Pants NOT on Fire

My wife and I decided that we needed to provide her mother in law with an internet outlet of some sort. Wifey thought it would be easiest to just configure an old laptop and leave it out. I know better. Hell, any IT guy knows that you never offer to support family computers. It starts out as an innocent, kindly gesture. Then, much like the plot every Ben Stiller move, everything that can go wrong, does. Sure, you can laugh at it for a little while but then it becomes obnoxious and difficult to handle. Eventually you want no part of it, even going so far as to fake your own death to get out of having to see any more. Either way, you're damned if you do and slightly more damned if you don't.

A little background on my experience with portable computing. I used to own one of the first Palm Pilots. Loved it. I had no real use for it, but it was awesome none-the-less. Around 2000, I got a Windows PDA. It was amazing. That much power at my fingertips and I no longer saw a need or a reason for a laptop computer. Eventually I sprung for a fold out keyboard and, well, I was set. That is until it died. After that I eventually went through a few laptops and experimented with other Palm devices, but nothing could trump the PDA experience I had. Then when mobile phones got smart, I got one. Then I got an iPod Touch. Then I tried out the iPhone. Eventually I landed on the Samsung Epic 4G running Android. Now I'm also rocking an iPad 2 that was given to me by my job so I can support iOS.

So, yeah, I have a heck of a lot of experience (well over a decade) with portable devices, so I know my stuff. I know what I like, and I know what I don't like. I have a good handle on what trends were and how they moved throughout the years.

When I say that I prefer the Fire over the iPad 2, that should mean a good deal.

I've got no beef against Apple, either. They make damned fine products and charge a premium for them. They're not like Dell, Sony, and all who make three lines of laptops (consumer junk, regular junk, and business grade). Apple's business model prevents them from churning out crap. I love them for that. I'm not going to go into a myriad of things I like about Apple beyond that.

But why, why do I prefer the Kindle Fire over the iPad2? I've got lots of reasons! First off is the size. For something that is supposed to be ultra portable, iPad2 is huge and unwieldy. The Fire is just right.

User input is simply easier on the Fire.

I touch type, so I'm incredibly slowed down by having to look at the screen. Even with the iPad in portait mode and typing with my thumbs, it's not so easy (yeah, iOS 5 can split the keybaord, but then that's three focal points, so still not any better). The Fire is roughly the size of a Nintendo DS. It just feels right in your hands no matter how you hold it, so typing in either landscape or portrait is that much easier. Granted, on-screen keyboards are not a suitable substitute for a keyboard, but we're keeping these portable, and the keyboards available for either are usually identical due to Bluetooth tech.

Fire's interface is just as intuitive as iOS.

If not more so. Kindle really did a good job of capturing the idea of a bookshelf. Everything you can do is part of the interface. So your books, movies, music, webpages, apps, etc all land on the shelf. Just flick your way through to what you want to do. If you want to save things with a specific spot so they don't get lost in the shuffle, you can just put them on the bottom shelf and they won't go anywhere. You can keep throwing things on the bottom shelf because there's always another bottom shelf waiting for you. It keeps getting taller. :)

There is also a menu on the top that lists the main categories you'll want to access. Tap on "Web" and Silk comes to life. Tap on "Video" and it'll bring you to its internal library with an option to hop on your Amazon account to see what's available. All the tabs will show you your local stuff, and give you the option to check out anything in the cloud or available for purchase.

Since the device only has one physical button (power/sleep/wake), you'll have to keep an eye out for the home key, which almost universally presents itself in the lower left of the screen. When you're in a movie or book, tap the screen and the interface will show you the standard controls, along with a back and a home key. When playing full screen games, a few pixels will be butted against the bottom of the bezel with an arrow that, when touched, will bring up the home key. So you'll never be confused as to where it went.

There are a few hiccups, though. For one, screen animations can get noticeably choppy when moving particularly fast (I haven't noticed the problem in the browser or while watching movies). The other is that when flipping through recent entries you'll probably have trouble landing on what you intended. It takes some getting used to, but this is something Amazon should really tighten up, seeing as it's essentially the first thing you do with the Fire.

Amazon calls it a media portal, but really, it's a tablet.

With its fully powered web browser, the Fire has access to Google Docs. Nuff said? Well, maybe. Google Docs requires a wifi connection to be useful, and since the Fire doesn't have a cellular option available, Google Docs is somewhat limited. The Appstore, however, has quite a few options for full Office Suites if that's more your game. (Not sure why ThinkFree isn't included, it's on almost every other Android device).

The built in email client is pretty good, too. It's just as simple to use and understand as any other client.

Another Dilemma

I decided that I could give Skyrim a chance at full price last week. I don't know what possessed me to do that seeing as I played Morrowind for about two hours and Oblivion for maybe four hours before I got bored and turned them off (including character creation). Neither of which I played when they were released, but a few months later when I could get a copy from a friend who had moved on. So they weren't exactly old either. My two biggest turnoffs about these games are the their customization were so overly elaborate that I just couldn't make any decisions and there is little to no direction. The worlds are somehow too open.

Interestingly one of those reasons I couldn't get into the Elder Scrolls series is the same reason I adore a good strategy game. Overly elaborate customization is my thing! However without some direction, it's not so much overwhelming as it is.. unusable. If I recall correctly, Oblivion had 21 skills and Morrowind 24. The leveling system was a bit mystifying in that whatever you did made that skill stronger, while an experience bar determined when you could get stronger. Leveling was, for me, a nightmare of deliberate action and immediately robbed the game of its ability to hold my attention. Rather than talking to the townspeople, I would have to strategically plan how I was going to break into their houses and pick their pockets to gain more stealth, lockpicking and pocket picking. The consequence of not doing this was that when I leveled, I'd get crap for stats. I felt I had no choice but to ignore the point of the game in order to be able to survive in its environments. The spiral of engagement and excitement was rapidly descending into the depths rather than soaring into an engaging environment.

So, as I said, I took the full price plunge. I think the reason I believed I could trust the new game was that some reviewers used the words "simplified leveling". Normally you'll hear me say I hate it when a game is simplified, however, that's what I needed to break into the Elder Scrolls series. And I'm genuinely enjoying Skyrim. I don't get the feeling that if I don't jump 1000's of times I'm not going to get that one strength point I need to give me the edge in the next random encounter.

Oh, wait, this isn't a review of Skyrim, not yet. I haven't put enough time into the game to understand it well enough to review it. This is a post about a dilemma.

I have very poor timing that I mostly blame on the video games companies. Everyone knows fall and early winter is when all the great games are released. And anyone with any sense would pick the one game they want to play and then just get the rest as they go. Normally that's what I would do, but for some reason this year I decided to that I needed to get Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword as well as Skyrim on release day. All of these games are out in November and, well, I've got almost no time now that I have an infant in the house.

AC:Rev shows up today. TODAY! It's on the truck waiting for some dude in brown to throw it on my doorstep. So, do I put down Skyrim and pick up where AC:Brotherhood left off? Or do I keep playing through Skyrim and let Ezio, Altair, and Desmond rot for a few weeks or months, with the possibility that Commander Shepard is going to have to save the galaxy before those damned Reapers can destroy the world of the Elder Scrolls?

I've already decided to wrap up Zelda and make it a Christmas present. It's the only game my wife will play, so that's the best way to delay that one... And I'm thinking I have to stick with Skyrim or I may not be able to get back into it with all its quests that are impossible to keep in order...

Oh well, at least I won't be bored.