Credit: Amazon.com
After an intense blitzkrieg on the media about the launching of Amazon’s Kindle Fire at the irresistible price of $199.00, the dust is gradually settling down and many are not happy with the cheap tablet. Several problems are rising up to the surface from unsatisfied users.
The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success with many of its early users. The most disgruntled are packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer. Thirty-one percent of Amazon’s Kindle Fire users are rating the tablet with three, two and one star. That’s not a good batting average for a promising rookie.
Below are the most common complaints of the newly launched Kindle Fire:
- There is no external volume control.
- The Power button at the bottom of the tablet is easy to hit by accident.
- Web pages take a long time to load. The Silk Web browser is not as fast as Amazon said it was.
- There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing.
- The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky.
- The Wi-Fi connection is mysteriously interrupted from the network. Then it’s back again after a while. (“No Internet connection. A Wi-Fi network connection is required to complete this task. Please connect to a Wi-Fi network”.)
Amazon is listening closely to these complaints and is currently working on a software upgrade to be released into the wild during the next couple of weeks. Amazon said Monday that it will release a software update to improve the performance of the Kindle Fire within two weeks. The company sidestepped questions over whether the upgrade was a response to complaints about Internet browsing speed and wireless connectivity since the device went on sale. “As with all of our products, we continue to make them better for customers with regular software updates,” Amazon said.
“In less than two weeks, we’re rolling out an over-the-air update to Kindle Fire,” said Drew Herdener, a company spokesperson. There will be improvements in performance and multi-touch navigation, and customers will have the option of editing the list of items that show what they have recently been doing. No more will wives wonder why their husbands were looking at a dating site when they said they were playing Angry Birds.
I’ll monitor the upcoming software upgrade like a hawk and will let you know how good or bad it is as soon as it becomes available. Stay tuned. Good Day.
I’m truly surprised about a few things on the list that seem so basic they never should have appeared, such as the volume control and privacy controls.
Of course, I’ve never heard of the Kindle Fire, so I’m not much of a test audience.At least I can come here and find out what the mainstream is up to!
(Angry Birds? – ok, I’ll go check that one out.)
Hi Linda:
Yep, Jeff Bezos is no Steve Jobs for sure. These omissions are so obvious, they should have been corrected before the tablet was in full production.
I’m keeping my eyes and ears wide open waiting for the software upgrade. I’m not a satisfied customer at this moment.
Take Care,
Omar.-