Technology: Kindle Fire Joins Crowded Tablet Field

Amazon has done it again with its newest creation, the Kindle Fire, one of the hottest new tablets to hit the scene, just in time for Christmas.

The Fire is a really neat toy for an extremely reasonable price tag of $200. In the competitive tablet market, of course, people are automatically comparing the Fire to the iPad. The truth is that the two just don't compare, in price, size, or many other qualities, but that doesn't mean the Fire can't be useful.

Right off the bat, you're saving $300 instead of buying a $500 iPad. The Fire has a 7" screen, a rubber back for better grip, and a size and weight equal to that of a paperback book. The Fire does have a smaller amount of memory, but it's not noticeable because the Fire is considered a cloud device, which stores all your music, movies, and books in the cloud, and then sends and receives the data as needed.

Then there are apps. The Kindle Fire uses the Android Market Place to access the apps compatible for the Fire. This tablet doesn't have the extensive app capability of the iPad, but it does have popular apps, such as Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Facebook.

The Fire includes built in speakers and a head phone jack. The device is multimedia heavy and, due to its extremely low price, doesn't have some of the perks other tablets do. The Fire doesn't have a camera or a GPS; it has a smaller 1 gigahertz processor and is limited to areas with Wi-Fi.

The bottom line? The Kindle Fire is no iPad. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles. However, it does have many of the features and capabilities you might look for in technology today, all for a very reasonable price.