Amazon Fire Tablet Review Update

I gave a somewhat glowing review of my then new Amazon Fire tablet earlier on. I'll have to change that one since it died on me while at UCSF a few days ago.

I was still delighted with it and enjoyed using it. Then, one morning when I was playing around with it, the screen just went black and I couldn't get it back. I thought maybe the battery died so put it on the charger for some time. Nope. That didn't help, although an image did show up of a battery just barely charged. No matter how long I charge that thing now I still only get that same battery image.

Now I'm going to contact Amazon for instructions on returning it for either a refund or replacement. Not sure which I'd prefer, although if I can get a replacement that stays working for more than a month, I suppose that will suffice.

Since this is similar to the problem I had with the old Trio ASX tablet my sister bought me, I wonder if power supply problems are what you deal with when you have a tablet? We'll see what Amazon says.

Review: Amazon Fire Tablet

I finally got the chance to put my new Amazon Fire tablet through its paces this last week, having spent that week detained at UCSF's Long Hospital. For starters, I'd almost say I was delighted- as the ladies like to say. I'm not sure I'd say it excelled at anything, although I was surprised from the start at how well it worked with one thing: movies.

I got up the first morning and turned it on only to see what seemed like an advertisement asking me if I wanted to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It gave the option of downloading or just watching it. I decided to just watch, having nothing else to do that early in the morning. It said it was free so, after checking for any fine print, I pressed the button to start the movie and was impressed from the start. 

It started right up. No delays- do they call that buffering?- as I'd expect even on this computer. I was almost startled by the fine detail and the color. I couldn't put it down, despite not being a big movie watcher. The only downside, as with all things cell phone and tablet, was tilting my head down to watch it gave me a stiff neck.

But I survived and finished the movie feeling I'd really made a score for $57.00 delivered. Then I tried some other things; checking e-mail and such. E-mail worked fine and seemed more efficient than my new smartphone. Replying to messages was problematic at times as if I accidentally touched the tablet or screen in the wrong place, whatever I'd been working on would get booted off the screen and I'd have to go find it. But, the Android operating system- love it or hate it- would usually save whatever I'd been working on right where I left off.

I don't know I'd say the tablet excelled at anything, except movies. Typing, as one would expect, was a pain, just as it is on my cell phone. And a few things seemed to be missing, bookmarks for one. It allowed you to bookmark pages, but I couldn't find a list of bookmarked pages anywhere. That turned out to not be too big of a problem since if i just started typing  the name of a web site, the system would automatically insert the rest of the title, then a list would pop up with recommended sites I might want to visit. Still, what if you couldn't remember specific names?

About my second to last night at UCSF my assigned nurse and I were talking and I mentioned my tablet. She asked me what kind of tablet I had. I'm surprised she hadn't seen it as it was charging on the table next to my bed. When I told her I had a Fire, she said she had one, too. We went on to discuss some of the pros and cons of it with her main complaint being she didn't like the keyboard. I had to agree, but that's what you get with tablets and cell phones.

I didn't see her again but wish I had if only to ask her a question. One thing that seems difficult, if not sometimes impossible to do sometimes, with the tablet is to copy and paste things. I found if I held my finger over something a small window would pop up that said Copy. Then you could find an empty field, hold your finger over it and another small window would pop up that said Paste. 

Except that didn't work for web site locations. I tried and tried to copy and paste the location I linked to on my last Hate Hillary post, to no avail. I finally had to wait until I came home to finish that one and I'm not sure I got the right link since I couldn't find the source of the original link even on the tablet.

That was fun talking with the nurse about something we had in common and I guess that makes us almost family since we both have the same tablets.

But, the complaints I'd read earlier on about regarding missing pixels on the screen or the tablet being slow, I didn't experience at all. For the price, I'd recommend it, but beware the stiff neck.

My New Toy

I decided I'd like to have another tablet in anticipation of future hospital stays. I really loved my last one.I looked around and found this Amazon Fire listed for just over $60.00. I bought one last week for about $57.00 through amazon dot com. It arrived yesterday.

Too soon for a review, of course, but I was surprised to see it come with no user manual. No instructions at all for how to get started with it, aside from a small card with a picture of the tablet and some images pointing to various parts of the tablet. I wasn't even sure how to turn it on, or how long I needed to charge it.. They do have an instruction manual you can buy. That seems kinda rude. I'd expect the user manual to be part of the original purchase.

I figued out the on/off button by myself pretty quickly if only because it was in the same spot as on my last tablet. Kinda hard to tell if it worked at first, though, since the tablet had no power. After a few hours of charging I got some letters to show up on the screen.

One thing I didn't like about this tablet, even before I bought it, is it seems to be wifi only. No data downloads at 4G that would allow it to be used anywhere as my old tablet had. I really loved that old one. I looked around and found some units that offered 4G but they were either too expensive or required monthly fees. I settled on wifi only.

After charging it a couple hours last night I turned it on and it started taking me through the set up process. About the second page I came to it said I needed wifi to continue and showed a bunch of available wifi networks, although I wasn't sure if they were secure networks and didn't try to tap into them. I recognized the first network name having seen it on my smartphone before and believe I was connected to it. I'll turn on the phone in a little while and see which networks I'm connected to, then choose one for setting up the tablet.

We'll see how this works, then I can go to Amazon add my review to the others.

Northcoast Travelogue 7/16

Yep. As some of you might have guessed, I've been out of town, thus some of the cryptic posts I've made here the last week or so. I've found it's near impossible to post here using the Amazon Fire tablet and it's great to be back on my real computer. Watched part of a TV show last night I found amusing and will look for again. Great Minds with Dan Harmon was fun. Last night he was some gay guy that tried to introduce Harry Truman to gay rights. Fun show and stayed that way. Good explanation on Dan's part, I'll add. I was expecting him to spoil it and bring wedding cakes into the mix but he avoided that so I enjoyed the show. Stayed at at the Super 8 Hotel in Cloverdale last night- my new favorite place. I was surprised to wake up this morning to find I couldn't get cell phone service although I'm sure I had it last time we were there. Maybe it was my phone, though, as I got a NO Service message from Cloverdale all the way to Eureka. Gonna get a new phone, I guess, although I'd decided that before the No Service mess. At least part of the Willits bypass is open now. No signs to warn of it until you get outside Willits to the north, then a detour sign directing you to the right where you're led to the last half mile or so of the bypass. Not real exciting and didn't seem like a freeway at all. Seemed more like a copy of the current 101 of Willits north. Go give it a try.

AT&T Outage?

John Chiv mentions something about an outage with AT&T services. It's not clear if it is affecting internet. Any other AT&T internet users out there?

My modem seemed to spaz out last night before I turned off the computer. I reset the modem and everything seemed back to normal. Then, this morning, I got up and noticed the lights on the modem weren't all green. I turned on the computer and couldn't connect to the internet despite resetting the modem half a dozen times. I went back to bed.

What else was I supposed to do? Stare at my desktop for hours? I snoozed for an hour or so, got up and tried again and oila! I could connect again. In the back of my mind I wondered if the problem might lie with ATT, but since my modem lights weren't normal, I figured the modem had had enough and needed to be replaced.

Why does this sort of thing always happen on Sundays? If it was Monday I might have been able to go up o Cornerstone Computers in Henderson Center. But, nope, another Sunday based problem. Only thing I could think of is seeing if Staples carried modems.

I'll probably buy a new modem, anyway, and this time get one that offers wifi. I'm no fan of wifi but at least if I had it in the house I could use my wifi only Amazon Fire tablet.

Anyone else having internet problems?