If you haven’t heard, Amazon has now officially entered into the tablet market with an amped-up version of their popular e-reader: the Kindle Fire.
Along with two new versions of the e-Reader (a $79 basic version and a $99 Kindle Touch), Amazon has announced the Kindle Fire, a 7” color touchscreen tablet that will run you $199—pretty cheap by tablet standards.
And the Kindle Fire really does have a lot to recommend it. It has a dual-core processor. It has access to all of Amazon’s electronic content: Kindle e-books, movies, TV shows, and music. Oh, and storage for any of that content purchased on Amazon is free in the cloud, meaning that you don’t have to worry about storing them on the tablet itself.
But perhaps the most interesting development the Kindle Fire brings to the tablet world is its “Amazon Silk” web browser. First of all, the browser does support Flash, which is quite handy. More importantly, though, Silk is kind of like the hybrid car of web browsers: it’s designed to load web pages faster by using processing power from Amazon’s cloud servers to boost its on-board performance. It’s an intriguing idea for sure, and it will be interesting to see if other manufacturers start employing similar technology.
If you’re interested in trying out the Kindle Fire, you can pre-order it right now on Amazon, but it won’t ship till November 15.