Holiday Gifts For Dad

Holiday Gifts For Dad. (Credit) Fickr

If you are wondering about what to your dad this year consider this one word; practicality. As fathers they need five basic things; sleep, food, comfort, practicality, and peace of mind. The new Kindle Fire Tablet will help him with the last three. He can use for so many ways in his day to day routine, and it's not a huge device at all. On top of that it is very affordable that's why it's at the top of the list of holiday gifts for dad. Check out what Laptop Mag says about

HOLIDAY GIFTS FOR DAD

This holiday season, the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire looks like the hottest tablet on the market, with Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet nipping at its heels. There’s only one problem: These devices are eReaders with benefits, and shouldn’t be considered tablets at all.

The Nook Tablet offers the best interactive eReading experience on the market, with a selection of more than 2.5 million books and amazing features such as Read and Record, which lets parents record themselves reading each page of a book so their kids can experience it even when they’re not around. The Kindle Fire isn’t as good of an eReader, but it combines more than 1 million books with access to the company’s extensive video and music stores.

Both devices have a powerful processor, a vibrant 7-inch screens, and long battery life. But having powerful hardware doesn’t make a device a tablet. Flexibility does, the flexibility to customize your experience for content creation and communications, not just media consumption.

Because Amazon and Barnes & Noble are focusing on promoting their respective devices’ ecosystem, the Nook and Kindle also have a slew of limitations that prevent them from providing the full tablet computing experience.

• App Selection: Neither tablet supports Google’s Android Market, opting instead to provide their own, smaller selections of custom-approved apps. Amazon claims to have thousands of apps for the Kindle, but strangely doesn’t even make all the apps in its own Android apps store available for its tablet. Barnes & Noble has only 1,000 apps with a few really glaring omissions—Raging Thunder is the only hardcore game. Yes, you can easily side-load apps on the Kindle Fire, and there’s an unsupported hack for doing it on the Nook, but most users don’t want to resort to that.
• Task Switching: Though both tablets have enough processing power to run several apps at the same time and an Android OS that supports true multitasking, their custom UIs make it way too difficult to switch between programs.
  On newer versions of Android, there’s a Recent Apps button at the bottom of every screen that lets you see thumbnails of all running programs and choose between them without leaving the app you’re in. On older versions of Android, you can switch between the most recent six apps—open or closed—by long-pressing the home button. In BlackBerry’s good-looking—but rarely used—PlayBook OS, you can swipe up from any page to see a list of window-like cards for every open app.
  To switch tasks on the Kindle Fire, you have to hit the software-based home button, which isn’t always visible (the keyboard covers over it, for example), go back to the home screen, and then flip through the dizzying carousel interface until you see the icon for the app you left. The Nook is a bit better because it has a physical home button and its home screen has lots of shortcuts instead of the carousel, but you still have to go home to get anywhere.
• Little Room for Customization: A true tablet is like Burger King; it lets you have it your way. With regular Android, you can rearrange your shortcuts on your various home screens, change your wallpaper, and add a slew of widgets. You can also install third-party app launchers such as ADW, an app that allows you to choose from any of 150 custom themes. The Kindle Fire offers none of these conveniences. In its defense, the Nook does allow you to change its wallpaper and to add shortcuts to its three home screens. However, you can’t drag these shortcuts around, can’t add widgets, and can’t install a launcher.
• No Alternate Keyboards/Keyboard Docks: Most serious tablet users have a virtual keyboard they prefer to the stock Android keyboard. All real Android tablets support the install of third-party keyboards, and many even come with alternate keyboard options such as Swype. There’s no way to switch keyboards on either the Fire or the Nook, and neither one offers a keyboard dock for serious data entry.
• Lame E-mail Clients: Neither eReading tablet comes with Google’s Gmail app, and their built-in e-mail apps offer the minimum functionality you’d expect. Neither the Fire or Nook Tablet supports Exchange natively, though you can download TouchDown, which adds Exchange features.
• No Third-Party Browsers Allowed: There’s a reason why neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble offers Firefox, Opera, Dolphin, or any of the host of superior third-party browsers available in the Android Market. They want you to focus on store-bought content, not on surfing the web. The Fire’s Silk Browser was supposed to revolutionize mobile browsing by using the power of the cloud, but on our tests, it was slow and crashed frequently. The Nook’s stripped-down browser is reasonably quick, but doesn’t offer tabs or any special features. At least the Fire offers tabs.
  Amazon offers no less than three different browsers in its general-purpose Android market, but it doesn’t make these available for the Fire. How come?
• No Cameras: If you’re one of those people who says, “I don’t plan to take photos with my tablet so I don’t need a camera on it,” I’m right there with you—up until the part where you say, “I don’t need a camera,” because cameras aren’t just for photography anymore. You need a back-facing camera to use augmented-reality apps such as Google Goggles to get information about objects, to scan QR codes or barcodes on products, to translate foreign text with Google Translate, and to scan receipts for work. Neither of these tablets offers a front-facing camera to make video calls, a concession likely made to get to such low prices.

• Few Chat/VoIP Options: You can’t get Gtalk going on either the Nook or the Kindle, and we couldn’t even find a working chat app for Nook. Forget about any kind of voice chat on the Kindle Fire, because it has no microphone. The Nook Tablet actually has a microphone, but at least for now you can’t get any VoIP apps in its app store. No Fring, ooVoo, Qik, or Skype here.
• Limited Storage: Barnes & Noble’s Nook has plenty of storage for things you buy from the Nook Store—about 12GB free for that. However, if you want to bring your own media files, you have a paltry 1GB free, though you can add a microSD card. When all is said and done, the Kindle Fire only has about 5GB and no microSD slot for expansion. Try fitting your extensive music collection, your giant powerpoints for work, or your HD home movies in that space! There’s a reason why the Fire relies so heavily on the cloud, but that only helps when you’re within Wi-Fi range.

There’s nothing wrong with accepting these trade-offs if your only goal is reading books and magazines, watching movies, listening to music, checking your favorite sites, and maybe a little casual gaming. But the minute you turn to content creation, you need a different class of device, one that justifiably costs more. The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are good values, but they’re not true tablets.

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With the Kindle Fire being an Amazon product, and the availability of fresh content every day, I recommend the Kindle Fire. It's the perfect holiday gift for someone; clients, employees, coworkers, men, teachers, boyfriend, kids, women, mom, and dad. There's just so many things you can do with the Kindle Fire, with all of the apps and the freedom,; you can't beat it! 
Why go through the congested traffic, you buy the Kindle Fire Here

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Kindle Fire vs Ipad 2-Which tablet is best for textbooks?

The Shopping Season is here and the competition is on and fierce, but what exactly are they competing on? The Kindle Fire vs Ipad 2 comparison will definitely make the sales people at your local big boy store feel like they're in the movie "Ground Hog's Day" with the constant repeating of the same explanation of the devices. So you can gather in a crowd and perhap here the explanation or you read below and get an understanding...btw you can buy your kindle fire now through link to the left, after you understand what it is and if it fits what you're looking for. If not you can buy an ipad 2 here for a good price. Check out this video for there performances in this video.

For the parent looking to buy a tablet for your child, perhaps you'll find this more helpful with deciding "should I buy kindle or ipad 2". This is from a mom trying to help her daughter who's in college and is about to study abroad. Check out the good advice Maggie gives:
Amazon and Barnes & Noble have made e-readers and now tablets so inexpensive that almost anyone can get them, even poor students. But are these tablets up to the task of replacing those big, heavy college textbooks?

In this edition of Ask Maggie, I try to answer that question. I help one mother who is considering getting either the Amazon Kindle Fire or the Nook Tablet for her college-student daughter so she can download digital textbooks. But it's still early days for e-textbooks. And I caution her to do some homework before she buys either of these tablets.

Also in this Ask Maggie, I answer a few other tablet-based questions. I explain whether magazine subscribers should expect to pay for an extra tablet-ready e-subscription. And I answer a couple basic questions about wireless network access and e-book compatibility for the Nook and Kindle e-readers.

Ask Maggie is an advice column that answers readers' wireless and broadband questions. The column now appears twice a week on CNET offering readers a double dosage of Ask Maggie's advice. If you have a question, I'd love to hear from you. Please send me an e-mail at maggie dot reardon at cbs dot com. And please put "Ask Maggie" in the subject header. You can also follow me on Facebook on my

Ask Maggie page.

An e-textbook conundrum

Dear Maggie,
I have a daughter in college and was wondering which tablet is better for textbooks. She already has a MacBook Pro laptop and an older iPod Touch. That said, I don't want to get her an iPad. So really it's between a Nook Tablet or a Kindle Fire. She plans on studying abroad next fall. And we thought an e-reader would save some room in her two suitcases, since she wouldn't have to pack them. What would you recommend?

Thank you!
Monique

Dear Monique,
This is a tricky question because not all e-textbooks are offered on all tablet or e-reader platforms. Many are offered only for PCs and not available on tablets at all. And some tablets/e-readers also don't support textbooks. For example, Barnes & Noble only offers textbooks for computers and not on any of the Nook devices or Nook apps.

The reason that textbooks aren't offered on the Nook or on the Nook app for iOS or Android devices is because textbooks need a bigger screen and more powerful hardware to handle all the graphics and content found in a big textbook, according to a Barnes & Noble customer service representative I spoke with.

That said, other tablet/e-reader platforms, such as Amazon Kindle do offer some e-textbooks on their devices. However, sometimes the way the content is rendered is not always ideal. As I researched the answer to your question, I found customers complaining on Amazon's forums about the text not being formatted right for the Kindle, so some diagrams may be hard to see and references to certain pages will be useless in the Kindle.

I know you're not interested in getting your daughter an iPad, but it may be something to consider. There are some textbooks offered through Apple's iBook catalog on iTunes. You can also buy books for the Amazon Kindle App for the iPad. And Google ebooks can also be accessed via an app for the iPad. There are also apps from sites, such as Chegg.com or CourseSmart.com, that can be used on the iPad (or an Android tablet) that lets you buy or rent textbooks. CNET Reviews Executive Editor David Carnoy said that he thinks the bigger screen of the iPad or other similarly sized tablets is much better for text books than the smaller Kindle Fire.

But before you go out and buy her a tablet, you need to do a little homework. First, find out out which textbooks your daughter needs. And then check Amazon, Google eBooks, Apple's iBooks, and the e-book rental sites, such as Chegg.com and CourseSmart.com to see if the books she needs are offered as e-books on any of these platforms. (Make sure you check out Barnes & Noble. I know I said that they don't offer any textbooks as e-books for the Nook or the Nook app, but some of the books that your daughter is required to read for her classes may not necessarily be textbooks. For example, The Scarlet Letter or a biography of Winston Churchill are not considered textbooks, but they could be required reading for certain college classes.)

Once you know which books, if any, are offered on which platforms, you can make a better decision in terms of the tablet you should get.
Personally, I think it's a little too soon to invest in a tablet solely for the purpose of accessing textbooks. And the reason I say this is that right now it seems very hit or miss in terms of which books are offered on which platforms and devices. I think if your daughter is really interested in getting the most out of an e-book, such as highlighting, book marking and taking notes in her e-book, she should just download whatever e-books she can for her classes onto her computer.
As I mentioned before, the Nook offers a free app that can be downloaded onto a Mac or PC to access textbooks. There are also the third-party textbook sites I mentioned earlier too that allow you to either buy or rent textbooks as e-books. Since your daughter already has a MacBook Pro, you won't even need to buy her a new device to access this stuff.

One other thing to keep in mind is that some online e-book stores, such as Barnes & Noble, will only allow you to purchase books while in the United States. So if your daughter is going to buy her e-textbooks from Barnes & Noble for her computer, make sure she buys the books before she leaves for her study abroad program. Amazon allows e-book purchases while traveling overseas so long as the credit card used for the account is based in the U.S. I'm not sure how all the other e-book textbook sites work, so check with those sites as well to make sure she can get them in electronic format even if she is out of the country.

I hope this information was helpful. And I wish your daughter luck in her study abroad program. It sounds like an exciting adventure!

Magazines on the Nook and double subscriptions?

Dear Maggie,
I'm writing regarding the Nook Tablet. I'm considering getting a Nook Tablet to read magazines. I already have several subscriptions to real, paper magazines. And I've noticed that some of the ones I subscribe to have Nook magazine versions. Is there anyway I can download the digital editions of these magazines without having to purchase a second digital subscription?
Thanks,
Casey

Dear Casey,
It is up to the publisher of the magazine as to whether print subscribers also get access to an electronic version of the publication. There are some magazines, such as Wired, that give print subscribers free access to the digital version. But other magazines may require you to buy a digital subscription in addition to a print subscription. Personally, I think that sucks, since many of the digital editions don't even store the entire magazine archives. And it really seems like publishers are double-dipping when they try to squeeze two subscriptions out of the same subscriber. The content for both the digital and print editions are usually the same.

Nook Tablet

But it's still very early days when it comes to tablet publishing for magazines, so the business models are still evolving. For example, The New Yorker says on its Web site that it charges a separate subscription fee for its print subscribers to also get the magazine on Amazon Kindle e-readers. But its digital edition, which can be accessed on a regular computer, is free to print subscribers. The iPad and Kindle versions of the magazine also appear to be free to print subscribers, according to the FAQ about tablets on its Web site. The magazine publisher also says that it will offer a Nook version of the magazine soon, which I assume will be free like the iPad and Kindle Fire versions.

My advice to you is that if you're interested in using your Nook Tablet to read magazines, you should check out Barnes & Noble's Web site and the Web sites of the magazines you want to read on the Nook to see if another subscription is required. If it is, I'd suggest canceling your print subscription to get the digital one, if you think you'd prefer that. Or you could just wait a little while and see if the publisher changes its policy. As I said before, things seem to be changing very quickly in this industry as magazine publishers figure out the best way to leverage the new tablet format. So even if your favorite magazines charge an additional subscription fee today, they may not in a few months.

Understanding e-book compatibility

Dear Maggie,
Can you read e-books from Amazon on the Nook Tablet or ones from Barnes & Noble on the Kindle Fire? I am reluctant to lock myself into one company, but I can't afford an iPad.
Thanks,
Mick

Dear Mick,
I double checked this information with my CNET Reviews colleague, Executive Editor John Falcone. He said Nook books can be read on Nooks and products with Nook apps, such as the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android phones and tablets. Kindle books can be read on Kindles, as well as, devices with Kindle Apps, such as iPads, iPhones, iPod Touches, and Android devices. But Nooks cannot be read on Kindles; and Kindle books cannot be read on Nooks. So unfortunately for you, you'll have to make a choice. But just remember you aren't totally locked in because both the Kindle and the Nook allow you to read books from either the Amazon store or the Barnes & Noble store on other devices, such iOS and Android tablets as well as smartphones. I hope this helps and good luck!

No 3G for the Nook Tablet

Dear Maggie,
Can I use the Nook Tablet anywhere the way I use my Kindle 3? I want the same kind of access I have with Kindle 3, but I want a better browser. Will the Nook Tablet meet these requirements.
Thanks,
Danny

Dear Danny,
Your Kindle 3 has a 3G wireless radio in it. The Nook Tablet does not have a 3G radio. It is Wi-Fi only, so you won't be able to download anything or use the browser if you are not in a Wi-Fi hotspot. That said, you can still store media on your Nook Tablet, so if you're not near Wi-Fi you can access content you've already downloaded. I hope this advice was helpful. And good luck!

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We are looking to help buyers make informed decisions when deciding between the kindle fire vs ipad 2. We'll provide more info on the Kinde Fire and how to's for it. So now that you have choosen which device to buy, let us why in the comments. Thanks for reading.