Kindle A Good Choice For College Student?

[awesumjon]

Hey, I've been looking for a tablet for school purposes (and also some play purposes)

I've had my eye on the Kindle Fire because, well let's be honest, it has Kindle textbooks on it, it's cheap, and i'm a broke a** college student XD

So, can anyone vouch for the Kindle, is there enough support for it? As in accessories (ideally keyboards and other helpful things)

Or is there a better tablet choice?

 

[awesumjon]

Ok. . . . . I guess I'll just hold off on getting a Kindle for now then

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[stoneworrior]

Sorry I just read this, looks like you have been waiting for a answer for a little while now. I have the Kindle Fire and the only issue I see would be storage. If you can wait a while longer the 249.00 Asus 7" would be a much better choice. That is if Asus can actually ship the devices.

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[will25u]

I'm a college student and I feel like its too small for productivity work. Also, I'm not sure about the textbooks but from the classes I've taken there were no kindle version of the textbook available.

I recommend a laptop if you want to be productive and if you find a kindle textbook just get the kindle for PC app and read it on your laptop.

 

[2ndaccord]

I don't think it is good for productivity. No USB host or Bluetooth mean no external keyboards will work. Also not having the android market limits the number of useful apps you can download. It is great however for a "fun device". Games, movies, browsing are all great.

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[jsh1120]

As others have noted, the KF is a fine, highly portable content consumption device. It is not designed, however, to be a content creation device beyond basic email management and a few other (short) productivity functions. I also own an iPad and would say it can be stretched to meet the needs of a college student. But it IS a stretch compared to a notebook. Stretching a KF to that extent is not recommended.

 

[stoneworrior]

As others have noted, the KF is a fine, highly portable content consumption device. It is not designed, however, to be a content creation device beyond basic email management and a few other (short) productivity functions. I also own an iPad and would say it can be stretched to meet the needs of a college student. But it IS a stretch compared to a notebook. Stretching a KF to that extent is not recommended.

It didn't look to me that he was looking at it as a creation device. Other than using a keyboard for some light document creation the way I read it is he wanted it for kindle books and some playtime. For that it is perfect. If I misunderstood then I stand corrected but from the way I am reading his question it will do fine other than the storage size and no peripherals available. That is why I suggested the new 7" ASUS coming out. It is essentially a 7" prime for another $50.00 and although it looks as if they will not have a keyboard available, he would be able to get a Bluetooth keyboard that would do the job just fine. This device is supposed to have Bluetooth along with wifi.

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[eric3316]

I was able to pickup a HTC EVO View the other day for $229 like many others here. My kindle Fire is going back to the store. It has only 8 gigs of memory without an SD slot, no bluetooth, no front or back camera's, no GPS, no hardware button for volume control, and they have disabled the auto sensor backlight.

For an additional $29 I got all these features in the VIEW and it also has 32 gigs of built in storage memory plus a card slot. The reason I bring this up is because if you are patient you can probably find this sale again. This sale has been offered about 4x through different sites over the past 2 months and I am sure will continue to be offered as the VIEW is going end of line next month. The View also offers an official upgrade to Honeycomb.

Unless you are going to root you Kindle which I did, it is really not a productive device. If you root it and then run CM7 on it, at least you have a full fledged table but still will come with a lot of limitations and other devices can be had that offer more if you just save up for a couple more weeks or possibly wait and see what new items are coming. But my recommendation is keep an eye out for a View sale and you will not be disappointing.

 

[jsh1120]

It didn't look to me that he was looking at it as a creation device. Other than using a keyboard for some light document creation the way I read it is he wanted it for kindle books and some playtime. For that it is perfect. If I misunderstood then I stand corrected but from the way I am reading his question it will do fine other than the storage size and no peripherals available. That is why I suggested the new 7" ASUS coming out. It is essentially a 7" prime for another $50.00 and although it looks as if they will not have a keyboard available, he would be able to get a Bluetooth keyboard that would do the job just fine. This device is supposed to have Bluetooth along with wifi.

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You may well be right. The OP will have to decide. And I agree that for media consumption (printed, video, and music) the KF is a great device. For the record, I'm not an iPad fanboy. I like mine very much but I mentioned it only as an example of a device (and there are Android alternatives) that can be "stretched" to meet the needs of a college student. (Been many years since I was in that situation but I do recall the budget constraints.)

I would say that by the time you're pushing $600 in price for any tablet a more rational purchase is a relatively inexpensive notebook computer. By the time you go through the hoops to turn a tablet into a reasonable content creation device, you're already at a price point where requirements are simply better met with a laptop.

 

[grvthang]

Is that EVO View $229 without a contract?

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[btc0526]

Is that EVO View $229 without a contract?

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Yes sir it was

 

[grvthang]

Yes sir it was

That's a great deal!
In any event, if a tablet is being considered as a replacement for a laptop or pc for a college student, I would advise against it. While it would be ok for browsing and reading (although I would imagine a lot of esoteric textbooks would not be found in digital format), the keyboard would rule out writing long documents on it. As others have mentioned, it's ok for short emails, but nothing very long.

 

[btc0526]

That's a great deal!
In any event, if a tablet is being considered as a replacement for a laptop or pc for a college student, I would advise against it. While it would be ok for browsing and reading (although I would imagine a lot of esoteric textbooks would not be found in digital format), the keyboard would rule out writing long documents on it. As others have mentioned, it's ok for short emails, but nothing very long.

The view has Bluetooth though which means you can use a Bluetooth keyboard which would be acceptable for a laptop replacement

 

[twtippets]

I bought a KF for my wife she likes it but the screen is just a little too small to really be productive with and the storage size isn't too bad now that you have so many cloud based programs to get music and movies from, so no storage on the device is really used. But in order to get anything really good out of the KF it needs to be rooted and ROMed. I use a viewsonic g tablet and love it. It's fast and I can take notes and edit pdf's. It has a 10.1" screen and is super smooth and has tons of support. I highly recommend it. It's your choice though. Good luck.

 

[stoneworrior]

You may well be right. The OP will have to decide. And I agree that for media consumption (printed, video, and music) the KF is a great device. For the record, I'm not an iPad fanboy. I like mine very much but I mentioned it only as an example of a device (and there are Android alternatives) that can be "stretched" to meet the needs of a college student. (Been many years since I was in that situation but I do recall the budget constraints.)

I would say that by the time you're pushing $600 in price for any tablet a more rational purchase is a relatively inexpensive notebook computer. By the time you go through the hoops to turn a tablet into a reasonable content creation device, you're already at a price point where requirements are simply better met with a laptop.

Yes I would have to agree with you. Personally I would get something like this and dual boot it with ubuntu but everyone is different.

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[awesumjon]

Thanks for all the help guys, in the end I decided to not to get the Kindle. I've tried out the Acer iconia tab a500 and I think that one may be the one for me. Thanks

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