I thought I’d write a quick follow up on the Amazon Fire I got last week. I knew when I bought it that it would be locked-down to some extent, but I didn’t really research exactly how locked down it is. Out of the box, you can only install software from Amazon’s store, not Google Play, and Amazon’s store is missing a lot of stuff. I installed OneDrive, Evernote, Slacker, and a few other apps, but there’s no (official) Dropbox client (as far as I can tell), Instapaper app, or any alternate web browsers (Firefox or Chrome). I’ve been reading up, and apparently you can “sideload” apps pretty easily, but I haven’t played with that yet. And I’ve read up on how to get the Google Play store installed, but the process for doing that seems a little dicey, so I’m not going to bother with it unless I need to.
In addition to the $15 32 GB MicroSD card I bought for it, I’ve now also bought a $15 case and a $5 USB cable (since the one it came with is too short), so I’ve officially spent as much on accessories as I spent on the Fire itself. I find that pretty amusing.