????For its software, Amazon took a version of Google's (GOOG) Android operating system (for the hardcore, codenamed "Gingerbread") and built a new user interface dominated by grays and orange. Designed to look like a book shelf, the home screen displays a thin status and notifications bar to display battery life or messages from apps running in the background, a row that categorizes items by media type like books, videos and apps, a virtual Cover Flow-like "carousel" of recently-browsed media to swipe through, and an area where users can bookmark things.
????The reading experience is usually as fluid as the latest crop of e-ink-based Kindle devices, but things hum along a little faster thanks to that processor. But just like the iPad, Nook Color, and other tablets, you may have trouble reading outdoors thanks to the device's color screen. On the other hand, photos and other art pop. Reading a photo-friendly periodical like Esquire is a pleasure, and little things like highlighting words for definitions or making notes are much faster. I did notice some lag swiping between comic books panels, though I didn't run into that problem when reading other media.
????One of the Fire's draws is a decent video selection from in-house and third-party services. Amazon breaks up the video section on the Fire into three main categories -- Prime Instant Videos, Movies and TV Shows. The company makes the experience easy to stumble upon or search something out, then either rent or purchase it. Though you can rent HD content on it, the Fire only supports standard definition video. So if you rent X-Men: First Class in high definition, it'll play in HD on other compatible devices, but in standard definition on the Fire. Hulu Plus, and a smooth-running version of Netflix, will also be among the thousands of third-party apps available at launch from the Amazon Appstore.
????Amazon's Silk has received a lot of coverage because it works differently from some other web browsers: some of the work of loading web pages is done by Amazon's EC2 cloud service, and some is handled by the Fire itself. Data is optimized for the tablet, so as the company explains, a 3-megabyte image may be crunched into a 50-kilobyte file. Silk also analyzes how other users typically navigate a particular web site you're visiting and based on the behavior, tries to predict what you'll click on next and pre-load it.
