
Kindle Kids Edition - jamesjyu
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07NMY72SC
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shermozle
My kids have had the Kindle Fire tablets for a few years. The hardware is
pretty underpowered but they were super cheap. However the Amazon software on
top of it is fucking TERRIBLE. To allow your kid to access a web site, you
have to log into the tablet with your own PIN, twice for no reason, then wait
for the horribly laggy app to load, then add the site, then go back to the
kids' login.

My hopes for this Kindle reader wouldn't be high.

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nnutter
I second this. It's an awful experience. Especially they're "all you can eat"
kids buffet, FreeTime Unlimited. Constantly having to manage disk space.
Searching and getting no/missing results for terms as basic as "dinosaurs". I
bought three, for the price of one iPad, and after a few months just bought
iPads because it was so ridiculous for the kids and for me to have to manage.

~~~
Pfhreak
Plus one, we just got rid of our Fire tablet and FreeTime Unlimited. They
constantly shift the content around, which means that we have to constantly go
in and block out the garbage. Just let me whitelist stuff, and automatically
blacklist anything new?

The tablet itself was grossly underpowered and not up to the task of just
navigating around. While it did hold up to a kid, physically, it was not a
great experience for anyone involved.

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philips
Walled gardens like the Apple iPad and Kindle provide strong management
controls for content and time management. And these seem necessary to help
parents manage how their children consume.

The risk for competitive ecosystems without these central controls, of course,
is that people have a tendency to stick with the tools they know. And I am
certain that these companies consider the stickiness of their ecosystem as
kids transition into adulthood.

~~~
nsilvestri
I'm admittedly in the Amazon/Kindle ecosystem, but the fact that they allow
you to upload your own documents and eBooks to your Kindle circumvents any
feeling of being locked in, personally. You aren't required to obtain your
eBooks from Amazon, and Calibre[1] almost totally automates the transfer
process.

[1] [https://calibre-ebook.com/](https://calibre-ebook.com/)

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philips
I am all in on the kindle ecosystem as well but everything that isn’t in the
buy path is really a second class citizen.

Personal docs don’t sync page progress

Library checkout process has a sign out button right next to the borrow button

It is all subtle nudges that feel designed to keep you in ecosystem.

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devicetray0
> Personal docs don’t sync page progress

Hmm, I never considered that because I mostly just send-to-kindle-by-email and
then read those docs from only one kindle device. How many devices do you read
on?

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philips
phone, tablet, and kindle

~~~
danilocesar
and PC sometimes

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jonjlee
My elementary aged child has a Kindle locked in FreeTime mode. He checks out
Kindle books from our local library from my phone once a week. There's no
clunky E-reader based browsing for books, a near infinite supply of well
curated books by librarians, no subscription, and it involves all steps he can
do by himself. I highly recommend this setup for anyone thinking of a device
like this!

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nsilvestri
Happy to see that ads are disabled on this device, and there's no option for
an advertisement-subsidized version like the normal Kindle.

~~~
bsharitt
Don't know about the regular Kindle, but on even ad support Fire tablets, the
ads are disabled while a kids profile is active, though that wasn't always the
case.

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pintxo
Sounds like a rather well designed offering, pricing seems to be fine as well.

But imagine the horror if your kids most sacred book gets removed from the
offering by amazon and there is nothing you can do to fix this (besides buying
the paper version, maybe). But would your kid know how to use it?

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yearofthespider
Amazon took the 1984 incident very seriously, so I think it's exceptionally
unlikely to recur.

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chance_state
What do you mean by "they took [it] very seriously"?

I have absolutely zero trust in Amazon to be fair or reasonable, so I pirate
the ebook then buy the paperback.

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WalterBright
Do kids really prefer those garish covers? When I was a kid I wanted my toys
to look like adult toys.

