Please do not buy the Kindle fire
colabopad.blogspot.com
colabopad.blogspot.com
This post really does add zero, if not negative, value to Hacker News.
I bought a Kindle reader a year ago; went for the cheaper ad-supported version. At first it was annoying, but now I don't care. I don't look at the screen if I'm not using it so I don't see the "screen saver" ads but briefly. There are some smallish banner ad type things on the pages that list what material is on the device, but they too have become essentially invisible to me. What surprises me is that none of the ads seem relevant to either whats on the device or my purchase history with Amazon.
Most important, when reading I see no ads. I wonder if it's the same thing on the Fire? Can you turn off the screen when not in use? I expect it goes blank fairly quickly to save power.
For someone who is considering buying a device it's helpful to know what to expect.
That said, stuff like this just sounds silly ..
Instead what I paid for is an obscene device that would be more appropriately called a "Personal Advertisement Consumption Assistant" (PACA), because that is exactly what it is. It is crippled with Amazon's custom Android, which again is simply the Amazon home page inundating you with ads.
... when you know in advance there will be ads shown.
Plus, the Amazon product page says this:
Special Offers and Sponsored Screensavers display on Kindle Fire tablet lock screens and do not appear while you are using the device.
If it's so painful just turn the damn thing over on its face.
I guess what bothered me is that the post manages to be nearly contentless, intellectually dishonest, and moralistic all at once. These kinds of inane blog posts really just shouldn't be submitted to HN.
A trifecta of fail. :)
I didn't expect to receive a device primarily meant to serve me ads, sorry if this is a naive expectation.
As far as what should or not be posted to HN, I believe that is why there is an up/down voting system.
Your tone is unnecessarily condescending.
That is, in fact, exactly what you got. I have the same device, albeit not ad supported. In other words it's exactly the same as yours except there are no ads on the lockscreen.
(sidenote: I'm really not a Kindle fanboy of any kind, but responding to your extreme post is making me sound like one!)
I didn't expect to receive a device primarily meant to serve me ads, sorry if this is a naive expectation.
Come on, you have to know you're wildly exaggerating when you say it's primarily meant to serve you ads.
As far as what should or not be posted to HN, I believe that is why there is an up/down voting system.
We're in total agreement here, that's why I flagged it.
Your tone is unnecessarily condescending.
I wrote it that way because you either went to the trouble of writing an alarmist, link-baity post like this without even doing the most cursory research (i.e. reading the product page) or you knew the post was intellectually dishonest and you said, "the hell with it" and tried to score some traffic for your blog with it anyway.
I see this type of thing get submitted more and more here, but usually I bite my tongue in the interest of civility. Today, I didn't. Sorry you were the unlucky author I called out; you're far from the only person to do this.
The product page says the ads only appear on the lock screen. They do not (or should not) appear when actively using the device.
Is this not true?
I'm genuinely curious because it would suck big time if you are shown ads outside of the limitations the product page describes.
Ultimately I think we may be of different minds about what we consider acceptable consumer/merchant relationship.
When I bought my kindle, looking for hidden gotchas was simply not part of my calculation. I expected I was buying a device...if there was a popup during the checkout process that said this product is ad support, I absolutely would not have bought it.
We haven't even gotten into the insidious implications of this type of intrusive marketing for people (kids especially). This is not about moralizing, I simply consider this unacceptable, others may defer.
Interesting. I bought mine from Amazon.com and it was quite clear that I had a choice of ad-supported or, for a higher price, ad-free. All of this info was on the product page, and it never felt like anything was hidden.
I think this page is pretty typical: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CU0NSCU/ref=kin_comp_dk_...
There's a clear choice of "With Special Offers" and "Without Special Offers" with a link to a popup that explains what this means.
If you bough yours from a different site or if the Amazon page did not indicate these options then I can understand feeling cheated.
I also had planned on rooting my device (at least to the extent that I could replace the ads with my own images) but I was never able to accomplish that. For me it ended up to be not a big deal, but I knew from the description of the product I was buying an ad-supported device in the first place.
Ultimately I think we may be of different minds about what we consider acceptable consumer/merchant relationship.
Well, since I agreed to the Kindle deal I'm OK with it. Amazon.com was quite upfront about what they were selling. I would not be OK if there was nothing to indicate I would be seeing ads.
This is something that annoys me with Tivo. I don't recall that they were as clear when I ordered the service that in addition to an annual fee I would also have to look at stupid banner ads on assorted screens. Also, as far as I know, there is no way to opt out of this (such as by paying more, as with the Kindle).