A couple of years ago, on a cold day in December, I opened up a box of happiness. It contained my Kindle Fire HD. This device would be responsible for almost completely converting me to ebooks, something I never expected. After all, I loved the feel of a new book, the way the spine cracked when I opened it. Still, the sheer convenience of being able to download a book without the wait time appealed to me.
It should have been cut and dried. Another Kindle addict born, right? Not so much. There are quite a few places that Kindle failed me. I’ll share them here with you now.
- Stability. Even though Kindle’s been around for awhile, it still suffers from too many crashes for my taste. In fact, the Kindle regularly behaved like a badly-rooted android phone, crashing at the worst time, losing notes and work.
Personal Documents. As an author, the ability to upload my files to a tablet and edit them has always been crucial. It’s a key part of my process. Something I would’ve appreciated even more? Being able to take my feedback and export it to a file I could work from. Even after all of the complaints on message boards across the web, Kindle still falls short, only permitting readers to export highlights on purchased ebooks. Even then it involves unnecessary steps and, at times, third-party software.- Apps. Yes, there are an amazing number of apps available in Amazon’s app store. Still, there are many that aren’t available on Amazon that are available in Google Play and iTunes. One such app is MoonReader Pro, an app that would have allowed for the exporting of notes. If Kindle actually supported it. The free Moon Reader app shows up in the store, but, unless you’re looking to jailbreak your kindle, forget it. Ridiculous, since Kindle is essentially running on an android operating system.
- No Chromecast. If you’re an Amazon Prime member like me, you’ve checked out the vast selection of movies and TV programs available through Amazon Prime. In many cases, they’re the only ones who have the TV episodes that your cable provider has mysteriously hidden from their guides. Amazon’s insistence that you use Fire TV instead only serves as a major inconvenience for everyone. You can install the Chromecast app from 1Mobile Market, but there’s a significant amount of trickery involved afterward that the average user will probably avoid.
Not Kid-Friendly. Amazon has this great feature where you can set up kids as users on an existing account. You can even set up the Kindle specifically for kids. It would be awesome if it worked! We found that when my son was set up as a kid user on my Kindle, most apps requested a parent logon, even though they were installed for him to use. Despite following the install procedures correctly, he’d get prompted again and again. Eventually I wiped the Kindle and set up a regular account for him, which I constantly had to police.
So that’s it. These are my reasons. If you plan to do nothing more than read purchased books on your Kindle, you may never experience any of these concerns. I’ve since traded in my Kindle for an iPad Air 2 and it resolves all of my issues except being able to watch Amazon Prime shows. I can live with that, however, because it ticks off the rest of my boxes.
These are just my reasons, though. What tablet are you using? Why did you pick it? Include it in the comments below!
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