon's market to suit just about any need we may have (including the MUST HAVE Angry Birds). As a mom trying to get the most for her money, I feel like I got wayyyyy more than I paid for compared to the prices for anything comparable to the Fire.

[racerfan]

I orginally had pre-ordered the Kindle Fire, but was on the fence whether to cancel or not. I was going to get it for DD13. I decided to cancel once I saw the BB ad that they have the Acer Iconia 7" for $189. I will be one of the first online and will be getting that as well as the Asus Transformer for DS15. I went with the Acer because I can expand the storage etc. When we take long trips she will be able to load it up and watch movies etc in the car or on the plane. We cannot guarantee we will be in the area with wifi to access the cloud when she runs out of stuff to do on only 8gb. I

 

Fire seems wonderful and we would have stayed with it, if it was expandable or had a LOT more storage capacity.

[jediliz]

I am sure you did and I hope your daughter will like her present.

 

My thing is that I have a few tv shows (just jetsons and flintstones) and a handful of movies (night at the museum, muppets take manhattan, animated grinch) that I bought a few years ago when they had the amazon unbox video player. At that time, there were only a small amount of portable devices that were compatible and could download these videos/tv shows. According to my account, they were downloaded on the max two devices (in reality they are only on ONE). I have NO clue if I could download these onto a Kindle Fire. Plus, I want to test one out at a store before I'd make a decision. I did that before I bought my Kindle 3rd generation wifi only. I looked at the demo unit as many times as possible whenever I was at Target or another store that sold Kindles. I made my decision for a wifi only one and bought it at Best Buy when they had a special offer last November for Reward Zone Card members of double points for eReaders and triple points for accessories.

 

If it had a camera for video chat....I'd consider it.

 

 

Anyway, trying to stay on topic....I do wonder if there will be any special tablet offers online for newer ones on Best Buy......that aren't in the leaked ad.

[len_mullen]

I stopped by Staples to grab one this morning. They were still waiting for the shipment to arrive. When I returned to the store after work, Fire posters were in the windows and there was a demo unit on display. After playing with the demo unit for a half hour, I bought two. I used Discover cash back to pay for the Fires, so my cost was $160/unit (Discover lets you purchase $25 Staples gift cards for $20).

 

My Fires were #2 and #3 sold at that store, so they are not exactly flying off the shelves. (The manager told me they were dead for the BF preview event last Sunday.)

 

I unboxed the unit when I got home. It was bigger and heavier than I expected. It's not TOO big or TOO heavy -- just a little bigger and a lot heavier than the Kindle I have been carrying around for a month. You won't slip it in a shirt pocket, but it easily slides into my front or back pants pocket which is nice if you are dashing through an airport.

 

Setup took just a few minutes. The keyboard is much better than my Storm2. Turns out bigger really is better and I like that the pressed key pops up above my fingertip as I type. It was painless to enter my wireless password and amazon credentials. My library loaded almost immediately. The Fire is a good ereader. It works in both orientations and the sepia color scheme is very comfortable for me. When you click a link in a book, the web integration is much better than on my Kindle.

 

I loaded the free Netflix app and watched an episode of The Office. This caught the interest of my oldest. He had 'no interest' in any tablet until tonight (he has a 14" laptop and a Droid2 phone), but monopolized the Fire for a full five hours. He gave Prime a thumbs up (better app than netflix and a surprisingly large library), installed some games (including a free version of Angry Birds), and surfed the web.

 

My wife also used the Fire for a half hour declaring it, "Awesome."

 

I didn't carefully measure the battery life, but 7-8 hours seems to be right on. College Boy returns to school tomorrow. I'll give this thing a thorough once over and post a followup. My first impressions are very positive.

[chimeralife]

I just re-read the whole forum and nobody ever said which the best BB BF tablet was. I have the Fire on preorder but am wondering if I want to just go with the ASUS on the front page instead.

 

OK update, just went to Amazon to cancel and it already shipped. Actually pretty upset about this because I was scheduled for next week. Don't get paid till Saturday which is why I went ahead and preordered since I was on the second week of sale. Good thing my husband put a little shopping money in my account today. Too bad now I can't buy what I was planning to.

 

Guess I'll have to deny it.

Edited November 16, 2011 by chimeralife
update

[peppysfireball]

The Fires shipped Monday , which was announced on here and amazon. They also should have sent you an email. The date you received for next week , was delivery not shipping. Super saver or regualre shipping takes a lot longer to get to you, but still ships the same time. Everyone on amazon reported the money was deducted from their accounts last Friday and over the weekend also.

 

I just re-read the whole forum and nobody ever said which the best BB BF tablet was. I have the Fire on preorder but am wondering if I want to just go with the ASUS on the front page instead.

 

OK update, just went to Amazon to cancel and it already shipped. Actually pretty upset about this because I was scheduled for next week. Don't get paid till Saturday which is why I went ahead and preordered since I was on the second week of sale. Good thing my husband put a little shopping money in my account today. Too bad now I can't buy what I was planning to.

 

Guess I'll have to deny it.

[jovifan4life]

I want more info from those of you who have the Fire. I was just on amazon looking at apps and there are not many children's apps (would be getting for my dd7). Is it worth it for her?

[len_mullen]

I thought most of the apps were suitable for a seven year old. If you select the kids category, there are 127 games and 1346 educational titles. Some will not be age appropriate and some will not run on the fire, but do some browsing and see if you cannot find enough to thrill your 7yo.

[kc4braves]

We had been planning to replace our old desktop with a laptop that the kids could share to do homework, etc. It would be so much easier and portable and pretty much does everything the desktop did.....and our laptops are newer and faster. I had considered getting my son an ereader or ereader/tablet since he reads on his ipod so much and the screen is so small. Now after reading so much about tablets, I'm wishing i could afford a decent tablet. We can't really swing both and have both a decent laptop AND tablet. My question now is......how close are tablets to laptops now as far as function? I know that tablets don't have cdrom drives but we really don't need them often except to load new programs initially. I assume thumb drives could be used with tablets but I just don't know enough. I have been thinking of tablets more as big phones not smaller laptops. I'm not sure if that is an accurate description, though. Would my kids be able to do their homework on a tablet? maybe one of the 10" tablets? They mostly surf for information and photos for projects, use word for papers and use the computer for online textbooks. And could they print from the tablet with a wifi printer? Just wondering which is the better choice for a 15 yo and 12 yo mainly for homework but also some online gaming....and maybe facebook at some point.

 

Also, is anyone familiar with the Lenovo® IdeaPad Tablet K1, 32GB that Office Depot has? it sounds similar to the Xoom to me as well as I think the Asus but I'm not sure.

 

Thanks for your input.

[chayw]

I am planning to get an ereader/budget tablet for my 5, 9 and 12 year olds. We travel a lot and the kids are always sitting through each others sporting events, so I am hoping that a tablet will replace the DVD player, Nintendo DS, and the books that they always bring along for trips.

 

I don't want to do the kindle fire because of the missing sd card slot and with traveling & the games we do not always have wifi. I have the lenovo A1 on order from Amazon, but will cancel or return those if I can get one of the BF tablets....so which is better the Blackberry Playbook or the Acer Iconia?? How is the market for Blackberry apps?

[Marcster]

How is the market for Blackberry apps?

Practically non-existent in comparison with Apple iOS or Android. It's like comparing a dusting of snow to a major blizzard.

 

But here you go: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/

[Marcster]

We had been planning to replace our old desktop with a laptop that the kids could share to do homework, etc. It would be so much easier and portable and pretty much does everything the desktop did.....and our laptops are newer and faster. I had considered getting my son an ereader or ereader/tablet since he reads on his ipod so much and the screen is so small. Now after reading so much about tablets, I'm wishing i could afford a decent tablet. We can't really swing both and have both a decent laptop AND tablet. My question now is......how close are tablets to laptops now as far as function? I know that tablets don't have cdrom drives but we really don't need them often except to load new programs initially. I assume thumb drives could be used with tablets but I just don't know enough. I have been thinking of tablets more as big phones not smaller laptops. I'm not sure if that is an accurate description, though. Would my kids be able to do their homework on a tablet? maybe one of the 10" tablets? They mostly surf for information and photos for projects, use word for papers and use the computer for online textbooks. And could they print from the tablet with a wifi printer? Just wondering which is the better choice for a 15 yo and 12 yo mainly for homework but also some online gaming....and maybe facebook at some point.

 

Also, is anyone familiar with the Lenovo® IdeaPad Tablet K1, 32GB that Office Depot has? it sounds similar to the Xoom to me as well as I think the Asus but I'm not sure.

 

Thanks for your input.

You should play with a tablet in a store. There are no ports to "add a thumbdrive", add an external monitor, add keyboard and mouse or connect a printer.

 

Programs (called Apps, as in applications) are added by downloading them "over the air" (typically through WiFi, unless you get a 3G-enabled tablet and a data plan).

 

The tablet you mentioned runs Android 3.1 and is most likely a very nice tablet but you should be aware that it is NOT Windows-OS based and therefore won't run the same games as the kids are playing on Windows computers. There are plenty of Android OS games available though. And plenty of Apps to do all sorts of things.

 

They won't be using "Word for papers", that's a Windows-based program. Though they can use Google Docs when they are on WiFi and that'll work too. It's similar but not the same as Word. I honestly can't imagine typing an entire paper on a tablet screen -- it's physically possible but they won't enjoy it. It would be better to fine tune a paper that they've written on a "real" computer or laptop.

 

To print to a printer from a tablet you'll need an App like Printershare (though there are others): https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dynamixsoftware.printershare The age of your printer is also going to be a limiting factor -- you may need to buy a new printer with Google Cloud Print technology.

 

I think you summed it up best yourself. Tablets really are like big smartphones -- not laptops or even netbooks.

[jediliz]

the Asus Transformer has a dock you can buy separately and can basically use the tablet like a netbook... It'll be on sale Black friday @ Best Buy and so will the docking component. As for printing from a tablet....not sure.....I don't have a Tablet yet....leaning towards that new Galaxy Tab 7 inch one that just came out that has Android 3.2

[len_mullen]

I like the transformer and think it could pull off the everyday computer role if it ran windows (next year there should be a win8 transformer), but a student will be more productive with a machine that runs windows and has a keyboard and mouse. Get an inexpensive laptop ($300) for school work and look at the $79 kindle for reading -- that will tide you over until the win8 transformer is available.

[len_mullen]

I am planning to get an ereader/budget tablet for my 5, 9 and 12 year olds. We travel a lot and the kids are always sitting through each others sporting events, so I am hoping that a tablet will replace the DVD player, Nintendo DS, and the books that they always bring along for trips.

 

I don't want to do the kindle fire because of the missing sd card slot and with traveling & the games we do not always have wifi. I have the lenovo A1 on order from Amazon, but will cancel or return those if I can get one of the BF tablets....so which is better the Blackberry Playbook or the Acer Iconia?? How is the market for Blackberry apps?

Replacing a DVD player with a tab is going to be expensive and/or a lot of work. You need to get your movies in a format that the tab can play and fit those files in the tab's memory or tether a mass storage device that will hold up under road conditions. Easiest solution would be to get one that download appropriately formatted media or stream via 3/4g, but that would also be the most expensive solution. If you can live without the movies, you can fit a lot of games and books on a Fire. If you want movies on the go, you may be better off with a 3/4g device that can stream media on the road.

[kc4braves]

Thanks for the replies. I think the laptop will be our best bet like I had thought. We were hoping for better deals but everything is high this year including gas and food. :-( My 12 year old will actually use the laptop more than my 15 yr old so still may look for a reader for him. I would like to get the less expensive kindle but he reads at night and I'm not sure he would appreciate a reader that he had to have a light to see. To get backlit, it seems we are back at $200 bucks. I guess he is good with his ipod touch....I would go nuts reading on that but he is 15. Maybe I should get ME a reader. :)

 

How does the operating system for the HP Touch differ from the android system? Keep seeing the "buy 1 HP laptop get one for $150" deal and wonder if DS would like it or what he could do with it. I know he likes apple and android apps but...I'm sure there are some benefits to the HP tablet, too.

[Marcster]

How does the operating system for the HP Touch differ from the android system? Keep seeing the "buy 1 HP laptop get one for $150" deal and wonder if DS would like it or what he could do with it. I know he likes apple and android apps but...I'm sure there are some benefits to the HP tablet, too.

Radically. It's like comparing French to Swahili.

 

The App market for WebOS is even smaller than that of Blackberry. Since the HP Touchpads are for all intents and purposes discontinued, do not expect many new apps to join the pool of possibilities. Also, do not expect new updates or features to be added to existing WebOS Apps.

[nat1jen]

Does the Kindle Fire allow you to download books from the library? I have a Nook, but I am seriously considering the Fire. My girls would love it. Thank you for any input!

[Jen8112]

 

Radically. It's like comparing French to Swahili.

 

The App market for WebOS is even smaller than that of Blackberry. Since the HP Touchpads are for all intents and purposes discontinued, do not expect many new apps to join the pool of possibilities. Also, do not expect new updates or features to be added to existing WebOS Apps.

I agree that the app store for the TouchPad is very limited but with so many being sold there could be more apps added and HP has said they will still support it and WebOS. I have received updates since the fire sale. I primarily use mine for the Kindle app and a web browser. For the Best Buy deal I think you need to buy a laptop of $599 or more to get the TouchPad for $150. I could be wrong though.