TechStuff Looks at the New Kindles

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an editor and how stuff works dot Com. Standing across from me, as is typically the case, his senior writer Jonathan Strictline. There. So, Chris, yes, Jonathan, you you know how to read? I'm assuming who told you say otherwise? Your editing job has been a complete sham, which also would explain the quality of my articles to go up

on the site. I just I just delete every once while to go in and delete random letters and in there, I just look for red squigg lease in the in the in the in the file, and if I've seen your red squigg laes, I just go ahead and right click and choose the first option to correct it. There are far too few cueues in this article, so we're a little cue that. That was my attempt at introducing

our topic today, which failed miserably. But today today we wanted to talk about the the recently as of the recording of this podcast, with the recently announced new suite of Amazon Kindle gadgets. UM. Amazon had a big event in early September two thousand twelve, the day before we were recording this. Actually, yeah, the day before we were recorded this, they had their event and they announced the

the new line of Kindles and Kindle Fires. I was actually quite sad that they didn't, because they're now different versions of the Kindle Fire beyond you know, WiFi only in three G versus that sort of stuff. Now we have two different sizes of Kindle's right, yes, Kindle Fires. So I'm kind of sad that they didn't go out and try and differentiate the names a little more with like the Kindle conflagration or the the Kindle burning sensation that I think those would have really helped out a lot.

But sadly that's um, that's not the case. I actually was reading one of the live blogs at the event as it was about to start, and somebody had suggested one of the I think it was on c nets uh forum and suggested that they go with other uh all chemical elements, you know, like the the water and you know, kindle earth. That would be interesting, right, yes, uh alchemy. So they did launch, or at least they announced the launch of several new lines in the in

the whole Kindle family of gadgets. And of course, if you're not familiar the Kindle, the original Kindle was an e reader with e ink. E Ink is this kind of cool stuff that has a charge on it. When you apply a magnetic field, you can have either a blank side presented toward a screen or a dark side, not the character from Superman, but a dark side presented

towards the screen. And so if you think of it like each individual tiny element of this ink is like a little sphere, right, and one half of the sphere is that sort of light gray and the other half of the sphere is black. And by applying the magnetic field of coust the the the bottom of this UM display, you can choose which side gets presented to the viewer, and that's what creates the images we see. So it looks like paper. It's not a back lit uh the

screen like an LCD screen. UM, you're not having uh that kind of of approach. So that's why it looks more like words printed on a page, and you actually need an external light to be able to read it up till now. Well, they that's one of the reasons that the e ink kindles and the ink is a company up in Massachusetts, UM, and there they were the ones who really got into this UM, this stratagem of of trying to uh, you know, do the do the

ink like this UM. One of the reasons it's so efficient and the ink readers made by multiple companies, not just Amazon UM, is because all all that needs to happen as far as an electrical charge is reversing or you know, charging the the substrates and material inside the screen. So once that's done, it can stay that way without

needing constant electrical charge like uh, like a tablet computer would. Right, it doesn't have to maintain power to the screen in order to keep it at whatever you last put it at. So when you turn a page, then it uses a power it. You know, it says, all right, well, I'm gonna turn this page. I've got to change the orientation of these individual uh elements, these individual points the e

ink itself. But once that's done, everything's cool, which is why why e readers in general, not just the Amazon line, but the readers in general, tend to have incredible battery life when you compare it against tablets, because they're not they're not consuming so much power. Now, if you turn the Wi Fi on so that you can browse the web or order new books or what wor, that can

drain the battery a little faster. So um, most of the time, when you see like the estimated length of time you can use a kindle before recharging, it almost always says with WiFi turned off, now, those screens can't be backlit. Um, which is both a good thing in

a way and a bad thing in a way. Um, you know, you don't have it offers a very good resolution this type of screen, um, but it doesn't allow for that illumination, which is why if you had, uh, let's say a first or second generation Kindle, you would still and you wanted to read in the dark, you would still need some kind of light to shine on the light. Yeah. Um, so you know that that's sort

of where we're coming from, right. But now now Amazon's introduced a new entry into this line of products called paper White, which um, I first thought was was supposed to be paid or weight, but that perhaps they got Aliza Doolittle to make the announcement paper light. All my want is a paper light somewhere anyway, paper White is the new Kindle uh and although a lot of the older models are still also available on Amazon and have been marked down in price as a result of the

new announcements. But paper White has a has a light incorporated in it, although it's not a backlight. Still not a backlight, um, which is good because one of the things that I like about e readers is that because you don't have this backlit screen, it seems it feels easier on my eyes than reading something that's on a screen. So what they have done is they've created a fiber optic cable essentially, except that they've managed to make it

a flat screen. They're using fiber optic technology, but they've created a flattened screen. The fiber optics guide light down onto the screen. The lights actually coming from above the screen onto the kindle of being reflected back so that you're seeing a reflection of that light, not the not the not a backlit screen. Um. But uh, yeah, when I saw the demo of this on some video that I think I saw it on the Verge maybe, UM, I was really impressed. Plus I thought, wow, this is

this is really cool. I just got a Kindle last year and I'm already thinking maybe I'll upgrade. Well, I actually have been using something with a similar technology. UM. For you know traditional paper books. UM, the the light wedge, which uses L E d s. But it's basically a wedge shaped piece of clear plastic. I think, I'm I'm guessing it's probably lexan Um, and it's got L E d s mounted at the side, and so you lay it across the page of your book and it illuminates

the entire page without shining directly onto the page. And I find it very nice to read by UM. This this message not sponsored by LIGHTWEIGHTGE. I actually went out and bought one. Um, they're not paying me, but but I imagine that the the effect is very similar when you're looking at a Kindle paper white, UM, because it it does, like I said, a very similar thing, although it's using a different way to achieve that effect. Um, and it's very pleasant. It it's not a bright light

shining in your eyes and that's UM. That's gonna make it easier to read. Of course, now Barnes and Noble has a similar type of device for its Nook line of e readers, but I don't believe it uses the same technology as as the paper White, and as a as a result, it's thinner uh. And in comparisons that I've read early comparisons, um, they said that the paper

White as a thinner uh machine. And it can it's not as obvious where the light is coming from because it is, you know, the using fiber optics and allows Amazon to keep it um more uh you know, unobtrusive, let's say. Yeah. And it's also it's also increased the resolution of the screen. The screen is going to be even more crisp than the previous Kindle models. Are that it displays it two D twelve pixels per inch. Yes, that's the or the equivalent thereof, and um, that's much

better than earlier generations of the Kindle. I mean the other ones are you know, or fewer. So it's going to have a nice crisp look to it. It's also got a capacitive touch screen, so instead of you using some buttons on the bottom to to navigate the the device, uh, you're actually gonna be using touches, and of course capacity of touch screen for those just just quick round up here. Essentially, it's applying a very weak electrical charge across the screen.

When you touch the screen, that effect of lee it interrupts that that electrical charge. You you can you conduct electricity too, So when you touch it, uh, there's the the device can figure out, oh hey, there's an interruption in the electrical field. It's coming from here. That means that they want to execute this command because that's what UM is connected to that part of the screen. That's a very very very bird's eye view of capacity of

touch screens work, but that's generally how they work. That's also why when you are wearing something like gloves, UM, you aren't interrupting the electric field. It's not conductive, so therefore you that's why you can't necessarily navigate a smartphone or tablet while wearing gloves, unless it happens to be the special gloves with the conductive fingertips, yes, or or you're using a hot dog. There are people who've done it. Yeah. Uh,

it's it's got two gigabytes of storage. And UM, it's multi touch as well, not just not just a touch screen, but multi touch. Um. Was there anything there's something specific I want to talk about with the paper white, but I want to see if there's anything else you wanted to why I didn't want to mention that the the the simple readers, let's say, not the the tablet style Kindles, UM,

the fire line. UM. There were there were four entries before before yesterday's announcement, officially the regular Kindle, the keyboard three G and the d X in addition to the Kindle Touch. The paper White basically UM replaces the Kindle Touch in that line, and the other three are still available. Those are are are things that the keyboard on the d X, which is the if you will, the magazine size. The larger nine point seven inch it's more uh comparable to an iPad in size. Um uh. And the the

keyboard on the six inch screen keyboard three gum. People are are complaining that, uh, you know, the the paper white doesn't have the keyboard. People the physical keyboard on it. Um, well you know me, I'm a physical keyboard kind of guy. You are that that kind of guy. Um. Also, it has no audio right on the paper white, so you're not gonna be listening to audible books from Audible or anywhere else for that matter. On however, it does include

their Whisper Sinc. Technology, which we'll get into a little bit um that that really plays more in with the Kindle fire line. But we'll talk about Whisper Sink when we get to that. Um. Yeah. The thing I wanted to mention was there time to read feature? Okay, I read about this. Um No, I don't think so time to read what it does? Is it actually times how long it takes you to read? Yes? Yes, yes I did. I do like that. I don't because I don't want

to learn how slow a reader. There's gonna there's gonna be some sort of nerd bragging rights going on, like it took you, you know, twenty minutes to read chapter I read in seventeen slow, slow reader. Well, everything's relative, you know when you put down your book and go to make a sandwich or something. Well, the whole purpose of this, well not the whole purpose, but one of the things that the time to Read feature allows you to do is, you know, the the what happens is

the Kindle. It just times how long it takes you to read various pages, and after a while, it kind of builds up an estimate of what your reading speed is. So let's say that it's late at night and you are on the second book of the Game of Thrones series. I can't think of anyone that this would apply to besides myself. Um No, But you sit there and you've just read an awesome uh Sansett chapter, and then the

next chapter is a Brand chapter. You love Brand, but it's late and you're wondering how long it's going to take you to read this chapter. The time to read feature would give an estimate of how long it would take you, based upon your average reading speed, to get through that next chapter. Because it will look at the beginn and end points of that chapter how many pages that is, and give you that estimate so you can say, oh, it's oh, it's only gonna take me another fifteen minutes

to read this. That's no big deal. I that I'm just podcasting tomorrow. What do I care if I'm a little extra tired. And so then you go ahead and you read about it and brand is awesome. Uh. This can apply to books other than the Game of Throne series. Yeah, you know, I'm still waiting for George RR Martin to make him a baker by the end of the series

so that we can have brand muffins. Nice. Anyhow, waiting all that time to say that, and all that time before we should before we move on, we should also say that they did release prices for these these devices, and so the paper white comes in. Technically it's it's four different models. There are two that are our WIFEI only and two that are three G. The WiFi only is one nineteen dollars if you do the one that has these special offers selection. Basically, you you at a

cheaper device in exchange for them showing you advertising. Right, it's an ad supported device, so you get ads when the devices and it's off mode, and occasionally you get it when you are uh navigating through stuff, not in the middle of a book, or at least as far as I know, they have never done that where your actual reading experience is interrupted with an AD. I've never had that happen. Meanwhile, back at the castle, hey, have you ever had a problem? Right, but exactly like dragons

getting you down? Called Bob's extermination service, so George's could be. So yeah, WIFEI wife, I only with the with the ADS, there's one nineteen dollars. But if you wanted to get it, whether it was not AD supported, where you have no ADS,

it's one thirty nine, so it's twenty dollars more. The three G model is a little more expensive now three G you get free three G service with this, So that way, when you have your device out in the wild somewhere and you're not connected to WiFi and you want to get that next book or you want to browse a blog or whatever, um, you can access the network through a three G connection and you don't have

a contract, you don't want to pay for it. But that's at one seventy nine with special offers and one without special offers. Which to me is very interesting considering the base price of the new Kindle Fire. Uh, because you know, again, this is the e reader. The paper whites the e reader, so you can do some browsing with it, but it's very limited compared to a tablet. And it's of course using an e ink screen, so you're you've got a black and white screen. Um, and

it's not as responsive. They they've increased the speed of which the the Kindle is able to present pages to you, but it's not as responsive as a tablet screen an LCD screen. So I guess with that we can move on to the new versions of the Kindle Fire. Yeah, that's actually interesting. The Amazon's press conference refreshed only a small portion of the the regular Kindle line, just the replacing the Touch with the paper white and and uh,

leaving most of the other Kindles alone. Well, they did keep the basic Kindle just at the lower price, but the Kindle Fire line, um, they added a a couple new well two and a half new devices entirely. Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. First, I guess we'll start with the the Kindle Fire. That's more it's it's it's in the

line of the seven inch tablets the smaller one. Yeah, and I think in a way it really kind of set the standard for the seven inch tablet because so many other devices and they kind of touched on this and in the and the press conference that uh Android tablets, there really wasn't one that found a foothold, like for example, every once in a while, uh an Android phone, will you know, one dotle of phone will really kick off like Samsung's uh Galaxy S three is is huge right

again right around the time of recording this, but the Kindle Fire has the lion's share of Android tablets and it's set the I think it's sort of set the screen size at seven inches for the popular Android tablets now, right. But they've decided to um to update this model. And there are two different versions of this. There's the sixteen gigabyte version and the thirty two gigabyte version. Sixteen is going to be a one and the thirty two is

at tot nine. So what's interesting to me is that the sixteen gigabyte version is one, which is the same as if you're getting a three G paper white unsupported by ADS. It's that's also one. So you've got an e reader which some people would say is a very limited device compared to a tablet, where you can also do reading on the tablets, just it's not like display a. Um, You've got the e reader and the at its highest setting I guess, and the Kindle fired at its lowest

price the same, which is kind of interesting. Um, you know, because again, if you are are presented with that choice, which one are you more likely to choose? The tablet that does all the stuff or the the e reader

that does one thing but does it really really well. Yeah, And I think there is a contingent of Kindle fans who are going to be just fine with the paper white at that price point, because they're going to want the illuminated screen and the higher resolution and they're not going to care about all this stuff that the tablet does. I agree. I mean, you know, as much as I express skepticism, I own both the Kindle and a tablet. So and I do all my reading on the Kindle.

I don't. I don't read on the tablet. I just stare at the web and say talk to me, Okay, No, I'll read websites, but I don't. I don't read books or magazines on the on the tablet. So the Kindle Fire HD. This this seven inch tablet. It's got a dual core Texas instruments process or in it. That's one point two giga hurts. It's a little less powerful than the one that's on the larger tablet, and it's got a twelve eighty by eight hundred screen resolution. So that's uh,

that's just the basic spects update to that Kindle. The other interesting line of products that Amazon introduced was a slightly larger tablet, which is an eight point nine inch screen as opposed to the seven inch screen. Yeah, and they they cleverly named that the Kindle Fire HD eight point nine inches. Yeah, it gets a little it gets even more crazy when you get to their top of

the line product. The eight point nine inch screen really means that this particular tablet is sort of going into competition against Apple's iPad, whereas the seven an inch screen is more in line with some of the smaller tablets on the market, like the Next of seven from Google or the Nook Tablet Nook Tablet from Barnes and Noble. So um, but this one looks like it's really taking aim at the iPad, which they called in their press

conference and and their their information online. The iPad three, although Apple just wants us to call it the iPad the new iPad, Yeah, which is going to be so confusing after next year. I hear rumors, by the way, that the new iPhone will be called the new iPhone and not the iPhone five. Interesting by the time this goes like, well no, well know, because yeah, the the the press conference for that is literally the next week

from now when we're recording. So you guys are all rolling your eyes, but for us, it's still a mystery anyway. The eight point nine inch screen, it is a little more powerful that this device is more powerful than the other kindle fires point five gig hurt dual core processor from Texas Instruments Um. It's also got an s g x five four four three D graphics core. They get process over twelve billion floating point operations per second. You're

scaring me. Yeah, it's got a gigabyte of RAM, it's got nineteen twenty by twelve hundred display, and it has two hundred fifty four pixels per inch, which puts it in in spitting distance of the iPad, which has two two hundred sixty four pixels p inch. Now that's the that's the retina screen, right. The iPad retina screen has two d sixty four pixels per inch. This new kindle

has two hundred fifty four, so it's really close. Um. And they also were touting some of the stuff that they have that the iPad doesn't, for example, dual band antenna. I found this particularly interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One is that you know the whole point of a dual band to antenna, as they have an antenna that's dedicated for the two point for gigga hurts frequency and an antenna that's dedicated for the five gig

hurts frequency. The idea being that should you go into an environment that has a WiFi network and they have a router, a wireless router that's essentially broadcasting on both of these frequencies, you have the ability to switch from one to the other should one of those frequencies get jammed down with a lot of traffic, because there are a lot of devices out there that have a wireless UH antenna for that that's for the two point for gigga hurts frequency, right, So that means a lot of

people if you go to, say a coffee shop. That's the great example. You go to coffee shop's got free WiFi, and everyone there's got a laptop and or a smartphone and or a tablet, and they're all connecting to this one network. Well, that's a lot of demand put on that one network, especially if they're all going for this

one frequency, the two point for gigga hurts frequency. Now, if the network has both frequencies broadcast, then you can switch over the five gig hurts, which has less traffic, which means theoretically you're going to get your data much faster than you would on the other antenna band. Um. I thought this was interesting because I always whenever I read these things, I think of it in terms of my own experience. I don't leave the house much. Yeah,

I avoid it when I can. So when I think of when they were talking about it's got it's got a dual band antenna, it's it's so much faster getting the data. What's going through my mind is, for me, the bottleneck has never been the device. The bottleneck has always either been the cable modem or the router. So if it doesn't matter how quickly the device can get data if it's not being delivered fast enough on the

other end. So it didn't even occur to me like, oh, well, what if you are happy to be what if you happen to be out and about with a whole bunch of other people, then totally makes sense. It's just I'm a hermit and I hate people, so I don't do that. Although it would have been very handy this past weekend at dragon Con because all those smartphones and all those

geeks hands just clogged up every single network. Yeah, yeah, so they're they're one of the things that well we should probably talk about the the other machine, Oh, the LTE model. Yes, now it was. It was funny in the in the presentation because um, Amazon's founder and uh guy in charge, Jeff Bezos was sort of funny about it. Was like, well, you know, the price point of a tablet this size is about five referring specifically to the

new iPad. Oh yeah, that's it, the base model. And I said, well, what could we do if if we were to design a tablet at that price point? What would it have in it? I mean, can you imagine the amazing magical things we could include in this tablet for that price, we could put unicorns and sasquatch and and it could dispense candy. I mean the way he was talking, it sounded like the only reason the iPad

is that price is because Apple. Is that the implications that Apple is greeting and that they're saying the price high so that they have this incredible uh profit margin when it comes to selling an iPad versus Amazon, which famously sell stuff off at a loss because they're using it as a conduit to all the content they own. So thinking that if they sell you the they talked about their tablets are part of a service. They're not just a standalone device, So when they're selling you a tablet,

they're really selling you access to the Amazon service. So uh so, yeah, it was there was there's a little snark in that part of the presentation about how, well, if we had a four dollar tablet, what could it possibly have in it? And so they need to us Yes, yes, it's the uh LTE, which is long term evolution. That's

what the LTE stands for. It's one of the many for it well, one of the few UH really supported uh for G communications technologies, wireless communications technologies, and it's been very much in demand here in the United States from phone providers. People are excited about seeing the speeds Internet speeds, data speeds improving on their wireless carrier. So this is a a huge deal, well a big deal. Um and uh, you know, I can't think of another

tablet right now that supports for g um. Yeah, I'm sure, I think, I'm sure there are others out there, and I'm sure our listeners are screaming in this right now, but won't It won't be long before more of them do this. But they're they're coming to market underneath um, Apple's price point for this technology. Um. And you know this is this is going to be a selling point

for this particular or device. Now. What Jonathan was saying earlier was one of the main focuses of this event was you know, hey, we're Amazon, we sell service, and that that's what they were. They weren't shy about promoting this. Now. They didn't say, hey, we're selling these devices at a

loss to make it up from us. They didn't say that explicitly, but you know, based upon you know, there are people who take these things apart and then they estimate what the price of manufacturer is and in almost every report I've read for the Amazon Kindle pasted. It's one of those things where the price, the cost of manufacturer, and the price that they sell it at are so close as to be uh you know, it pretty much

means Amazon has to sell it at a loss. Yeah, I think what was it, the the the original Kindle Fire. When they first released it, they were making a profit of something like two or three dollars on it. And this isn't unusual. I mean we've seen this also, like Microsoft did this with the Xbox three six and the

x spots, the PlayStations and Nintendo as well. You're talking about. Yeah, the console itself is priced a little lower than what it would be if you were just selling that to make a profit, but you're hoping to make up for it in whatever the services are down the road. It's the old Gillette model, as they say, we should also say that if you were to get the LT model.

First of all, there are again four different models of this eight point nine inch display version, right, So there's the there's the WiFi models which have a there's sixteen gigabyte and thirty two gigabyte versions. The sixteen gigabytes priced at two nine nine, which is incredible, right, A sixteen gigabyte WiFi um is, that's that's very attractive. Very two

gigabytes at three sixty nine. Then if you go to the LTE, the thirty two gigabyte which is their base model for LTE, they said, oh, you know, you need to have a lot of space on this thing if you're going to have all this speed and everything, which we'll get to again in the second because there's another problem here. But thirty two gigabyte base models at four and then they have a sixty four gigabyte version at five nine nine. So those are your your four basic models.

One of the other things about that LTE is that you have to pay fifty dollars a year to get the LTE service. So that's on top of the price of the device. It's not like the three G service that that's free, right, the three G service on the paper White, which is completely free. It's not like that. So you now it is provided through Amazon, but you have to pay Amazon fifty bucks a year to have that service. So the device, the base device, costs plus fifty dollars per year so that you can get LTE.

Here's the other thing that I think is a big sticking point. They have a data cab on the LTE data transfers of two hundred fifty megabytes m hm. So that means you can't in a month, you can't do more than two fifty megabytes of transfer on LTE under this plan, which is kind of crazy because I mean, even if you read Amazon's uh stuff about why they needed so much space, like the whole idea of here's a thirty two gigabyte tablet, why do you want thirty

two gigs? Well, because the standard definition movie is five hundred megabytes, Standard definition movie is five hundred megabytes, and your data cap is two hundred fifty megabytes per month, you start to question what are you using that LTE for. It would mostly be for things like browsing the web, doing social networking stuff like Facebook, Twitter, that kind of thing. Those are low demand data, uh features, Right, you're not. You're not churning up a lot of data getting on

Twitter and posting hey I got my new Amazon Kindle. Yeah, if you were. If you were just downloading books from from Amazon, that's not that's not gonna be that much either. But if you wanted to download or stream a movie or whatever, and you're on you're out and about and you don't have WiFi, you're gonna run up against that

tuneer in fifty megabyte cap pretty quickly. So to me, there's a question if you if it's five dollars to get the LTE model, the base LTE model, plus fifty dollars on top of that to get the LTE service and there's a two fifty megabyte cap on that per month, is that really worth that? Or should I just go with the thirty two gigabyte WiFi only model for three

sixty nine? You know, I save about a hundred fifty dollars that way, A little a little less than that, but around a hundred fifty dollars, and let's call it a hundred thirty So you save a hundred thirty bucks and you're not paying for this service and you don't have to worry about data caps because you're only using it on WiFi. Is the convenience factor of LTE worth it considering that two and fifty megabyte cap, it's not.

To me. That's my personal opinion. Now for other people, they may say I like the idea that i'd be able to get books. I like the idea I'll be able to do you know, the social networking, the web housing, all that kind of stuff. That's what's important to be I totally get that, and that makes sense. And I have nothing against you, guys. I'm just sitting there thinking like, well, I mean, how much would I be irritated if I had to find a WiFi hotspot? But on the flip side,

I don't have to worry about data capps. Yeah, And honestly, you have to think about this. I mean, it's not It would probably be more of an issue if you were planning on, say, buying one of these to allow your kids to watch movies as you're driving across the country, that would be an issue. If it's buying it for yourself to use, say at home, or take it with you to work, want you to watch something on your

lunch break, or take it to the park. Um, you're probably not going to be using wireless as much as you would WiFi, I would guess, so it may be sort of a moot point depending on what you're doing with it. Right, So I think think if it were me, I would I would be in the same boat, you know, I would say. You know, I'm not gonna I'm frankly just not going to use this on the move that much because, um, you know, I've already been cited several times for trying to watch movies while I'm driving. Yeah,

you shouldn't do that. They keep saying that, But I don't understand what the problem is. It's because you like foreign films so much, and the subtitles are very distracting. You know, I all those people with whiplash. I don't I don't get no, I'm I'm I'm teasing. But but yeah, I mean, but it isn't an interesting selling point, and it will be kind of I'm kind of curious to

see whether this becomes a thing. Um. There are some other things to note about the the fire h D s um, the the stereo sound with Dolby Audio Delby Auto Audio duel stereo speakers. I kind of wonder how how effective that is just because they're really really close together. Yeah, that's that's exactly the reason You've got two stereo speakers that are by necessity close together because they're inside a

tablet device. How effective is that? Granted we should both say neither of us have had our hands on any of these devices yet, so we can't speak from personal experience. Yeah, however, I do imagine that you would have a more depending on how you situate the tablet, I imagine you will have a more robust audio experience with it. Um, they have not just a crappy little one speaker device right right,

quality speakers. It's not it's not this little tinny thing that you know, barely can gain any music out or whatever. But there are limitations to speakers at that side and that close together. There's some other cool new features too that are more on the service side. Uh, the for instance, the x ray. That's exactly the one I was going

to mention. Yeah, now x ray. This is kind of a neat idea, the idea being that, and this comes from the idea of having a second screen type thing, Like how many people when they much television, for example, have a second screen in front of them so that you know they're they're either doing work or often they see something on the screen and they think that's interesting,

I want to know more about that. For me, it's always I know, this person, what else have they been in I've noticed this with my friends for years now, and actually Google did a report about this, uh came out just a few days ago. As I when recording this, about how people use multiple screens, and that's you know, not just a tablet and the TV, it could be a smartphone and a computer, you know, multi screens and uh, working on multiple things at once, and even even in

recreational use. As you said, you're going I I know that guy, who is that? And you'll pause whatever it is and go look it up on the computer, and people just keep that nearby. So so what Amazon has done is they've incorporated that as a service directly into the Kindle experience. So let's say you're watching a movie and you tap the screen, it'll bring up information about the people who are in that movie. It'll bring up

an IMDb page. And Amazon owns IMDb Internet Movie database, so that lets you that lets you look up more info and learn more about it. But it's beyond just movies. They also do it for books. So you might click on a book and you learn more things about the chapter. You might even learn contextual stuff that is mentioned in the book. For example, let's say I'm reading The Devil in the White City, which is it's a fantastic book,

highly recommended. I have no connection with with the author whatsoever, but fantastic book. Well, it has two lines of of plot. Essentially, this is a nonfiction book and it follows two different things that were happening around the same time. It follows the murderous exploits of Dr H. H. Holmes, who was one of America's first serial killers. Terrible story but also fascinating, especially for people were interested in criminal psychology, and I

think that stuff you should know. I think actually covered Holmes's death house in an episode, if I'm not mistaken. Creepy. But then it also follows the Chicago World's Fair, which was being uh was being put on around the same time as Holmes as deadly activities, and we've mentioned that on our show before, right, and so these two different stories overlap a little bit. But but it goes chapter,

you know, each chapter kind of alternates. It goes from homes to the World's Fair, to homes to the World's Fair. And if you were to read this, say on a kindle fire, and you had the X ray stuff and it was all set up there, you might be able to be you know, you could be reading a book about this and we read a paragraph about a particular person during the World's Fair who did uh some architectural work, and you're like, oh, that sounds interesting. I wonder more

if there's any more about him. You could tap the screen and pull up information about that person or go to a link on an article about that person, so you can learn more about them. And of course this applies to you know anything, not just not just that book. That's just using that as an example, but it also will give you information about the book itself, so not just information that's in the book, but about the book, so you can, um, if you're curious about certain things

like what else is this author written? Um? Or you know what, what sort of other books are like this one? You can find that kind of stuff out too, which I thought was pretty interesting. And they're also offering it for textbooks, which is nice. If you get really intrigued about something that you're you're working on in class, your student, and you're you're getting into something, you go, you know what, I'm curious about this, I'd like to know more. Um.

You know, It's it's a really neat idea. I also like the whisper sinc for voice, which is cool. Like if you're reading a book. Uh, let's say you commute by by rail, um and you you um get to the station you're about to get in your car, and you've gotten to an interesting point in the book where you can plug your your kindle into the sound system of your car and listen to the audio book being read to you as you drive. Ye. So this is

a little different from you know, the earlier kindles. A lot of them had the speech to the text to speech, but that was sort of uh, it wasn't it wasn't an ideal experience. And in this case, it's sinking a text based version of the book with an audio version of the book that's been read by a professional narrator. So it's this is an actual voiceover person. Sometimes it's the author, depending upon the audible or the audio book. I keep saying audible because that's where I go for

all my audio books. But if you you know, it'll it'll sink those together so that when you left let off from one. Let's say that you um, you like Chris was saying, you just finished reading a section and you're really interested. You can queue up the audio book and it's going to pick up right where you left off with the text version. So that way you can continue reading this book in two different forms, um, and

not interrupt your experience, which is pretty cool. Yeah. They also have a whisper stinc for movies, books and games. Of course they've they've had it for books for for a long time. But uh, but yeah, I mean, if you you change devices or even with the games, if you're in the middle of a level, it will pick up where you left off. And it says the Amazon site says, even if you delete the game from your device and you decide you want to go back and do it again later, then you can. You can reload

it and then they will remember where you are. Of course, all this information is stored in the cloud, which is another uh selling point. This is another service selling point for Amazon. Um, the sixteen or thirty two gigabyte Kindle fires Um. You know, they have that limited amount of onboard storage. I mean, that's a pretty decent amount. But they also, as they advertise, if you download music or movies from Amazon, they will allow you to store that

and it's basically free storage. Store it in the cloud for free. UM, So that doesn't necessarily count against the amount. Of course, I guess if you take it with you and you don't have streaming service where you are, you know, you go to the beach, and you're right, you can

choose attempting to bright sunlightning. I've used these services on a very similar services on other devices in the way it generally works as you can choose whether or not you want a certain track to be streaming only, or if you download it to specific device so that it's available even when you are, you know, not not in a networked area. But yeah, that's the idea, is that that way you can store stuff in the cloud doesn't

count against your your devices on board storage. Yeah. And they also have a screen time thing for parents that as of right now is not available but will be shortly USA, they say, in October of twelve, where if you have uh kids who are going to be using it, you can set the amount of time that they are allowed to use it to prevent them from going over their time. So I guess that means they have multiple users. For the tablet, you can also set it so that um,

certain certain functions will be available longer than others. So, in other words, you can set it so that watching a movie or television or playing a game on the device. Uh, the kid might have an hour worth the time or two hours whatever. Um, But then if they want to use it for reading, they can use it for reading for another four hours, but they can't use it to

watch movies or whatever. So that's kind of interesting that they've they've got that sort of granular amount of control for parents so that they can shape their kids into the automatons that they need to be so they can lead us in the future. But I'm kidding. Of course, I also don't have kids, so I can make very cavalier statements. Um. What about immersion reading? What do you think of that? Um? Well, I I don't know a whole lot about immersion reading. I'm still catching something. It's

pretty it's pretty interesting. Immersion reading. It synchronizes an audio and text experience of a book so that you are hearing the book as you read it. So, in other words, you have the text version of the book in front of you and you also have the audio version playing

at the same time. And the idea is that for certain people, and it's people from all different areas, Uh, they they retain information and learn and um get more out of an experience if they are both reading it like themselves and listening to it at the same time, that they they have a more rich experience with that book. So therefore, I think it's something like around fifteen thousand titles it's available right now. Where I thought I thought

that I had read that. I didn't have it in my notes, but I recalled that that number being bandied about. But yeah, the idea being that you will read a book while it's being it out loud at the same time, which I can imagine particularly being useful for kids who are learning to read. You know, if you're if you get some books that are not as a complex something like The Hobbit, which was a book I loved as a kid, still do technically all right, so I still

love it, but as a kid I particularly enjoyed it. Um, but that would have been an interesting thing where you could listen to the book as you're reading along. Uh. And like I said, for some people, this is apparently the the ideal way to experience a book. So yeah, there are a lot of new features that are being launched with this. Some of them are going to be compatible with the old Amazon Kindle Fire some are going

to be available only on the new models. Um, just because they're more you know, they're they're they're more advanced, they have the specs to handle it. Uh. So we'll see how this does. I imagine that these are going to sell very well. Amazon always positions itself very well for the holiday market. And uh, they already are on pre order. They went on pre order the day when

they announced it. And I imagine although Amazon also does not tend to release sales figures, so we probably won't know how well they'll do, but I'm sure that they'll do pretty well. Um So, so Chris, Theoretically, let's say that you had the ability to buy one any one of these devices, which of them appeals to you most, Like, you could only get one of them, but you you

could choose whichever one you wanted. Well, I I admit, um see, I'm I'm sort of torn, frankly, um because, like you, I own a tablet, but I don't own any reader of any type. So I'm fascinated by the paper white simply because, um, I would kind of like to be able to have that reader experience that said I have enjoyed over the past while that I've owned my tablet uh and enjoyed having it available to read books on and do other stuff too, and having one

device that does it. So, I mean, if I had to choose one, if you were going to hold my feet to the fire, I would probably go with the eight point nine inch HD without four G because I just simply don't need that connectivity on the go. So clearly you go with a thirty two gigabyte because you can have any of them, so you can go with thirty two gigabyte WiFi only eight point nine h HD. That is correct, That's what I would do. That's that's that's the correct answer for you. I would go with

the paper white. And the reason why I go with paper white is I love my e reader and I would love to be able to um to upgrade that because I do like I do like the idea of having the onboard light there so I can read in the dark and that kind of stuff. Um so I and I really just like the features of it. Although I am a little hesitant with the capacitance touch screen as opposed to a physical keyboard. That does give me pause. But the reason why I shy away from the Kindle

experience is that um is is it's a bias. It's a and I fully had it is it is a bias because the operating system for the Kindle Fire is a forked version of the Android operating system. They took an earlier build of the Android operating system as their foundation and then spun it off. So it's really its

own thing, but it at its root it has Android. Well, I love the Android operating system, but I prefer to have a more in line operating system, like one that's that's aligned with Android more directly, and and it gives you a lot more flexibility with your device. That's one of the complaints some people had about the Kindle Fire is that it doesn't give you as much flexibility as some other tablets do. Now, granted, you can work away

around around that. You can hack a tablet and and you know, essentially jail break it so that you can use it in any way you like, loading on other operating systems things like that, But for the average user, that's that tends to be outside their grasp. You know, someone who just wants to buy something and just have it work. Well, if you love the Amazon's uh the system, then this is a great fit. And I do love

the Amazon system. It's just that all of my stuff lives in Google, so that's why I love the Android operating system for my tablets. Um that being said, I think these devices look really, really attractive and their price points are phenomenal compared to some of the other stuff,

and I do think that's going to well. There are rumors that in the event that you already know the outcome of but we don't, that there may be an iPad many announced alongside the iPhone, which will make you wonder how much that's gonna cost, because the iPod Touch, if you go with the most evanced iPod Touch, that's more expensive than some of these tablets. Yeah, so I'm starting to wonder if Apple is going to be forced to start to lower the prices someone on tablets. Yeah,

I mean, it does make you wonder they do. They do really well in the app store, you know, and they make a lot of money through the app store, so it's possible that they could take that route. But we don't know. Of course, you guys do know, so you can go Nanni Ninni boo boo at us and if you would like to do that in an email. You can say Nanni Nini boo boo in an email to tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or say Nanny Ninni boo boo on Facebook or Twitter, or handle it

both of those. Is tech Stuff, H s W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com. See, guys, I told you we talked to you again really soon. That really soon is right now. I'm just reminding you that we have our photo upload widget live on the site at www dot how stuff works dot com. Slash Upgrade your tech Toyota is giving us the chance to let you

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