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I have been considering a Kindle for some time and the Fire does indeed look interesting to me. I want to wait, however, and see some detailed hands-on reviews of the final product before ordering one.

As for being a threat to the iPad, I am not so sure. The Fire strikes me as being almost totally dedicated to media consumption, where the iPad seems to be more of a general computing device.

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> I have been considering a Kindle for some time and the Fire does indeed look interesting to me.

Keep in mind that eInk Kindles are very different from LCD tablets. The former are fantastic for reading, and not that good at much else. The latter are more general purpose, but have much shorter battery life, and are probably not so good for reading, depending on how well you like reading an LCD screen.

> The Fire strikes me as being almost totally dedicated to media consumption

Many people said the same thing about the iPad when it first came out. Some still do.

There is a difference though - the iPad was built by Apple to be bought as a piece of multipurpose hardware (once you buy it, Apple is happy, has made a profit from you) while the Fire was built by Amazon to be a cheap window into Amazon streaming content (once you buy it, all Amazon wants you to do is consume media, so they can make their money back).

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