The team at Amazon behind the Kindle Fire series of smart tablets have made some relatively major changes to the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. Besides adding an “X” to the name, the body of this machine has been completely redesigned – no more internal midframe, for example, here you’ll find a magnesium cast unibody. The […]
Amazon has a new button. This button, built into the new Kindle Fire HDX’s software, summons a real, live human being (support technician) to your tablet over video chat, day or night, any day of the year, for whatever reason you want. It’s positively absurd, in scope (and, likely, practice). And it’s something that only Amazon could pull off.
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The average price for basic health coverage purchased on health insurance exchanges created by President Barack Obama’s health care reform law will be $249 a month, not counting subsidies, in 48 states reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a government report published Wednesday.
The health insurance exchanges, marketplaces for uninsured people and consumers who don’t get health benefits from their employers, are scheduled to launch on Oct. 1 for an enrollment period that runs through the end of March for 2014 coverage. This latest analysis of what the health insurance plans will cost comes just six days before people will be able to find out what they’ll actually pay.
“For millions of Americans, these new options will finally make health insurance work within their budget,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday. Reporters were provided access to the report prior to its publication.
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What do a 60-year-old video artist, a 36-year-old atomic physicist, and a 53-year-old behavioral economist have in common? Not much, probably, except they’ve each been awarded the 2013 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, a coveted accolade that earns them $625,000 and a spot in cultural history.
Carrie Mae Weems, Ana Maria Rey and Colin Camerer are three of the 24 people in this year’s class of MacArthur fellows, announced Wednesday. A total of 13 men and 11 women received the honor, working in fields that include organic chemistry, medieval history and ballet.
The MacArthur accolade, which has been around since 1978, is handed out annually to a select group of high-achieving individuals in disciplines ranging from science and medicine to literature and art. What was once a $50,000 award has since morphed into a six-figure bounty. Past winners include writer Susan Sontag, choreographer Merce Cunningham and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.
Amazon has upped their game once again with the 2013 edition of the Kindle Fire, called in this case Kindle Fire HDX. The HDX represents the high-definition resolution of the display, that being 1920 x 1200 (aka 322 DPI) across 7-inches of screen real-estate, the same smaller-size panel as 2012′s Kindle Fire HD
The newest versions of the tablets, which the company showed for the first time today, add a new offering: live customer support over video chat.
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It’s two years since the first Kindle Fire tablets, and Amazon hasn’t been sitting still: the new Kindle Fire HDX line-up is evidence of that. Still aggressively targeting cost-conscious users with a near-cost sticker price Jeff Bezos & Co. hope to offset with music, ebook, movie, and other purchases, the Kindle Fire HDX take on […]
Amazon has upped the Fire tablet ante with two new HDX models in 7- and 8.9-inch sizes with brand-new, high-resolution screens and running an updated Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor at 2GHz. Both models have adaptive screens that change brightness according to the ambient light and a special reading mode that will keep the tablet alive for 17 hours of uninterrupted reading.
The new models are considerably thinner than the original Fire models. For example, the 8.9-inch model is 34 percent lighter than the original 8.9 and is far thinner. Alongside these new models, Amazon is launching an updated OS, called Fire OS, with improved enterprise compatibility for email and secure browsing.
The devices are far faster than their predecessors, and gaming on the tablet was smooth and the graphics were surprisingly detailed. The 8.9-inch model also has an 8-megapixel rear camera complete with a small photo editing app that allows you to tweak brightness and contrast, retouch portions of the photo and even add meme-like top and bottom headers and “whimsical” “stickers.”
Stickers!
The new OS supports some surprisingly cool second-screen tools that allow you to buy music you hear on a movie’s audio soundtrack and even see the actors and characters in a movie. Amazon has partnered with a song lyrics provider to display the lyrics for downloaded music, allowing you to fast forward to certain lines in a song or follow the words along with the melody. The new OS will allow you to download Amazon Prime video for offline viewing.
Amazon has also added Mayday, a 24/7 customer support solution that allows you to ping Amazon support people. The service is ingenious. Remote support folks appear in a little video window and can annotate your screen with arrows and even touch UI items. You can mute them so they can’t hear your discussion and block them from seeing your screen if something… untoward appears. It is a free solution to family tech-support problems, and as long as you’re online you can access the service at any time. It is, in a word, amazing.
The 7-inch model starts at $229 for a 16GB model and $329 for the LTE-enabled WWAN version. The Wi-Fi-only model will ship October 15, and the LTE version will ship on November 14. Pre-orders are available now.
You can pre-order the 8.9-inch version for $379 (shipping November 7) and the 4G version, at $479, will be available in December.
The Kindle Fire HD also gets a slight processor bump to 1.5GHz. It costs $139.
Amazon has completely redesigned the Kindle line in this iteration, adding a glossy back bar to the HDX models and slimming down the HD model. The screen itself is very clear and bright and acceptably readable in direct sunlight thanks to the reactive brightness setting.
Amazon is also offering an improved case, called the Origami, that can fold to hold the device upright or in landscape mode. The 8.9-inch model has a unique sliding system that exposes the rear-facing camera and activates the camera app when initiated.
More interesting for the business crowd is the native enterprise support in Fire OS, offering hardware encryption, VPN-based browsing, and enterprise email support. Given that the Kindle Fire is already a popular “work” tablet given the price and size, it’s clear that Amazon sees a solid new niche for the platform.
Are the new models worth the cost of an update? If you have a user at home who has trouble with their devices, May Day alone could be a godsend. Otherwise, the hardware is nicely updated and very nicely designed. Compared to the original, bulky Kindle Fire, these models exhibit a certain design maturity and far better hardware.
Overall these are solid, incremental updates to an already strong platform and should be a big hit with readerly types and those looking for an inexpensive but powerful tablet from a well-known manufacturer.
It’s no surprise, of course, that the Kindle Fire HDX was the thing Amazon wanted to shout about from the Seattle mountaintops today. But Jeff Bezos had another little surprise up his impeccably tailored sleeves — a surprise that makes the $229 HDX look downright extravagant. A warm (if decidedly overcast) Pacific Northwest welcome to the new Fire HD. Well, “new” is perhaps not entirely accurate. This Kindle shares a lot with its predecessor, though there are some notable changes. Namely, the body. See, if we’re strictly talking form factor here, this guy is a dead ringer for the 7-inch HDX. Inside, however, you’ll find last-gen processing power: a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and on the front, the same old 1,280 x 800 display. Still, not too shabby for $139 — that’s $60 less than the last version cost moments before this post went up.
That price also gets you access to Fire OS 3.0, aka “Mojito,” Amazon’s latest sugary rum of an operating system. Naturally, some of the new features just won’t work on this hardware — things like Mayday, which requires a microphone for use. Like the HDX, this slate plays nicely with those neat new Origami covers. You can pre-order one right this second, but you’ll have to hang on until October 2nd before it actually starts shipping.
Philip Palermo contributed to this report.%Gallery-slideshow90901%
Source: Amazon
The new Kindle Fires are here. And they’re pretty damn impressive. The Kindle Fire HDX, in 7- and 8.9-inch models, has improved the screen, processor, RAM, software, and body of last year’s Fire HD. And that’s before you get to the insane new tech support feature Amazon dreamed up. But is that enough for the Fire to shake its rep as the "cheap" tablet? Maybe.
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