14 DAY TRIAL // The Amazon Kindle Fire has been available for a few weeks now, meaning that a lot of people have gotten their hands on it, especially since it's selling so well, as Amazon takes every opportunity to boast.
And, unsurprisingly perhaps, there are critics, plenty of them. From the slow and sometimes poorly designed user interface, to the lack of hardware volume buttons, to the inability to disable one-click purchases, there's plenty that's wrong with the device.
There's a long list of things that people don't like about the Kindle Fire tablet and a lot of them are complaining. Many are even returning the device, when they discover it's not exactly what they imagined it would be.
Of course, there's no way to know whether those that are complaining represent a significant number of those that have bought the tablet, or just a small minority.
An update to fix some big issues is coming before Christmas
There's enough of them, or they're simply loud enough, for Amazon to respond and promise a software update, coming just before Christmas perhaps.
The update will fix some of the biggest issues, there's a performance upgrade promised, for both the UI and the Silk browser, and some of the most irksome issues will be remedied.
It's unclear whether all of the complaints will be resolved, probably not. Clearly, it won't be the last software update for the Kindle Fire and, in time, bugs should be ironed out and performance improved.
But, the thing is, it doesn't really matter that the Kindle Fire is buggy and it doesn't really matter whether software updates will fix the tablet's problems or not. No software update is going to put hardware volume buttons on the device, for example.
The Kindle Fire is so cheap that most bugs won't matter
The Kindle Fire is going to sell in the millions for one simple reason, price. Here's a device that, at least in the minds of most people, offers everything that an iPad offers, but for a third of the price.
When buyers finally get their hands on the device, they may be a little disappointed, but they'll feel like they got what they paid for and be content with that.
This Kindle Fire is buggy, but there's a better and cheaper one coming in months
And there's another reason why the Kindle Fire's shortcomings aren't that important, there's another one coming soon. It may even be as soon as this spring, if the latest rumors are correct. At the latest, Amazon will launching an updated version in a year, like it does with its Kindle ereaders.
When you compare the first Kindle with the latest touch devices, it's easy to see that a Kindle Fire tablet four years from today is going to be a totally different beast.
The Kindle ereader is now roughly four times as cheap as at the time it launched. The Kindle Fire tablet launched at half the price of the original Kindle ereader. It's only going to get cheaper.