Kindle Kids Edition

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07NMY72SC

by jamesjyu • 7 years ago

28 23 7 years ago

pintxo• 7 years ago

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?

yearofthespider• 7 years ago

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

AJ007• 7 years ago

I can’t speak for books, but I’ve had music vanish from my library and videos I purchased cease being available for viewing. The music admittedly I noticed was missing, emailed support, and it reappeared.

chance_state• 7 years ago

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.

scrollaway• 7 years ago

I agree with you. Thankfully, the kindle ebook format has been entirely reverse engineered and the encryption is easy to crack (you can find your own account key very quickly). Kindles are also very easy to root. That personally gives me enough confidence to buy into the ecosystem but it sucks these aren't consumer guarantees in the first place…

nsilvestri2• 7 years ago

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

m463• 7 years ago

I suspect COPA might have something to do with it.

bsharitt• 7 years ago

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.

philips3• 7 years ago

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.

nsilvestri2• 7 years ago

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/

philips3• 7 years ago

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.

shermozle• 7 years ago

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.

nnutter• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

WalterBright2• 7 years ago

Constantly having to manage disk space.

This problem could be resolved by Amazon. The devices could have "infinite" storage simply by using the on-device storage as FIFO buffer with the overflow in Amazon's cloud storage.

WalterBright2• 7 years ago

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

jonjlee• 7 years ago

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!

Kindle Kids Edition

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