4 Good reasons you do NOT want to buy a Kindle Fire

Before you rush out and spend your hard-earned cash, here are 4 good reasons why caution would be a good thing.

Reason 1: It's an Out-of-date Android
The single biggest reason you might not want to buy a new Kindle Fire is because it’s most likely going to be running the old 2.1 Eclair version of Android. For those keeping track, that’s actually ten revs behind the current tablet Android release, 3.2 Honeycomb. There was 2.2 Froyo, 2.3 Gingerbread, 2.3.3, 2.3.4, 2.3.5, 2.3.6, 2.3.7, 3.0 Honeycomb, 3.1, and, finally, 3.2.

All indications are that Amazon has customized their version of Android, but still, that means you’re essentially running something almost two years out of date.

Reason 2: It’s not really Android
If you’re interested in the Kindle Fire because it’s an Android tablet made by Amazon, think again. Because Amazon is likely to be hacking it up and making it their own, anything you want to run from the real Android world may or may not run on the Fire.

Plus, from a more geopolitical point of view, Amazon is adding one more fork in the already twisted road of Android distributions.

On one hand, they’re taking advantage of an open environment, which is what open is all about. On the other hand, they’re specifically not working and playing well with others, to the harm of the entire ecosystem.

Reason 3: It’s a BlackBerry PlayBook hand-me-down

The “new” Kindle Fire is really just a BlackBerry PlayBook with some new software. The Fire was apparently designed opportunistically by the same company, Quanta, that did the PlayBook — and it’s essentially the same hardware.

Now, I have to say I like the form-factor of the PlayBook, but we know the device hasn’t really resonated with consumers.

Do you really want to buy hand-me-down hardware that’s already failed in the marketplace once?

Reason 4: No Access to the Android App store
While you’ll probably be able to get all the apps you want from Amazon’s Appstore, you will not be able to get apps from the canonical Google Android App store that should be available to all Android users.

That also means you’re going to be getting special or custom or possibly nerfed versions of apps, because they’re specifically meant for the Fire and not for the wider Android ecosystem.

Conclusion

There are many many more reasons you should not be in a hurry to buy this device but the bottom-line is, if you like the Amazon services and pretty much want to be tied down to just that suite of services, you’re fine with the Fire.

Otherwise, you might want to 'wait and see' how other users in the market like or dislike the device.