kefrank

Obviously they're not trying to compete directly with Apple. If they were, they'd put out a $500 full-featured Android tablet just like so many other companies are right now.

Think about what the e-ink Kindle is. It's inexpensive hardware that works well and gets you to buy e-books from Amazon. The Kindle Fire is the same idea, just expanded to other media that Amazon sells: e-books, videos, music, apps. Amazon makes revenue on all of those media sales and the Kindle Fire offers a portal to that media at a much lower entry price than the iPad. It's attractive to many people (even some current iPad owners) because:
-- it's inexpensive
-- many consumers already have strong ties to Amazon and their solid media services
-- it's more portable than the bigger tablets, including the iPad

mphtrilogy

grabbed the amazon touch
enjoying it, but frustrating page numbers are not visible, only "locations" and percentages...
also annoyed by the ads, but i knew that going in.. might splurge for the cost to get rid of them...

my daughter has the nook, and I like the look of it better, but I like the idea of the amazon footprint and cloud, i suspect it will be around longer than B&N so I am in for the long haul...

$99 is just crazy for this fun little device though.. i have a ton of books on this thing already and doing more reading than I have in years...

the e-ink is nice and reading on the touch is not bad at all...

wmansir

I have already gone with the Nook Touch, but I still wanted to get hands on with the Kindle Touch and I was at Walmart today so I thought I would check out their ebook/tablet display. It was a complete waste of time.

The best of the bunch was the iPad, which was sealed in a plexiglass display playing a demo video on loop. From their it wasn't so much down hill as off a cliff.

They had a demo unit display set up for the Kindle Touch, Nook Simple Touch, Nook Color and Kobo ereaders. It was the kind with the security wire and then four cords wrapped around the device so it can't be stolen. Only, for all the devices except the Kindle, it wasn't the devices at all but just the boxes. That's right, secured, empty boxes. WTF?

The Kindle didn't even have the box, just the placard and an empty security device.

whotony

It's Walmart why would you not expect it to be that way?

mewmartigan

I like the ads...some of them are actually good deals although the ones since Black Friday have just been advertising standard gold box deals.

The Touch (and any other Kindle) will display page numbers along with locations and percentages...however, Amazon has to have updated the book with it. Some of my books have page numbers, some do not. Amazon has a special code to put in each book since the physical page you are on would adjust with font size, etc.