So, the Amazon “Kindle Fire” tablet is now reality and I believe it will be a big seller. At $199 it is within shouting distance of that “no brainer” gadget purchase price. Best of all, for us consumers, Amazon is forcing the rest of the tablet market to prove their value and “reason for being”.

That doesn’t mean that Motorola, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Vizio, Samsung and whoever else is making an Android tablet this week is going to be out of business. Oh, and unless Apple hires Leo Apotheker (former CEO of Hewlett-Packard), I very much doubt the iPad is going to be killed off anytime soon.

There is an “if” though, because I’m writing about a device I’ve only seen in demo videos. Problems have been known to become apparent when a million users fire up a new device or service. But, for the sake of this article I’m going to assume that the demos are real, the people that used the demo units are being honest and that Amazon is sticking with their practice of not releasing products until they are ready. Besides, if Amazon doesn’t deliver it will make for an even better article come mid-November.

First let’s talk about the timing of Amazon’s release. It’s about as good as it could get. The product is available for presale now, on the cusp of the fourth quarter, it will be released over a month before Christmas and most importantly, may be available several months before Apple is expected to announce its new iPad model(s).

In designing the Kindle Fire Amazon looked at their target market and only included hardware necessary to support that offering. The device features:

1. 1 Ghz Dual Core Processor
2. 7″ multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors
3. Battery Life – 7.5 hours of video or 8 hours of book reading (WiFi Off)
4. Weight 14.6 ounces (413 grams)
5. Charges from wall adapter OR computer USB port
6. Free cloud storage for all Amazon content.
7. One-month Prime Subscription
8. 8GB RAM
9. Amazon Silk web browser (http://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/introducing-amazon-silk/)

So, Amazon has developed a device that when coupled with their extensive online content library is clearly aimed at the consumer/home market both in price and capabilities. I doubt we’ll be reading stories about the Kindle Fire being used as a Point-of-Sale system or for navigating commercial aircraft.

However, the Kindle Fire has more than enough processing power to provide for smooth video playback, fast app launches and a responsive user interface. The display is bright, has a higher pixel density than the iPad 2, and (hallelujah!) an anti-reflective screen.

If the battery life lives up to the claims it’s more than acceptable for consumer use and being able to charge the device from either the wall or a standard USB port makes it less likely you’ll have to carry, or hunt for a high-amperage charger when needed. Basically, you’ll be able to charge it with the same charger or cable you’re using for a number of other devices in your home or car.

The Kindle Fire comes with 8GB of storage space and no slot for extra memory. I believe that is going to be sufficient when you consider Amazon is also including free storage on their cloud system. To give you an idea I looked at memory usage on my iPad where I have over 350 apps installed and they only take up about 3GB of space. For further comparison I checked my T-Mobile G2 phone and found that 150 apps there resided in less than 700MB of memory.

This should leave sufficient room for the device to hold several hours of video, books and a lot of music, and provided there’s a WiFi signal available content can be removed from the device and new downloaded from your online library. Once you have purchased content from Amazon it is always available. I suspect that Amazon will charge for non-Amazon content that is uploaded to their service much as they do with their existing MP3 library service (the first 5GB of non-Amazon content is free and 20GB of storage costs $20/year with higher limits available.).

What may also aid in the Kindle Fire being a game-changer is their new “Silk” browser. Amazon is attempting to split the workload of the browser between their “EC2” cloud service and the device. They’ll be caching pages in their cloud service as well as making intelligent guesses (based on data gathered from all of their users) at what links you’re likely to follow and pre-downloading them to the device. They’ll also be optimizing (shrinking) graphics and other content so that it is only the quality and size necessary to look good on the Kindle Fire’s display. Companies like AOL, Opera, Skyfire and a few others have tried similar, albeit less complex, schemes in the past. If Amazon can succeed in speeding up the browsing experience it would become another significant differentiator between them and the competition.

Amazon’s choices of what features they didn’t include in the Kindle Fire are almost as important as the features they did. Amazon’s new tablet reportedly does not include:

1. GPS or Accelerometer (G-Sensor)
2. Bluetooth Radio
3. 3G/4G Radio
4. No Microphone
5. No Cameras
6. No Memory Expansion Slot
7. No HDMI/mini HDMI port

All of these missing features were shaved to reduce cost, size/weight and battery usage. The only item on the list that surprises me is the Bluetooth radio as it would allow people to connect their wireless headphones and external speakers. Perhaps one can be added via the device’s mini-USB port, but that smacks of the same connectivity unfriendliness as the iPad Camera Connection kit for the iPad. Dante’ should have included “dongle usage and storage” as one of the “Circles of Hell” .

Some will complain about the lack of a 3G/4G option, but I don’t believe Amazon wanted to include a feature that would require their customers to contract with a third-party company. The cost of providing an all-inclusive 3G package like they offer on the existing 3G Kindle readers would have been too pricey. Customers don’t like metered service, contracts and, in general, mobile carriers. Even the best of the carriers is ranked pretty low on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.

I’m sure AT&T’s backpedaling on the iPad 3G’s $30/month unlimited package (it’s now $25/month for 2GB) shortly after the iPad 3G was launched also had struck a nerve. It wouldn’t take many movie downloads to more than equal the price of the device in data charges. That may lead to unhappy customers.

On a side note, I’d suggest that anyone absolutely needing 3G/4G service for their Kindle Fire consider purchasing one of the standalone mobile hotspots. For roughly the same cost you could have 4G service (if available) and use it with a variety of devices. There are also some phones offered by the carriers that allow tethering as part of their data plan (My T-Mobile G2 phone is one of them).

The rest of the items are superfluous to the Kindle Fire’s intended use. The Amazon’s development team was not intent on replacing your computer, car navigation system, smartphone or point and shoot camera. The Kindle Fire is a relatively inexpensive device that is meant to fulfill the desire to watch TV shows, movies, play games, read books, newspapers and magazines, listen to music, browse the web and check things like email and personal calendars. My guess is that list covers about 85% of the use most tablets see today and a far higher-percentage of the use predicted for the hundreds of millions of people that haven’t yet purchased a tablet.

Certainly there are going to be people that want a device that has one or more of the features that Amazon did not include. Amazon is gambling that a lot of consumers are going to decide against paying $200 more for some of the fuller featured Android tablets or $300 – $450 extra for a WiFi iPad/3G iPad with GPS capability.

Presently, there’s only one successful tablet maker, Apple and the iPad. I’m looking forward to seeing how Apple reacts to the Kindle Fire. Their response is going to tell us a lot about Apple’s market strategy moving forward. Do they want to be a sales leader in the tablet marketplace or are they content to be the manufacturer of a highly regarded, high-margin luxury model? Steve Jobs once stated that the Macintosh’s market share was greater than that of Porsche, BMW or Mercedes and being the BMW or Mercedes of the computer market wasn’t a bad thing. We’ll soon get to see if that’s still the Apple strategy or if they’re willing to compete based on price in the tablet marketplace. With their locked-in content libraries (iTunes and the Apple App Store) proving to be a significant profit center for Apple the pressure to drop price or produce lower-end iPads might be very tempting.

While Apple is planning its next move the other Tablet makers need to decide in which segment of the market they want to compete. Google (and its licensees like Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Samsung and even Sony) trails both Amazon and Apple badly in availability of streaming video and other saleable content.

Even if Google can improve its content offerings it would be hard for their partner tablet manufacturers to reduce their margins of the units when they will be sharing their profits from the sale of content with Google or even Amazon’s own Android market offerings.

I expect we’ll see some of these guys pull the plug on their current offerings and others re-work their devices to go after the other potentially large tablet segment, productivity machines. Samsung, Asus, and Acer have always been adept at producing lower-cost versions of products. None has ever shown itself to be a market pioneer or provider of entertainment content. This may lead to some of them jumping ship from Android to Windows 8 and its desktop integration, but that’s over a year away and in a marketplace where the lifecycle of a device can be less than two months (HP TouchPad), a year is a long, long time.

Sony’s choices will also be interesting to watch. While their e-readers have been technically competent they haven’t really challenged Amazon or Barnes & Noble in that marketplace. They have two tablets and, of course, their own library of video and music content. In the past they have licensed that to vendors like Apple and Amazon. I doubt they’re going to pull that content from Apple or Amazon, two significant revenue sources; however tablets like the Kindle Fire do pose a threat to their portable gaming devices, and even to their PlayStation 3 consoles.

My guess, Sony will also focus their tablet offerings to compete in the productivity segment and perhaps work a revenue sharing deal with Amazon for content distribution through their PlayStation devices.

For those old-timers out there like me, I expect that the Kindle Fire could have the same impact on the tablet market as the Commodore 64 had on the personal computer industry back in 1982. Commodore’s CEO Jack Tramiel used to proudly claim that he made, “Computers for the masses, not the (upper) classes.

So, we may end up with the two of the highest rated companies for customer satisfaction in their respective markets going toe to toe (Apple is the highest rated Personal Computer Manufacturer and Amazon holds the top spot among online retailers according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index).

For those that enjoy watching the machinations, sparring and outright wars in the high technology industry this should be a great show.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Acer, Amazon, Apple, asus, Commodore, iPad, Jack Tramiel, Kindle, Samsung, Sony, Tablet

Kindle Fire – A Tablet for the Masses? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 2, 2011 at 11:00 am.

The Acer Aspire 5738DZG is officially the worlds first commercially available 3D laptop – and you can get your hands on one now, thanks to Amazon.

This brand new, portable powerhouse will allow you to enjoy all your favourite 3D movies and add another dimension to your gaming on its crystal clear 15.6 inch HD display, which uses a special polarised layer to deliver the awesome 3D effects.   Inside the case there’s a generous 500GB hard drive, Pentium Dual Core processor,  4GB of RAM, Dolby Surround Sound, ATI HD Graphics, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium.

The Acer Aspire 5738DZG will set you back £540 from Amazon, but that also includes two pairs of trendy polarised 3D specs to go with it!

Filed in categories: Laptops and Gear, News

Tagged: 3D, Acer, Spotlight Gadgets

3D Laptop now on sale from Amazon originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 7, 2010 at 9:53 am.

I was excited when Julie told her main article contributors that she was sending us HP Mini 1000 netbooks in December, but for an entirely different reason.

See, I’d already purchased an Acer Aspire One only a few months earlier, and I was quite interested in seeing how the HP Mini stood up against the stiff competition of the netbook I’d grown to love so much. And when I say “love”, I really mean “love”. My AAO has a 160GB hard drive, 1.5GB RAM (I went ahead and upgraded), a long-lasting six-cell battery, and all the standard fare for a netbook – 8.9″ 1024×600 display, 0.3MP webcam, USB 2.0 ports, integrated SD/MemoryStick reader, and the requisite 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor.

One has to wonder – with all the netbook offerings on the market, are they really that different? The technical specifications are very similar across the board. Every netbook available (in the United States, at least) packs the 1.6GHz Atom. Microsoft has put the kibosh on allowing more than 2GB RAM in any netbook running Windows XP, so you’re likely to get 512MB or 1GB preinstalled. Although more 10″ displays are finding their way onto the market, the resolution is the same on every brand, make, and model – 1024×600, and the graphics are always an Intel integrated mobile chipset.

What sets apart one netbook from the others are subjective things, like the aesthetics of the case, the quality of the webcam, or the feel of the keyboard and trackpad. In these ways, I love, love, love my One. It’s got a sparkly blue exterior, a good webcam (for what it is, anyway), and a fabulous keyboard. I have little bitty hands, and the One’s keyboard is amazing – I can touch-type on it just as quickly as a full-size keyboard, at my normal speed of roughly 120-130WPM.

In fact, I love this little $400 laptop so much that I frequently find myself using it in lieu of the $2,000 Dell XPS M1330 I received through my employer. It’s lightweight, the battery lasts all day, and it does everything I need from a laptop except handle gaming or particularly heavy Photoshop work.

So did the HP Mini win me over? Could it convince me to switch from my beloved Aspire One to a different kind of netbook?

The short answer is no. The long answer takes, well…a longer explanation.

The Specs

There are some differences between the two laptops, to be sure. As previously stated, the technical specs are similar – the real differences are in the details:

Acer Aspire One

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor with Intel integrated graphics
• 1GB RAM stock (512MB onboard + 512MB SO-DIMM)
• 160GB 5400RPM SATA 2.5″ hard drive
• 1024×600 glossy 8.9″ LCD
• 0.3MP (300,000 pixel) webcam
• Integrated Atheros 802.11g wireless
• 6-cell battery
• Three USB 2.0 ports
• Two media slots (SD storage expansion and SD/MemoryStick media reader)
• VGA video output

HP Mini 1000

• 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor with Intel integrated graphics
• 1GB RAM stock (1GB SO-DIMM)
• 60GB 4200RPM PATA 1.8″ hard drive
• 1024×600 glossy 10″ LCD
• 0.3 MP (300,000 pixel) webcam
• Integrated Atheros 802.11g wireless
• Integrated bluetooth 2.0 EDR+
• 3-cell battery
• Two USB 2.0 ports
• One media slot (SD/MemoryStick media reader)
• VGA video output

The Aspire One has the disadvantage of having 512MB soldered directly onto the motherboard, which means it can only be upgraded to 1.5GB total – adding a 2GB DIMM won’t do anything, since the chipset on the motherboard is only capable of supporting a 1GB DIMM.

The Mini 1000, on the other hand, has a much lower quality hard drive – not only is the speed slower (4200 RPM vs the One’s 5400RPM), but it’s PATA and 1.8″, whereas the One uses a standard laptop-size 2.5″ SATA drive, making future upgrades much easier.

Additionally, the Mini has bluetooth built in, while the One does not. There are plenty of sites online talking about modding the One to support bluetooth. In the meantime, I picked up a super compact USB bluetooth adapter for mine.

The One has one additional USB port and an option for a 6-cell battery, which I chose (I got my configuration on eBay, although at most retailers it is available with a 3-cell or a 6-cell). this adds to the bulk and the weight of the laptop, but it also means I can go for five or six hours without really needing to recharge it.

Both have the sub-par Atheros wireless card. Personally, I think this was a poor choice, although I’m guessing that card costs less per item than a Broadcom or Intel-based card. My One’s wireless card randomly quits working, forcing me to turn off the computer, unplug the charger, and remove the battery just to get wireless working again. My research online has indicated that this is a problem with the wireless card, so it’s an easy fix – since both machines use a standard MiniPCI-e form factor for the wireless, I can just replace the existing card with an Intel-based module purchased online.

On paper, the technical specs are fairly similar. The HP’s mediocre hard drive is offset by the larger display and inclusion of bluetooth, while the One’s extra bulk and smaller screen are offset by a bigger, better hard drive and much longer-lasting battery.

Exterior Impressions

This is one area where the HP can pull a little more weight. It has a larger keyboard, a far more attractive casing, and a larger trackpad with bigger buttons. While I like the blue casing on my Aspire One, the HP has a nice patterened lid, and the entire device looks sleeker and more symmetrical.

You can see a big difference comparing the HP to the Aspire One and the eeePC 900:

Here’s a close-up of the swirl design on the Mini 1000 (enhanced so you can see the pattern more clearly):

The larger 10″ LCD on the HP has good and bad – the glass on top of it covers the entire display area including the bezel, so getting cat hair and whatnot off it is a bit easier (dust and hair gets stuck in the corners of the LCDs on both my XPS and my Aspire One). The downside is that the display itself is noticeably lower quality than the hardware in the Aspire One. The backlight seems weaker, and the quality of the image is just subpar – blacks appear very washed out and almost gray. It’s harder to tell this when using the HP by itself, but when placed next to the Aspire One or my XPS, it definitely stands out.

There is a single switch to toggle bluetooth and wifi on the HP. I do prefer this hardware – the switch is sturdier and feels higher quality, and the HP uses sexy blue and white LEDs instead of the more boring, ho-hum orange and green ones on the Aspire One.

Usability

Between the two laptops, there were some surprising differences in general usability. I’m a very fast touch-typer and discovered that the extremely low-profile keys on the HP’s keyboard meant I frequently missed letters while typing. While I could probably fairly easily adapt to the shorter travel on the HP, I definitely prefer the Aspire One for typing.

My boyfriend, however, has big, manly hands, and he finds that the HP’s keyboard is much, much better – the keys are physically larger, and he found that adapting to it was much easier than using my Aspire One. He also prefers the larger display, even though the colors are more washed out.

I think the keyboard is probably the most important component of a netbook (along with the display), because you’re likely going to be typing on it plenty. You can see a comparison of the two keyboards here:

And here’s a handy visual comparison of the keyboards on the Mini 1000, the Aspire One, and the eeePC 900 (which has a much smaller keyboard) for your reference…

HP Mini 1000:

Acer Aspire One:

Asus eeePC 900:

The HP’s power switch is a little weird – it springs back, so you have to push it and hold it in place for a few seconds to get the machine to turn on. When the laptop is in standby, the power switch’s white LED slowly blinks. The Acer has a more standard power button above the keyboard, which illuminates with a green LED when on, and blinks orange when the machine is in hibernate or standby.

I didn’t find that I had problems using the Acer’s trackpad buttons. The HP’s trackpad buttons are a bit larger and easier to find with your thumb, and the HP includes a handy one-click button to disable the trackpad. All in all, I definitely prefered the HP’s trackpad over the one on my Aspire One. The One’s trackpad is also glossy, and the buttons are flush with the sides – too often I find myself trying to scroll on the right button instead of the right edge of the trackpad!

That being said, although both machines use the high quality Synaptics line for their trackpads, the Aspire One has the added bonus of supporting multitouch. Scrolling through long documents is accomplished through what Synaptics calls ChiralMotion – you start sliding down on the trackpad, and then move your finger in a circular motion to scroll. It’s much faster for long webpages and documents than the traditional scrolling method of coasting at the bottom right corner of the trackpad.

The Verdict

Both machines have certain advantages and disadvantages. If you want something that’s very sexy with an almost full size keyboard, I’d recommend the HP. However, the Aspire One is definitely has better technical specs for the price, and being the frugal-minded girl that I am, I’m glad I chose it over the HP when making my original purchase.

If you’re interested in buying a netbook, I highly recommend hitting your local shopping area to look at models on display. Your best bets for checking out the physical laptops are Best Buy, Sam’s Club, and Fry’s. The technical specifications are so similar across the entire netbook line that it comes down to subjective preferences on appearances, keyboard, port placement, and other fairly minor details. I love my Acer Aspire One, but my boyfriend Dan much prefers the HP Mini 1000 – it’s just a matter of what’s important to you.

At the end of the day, we both adore having netbooks. We tend to keep ours on our nightstands for late-night browsing and light gaming (these little guys are great for old-school DOS games!), and we’ll be taking them along when we go to Florida at the end of April. Even though Dan’s a heavy gamer, he’s already decided that his next laptop purchase will be a netbook – they’re just that great.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Acer, HP, Netbook

Netbook Face-Off: Acer Aspire One versus HP Mini 1000 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 8, 2009 at 5:06 am.