Amazon to kindle Fire tablet tomorrow
Based on BlackBerry tab?
Amazon's Kindle tablet will be called the Fire and be based on the same core technology as RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, it has been claimed a day ahead of the retailer's big announcement.
That's according to Tech Crunch, which claims that while the Fire will be shown off on stage by CEO Jeff Bezos, punters won't get their mitts on it until the second week of November.
The website also reckons the fondleslab will incorporate a Texas Instruments dual-core OMAP chip clocked at around 1.2GHz.
Leaks already indicate the Fire - if that's indeed what it will be called - will be a 7in tablet running Android 2.1. This model may be followed by a larger ten-incher.
As the Fire was designed and constructed by RIM's tablet maker, Quanta, it will apparently have a similar look to that of the BlackBerry PlayBook. The software that runs it, though, is said to be much smoother and provides access to a far greater range of content.
I guess all should be revealed tomorrow. We'll be back with the official info for you then. ®
COMMENTS
And even now
Reg hacks are patiently waiting for the first malfunctioning Kindle 2 battery, just for the headlines.
Annoying as it is you can't blame Amazon for region locks, it's the dead tree publishers who haven't woken up to the fact that parcelling ebook rights out on geographical lines makes no sense whatsoever, and just pushes people towards cracked downloads.
It would be nice if these idiots actually looked outside their little cartels and noticed that this hasn't worked for the music and film industries, but that's probably too much to ask.
If it goes the way of the Touchpad, will there be a Kindle Fire-sale?
Regional e-books
Blame the publishers for region locking. Or remove the DRM.
Blame publishers for only allowing an e-book license to be lent once in it's lifetime - if you're lucky to get even that.
Blame publishers for expiring library e-books licenses so they have to be re-licensed after a number of years.
As for the tiny share of money that goes to an author from the sale of an e-book license....
Regional locking
> Come-on Amazon, putting a regional lock on books?
Not necessarily their fault. Some publishers/rights-owners may request this. It's not unusual for different publishers to publish the same book in different places: digital-rights may be local too.
