[Callum]

All you can do on the Kindle Fire is read books though, right? Where as with the iPad, reading books is one of many features on it.

[arista]

Originally Posted by Callum

All you can do on the Kindle Fire is read books though, right? Where as with the iPad, reading books is one of many features on it.

the Fire has more
using clouds


"He then took a swipe at Apple, saying there would be no need to synchronise the Kindle Fire to a computer, as people do with their iPads. "That model, that you are responsible for backing up your own content, is a broken model," he said.

Michael Gartenberg, analyst at Gartner, said the announcement pitched Apple and Amazon head to head in the battle for "cloud" media services. Both Apple and Amazon have been developing services that allow customers to store their music, movies and TV shows remotely – "in the cloud" – and then access them from any device connected to the web. Next week, Apple is expected to respond, with more details of its inevitably-named iCloud service next week. "For me, that was the most significant part of the announcement," said Gartenberg. He said the Kindle Fire looked like a good product and was priced to sell, but the real battle was "in the cloud".

Amazon plans to begin taking orders for the Fire on its US website immediately, and will start shipping on 15 November. Bezos said the company was "making many millions of these" – but Amazon has no immediate plans to launch the Fire in the UK.

Reaction at the event was mixed. Avram Piltch, editorial director at Laptop Magazine, said the device looked "more like an iPod killer than an iPad killer". He said the Kindle Fire looked set to be a big seller for people who want to use it to consume media, but it didn't have enough firepower to take on the iPad or other tablet manufacturers who were making devices for people at work rather than play.

The new Kindle has its work cut out for it. Apple sold more than 29m iPads in the product's first 15 months on the market. Most of its competitors have bombed. Hewlett Packard scrapped its tablet device in an embarrassing U-turn that contributed to the ousting of its chief executive. Blackberry maker Research in Motion shipped just 200,000 of its own rival to the iPad, the PlayBook, in three months.

But, said Gartenberg, Amazon has one big advantage over the other would-be iPad killers: content. "Amazon has millions of customers already buying their stuff. It has their credit card details, it knows their names. That's a big advantage," he said.

Next Tuesday, Apple will have its chance to respond – except that its big launch for Christmas is the latest version of the somewhat smaller iPhone. The battle has just begun."