I unexpectedly sorta obtained* a kindle fire. Any good hints on what to get/do with it?

* S. got it as a conference door prize. I said "so does this mean I can have your ipad....?"

Amych, if you have Amazon Prime, it's a great way to watch entire seasons of television for free.

Otherwise, it's kind of a low-rent iPad: if you have wifi, you can surf the net and download books from Amazon on it. Amazon's comics reader is pretty good--the screen is quite crisp & bright.

I found it useful for traveling, but as an e-reader it's not that awesome: the backlit screen drains the battery pretty fast, and you can't read outside. And Amazon is kind of demonic about DRM, which is annoying. It will only read MOBI files, so if you want to read public domain work, you have to buy it from Amazon (although some of that is free) or download it from Project Gutenberg and convert it and then sideload it (or email it through Amazon for download). Oh, it will read PDF, but it doesn't treat them as books, and they show up in the Documents folder instead.

I haven't had much luck using it to watch non-Amazon video, since the system is intentionally hobbled and there's only a limited number of apps Amazon allows you to install.

The site I've found most useful is the mobileread forums, where there's a lot of guidance and tips.

I got mine as a gift: now that I've had it a while, I'm still pretty dissatisfied with its inflexibility, although it was useful for reading my mail and B.org when I was traveling. Not useful for typing on, though: I haven't yet been able to install Swype on it.

Jon, it might've been the thing I was vaguely remembering, where it was buggy and they took it down and brought it back.

No, I think it was the lack of offline caching and just that it didn't seem to offer anything useful that the standard app didn't. Now, get me the ability to choose what the "from" field is in emails that I send (like the desktop web version), and I'll be all over it.

Childproofing! It's as good an excuse as any to get a new TV!

I currently have a Sony 42" rear projection LCD, purchased in 2004. It still works great, but it's quite topple-able. I'm thinking about trying to sell it on Craigslist and replacing it with a wall-mountable flat screen of the same size or a little bigger, say 46"

I know this has been asked here before, but I didn't have much luck searching the thread: What brands/models do people recommend or suggest I avoid? Am I remembering right that Samsungs are good and reliable? Consumer Reports seems to rate them highly. What technologies are best these days? Plasma, LED, or LCD -- Why choose one over the other?

I prefer Samsung LCD with LED backlighting.

I'm not video expert, but I really don't feel Plasmas are worth the price. THey burn in easier, and burn out faster. I have a Samsung LCD, no backlighting. It's 4 years old now. Still doing great. Although, the speakers are blah. But I have yet to hear a flat screen with good speakers. I'm also a sound guy, so take that as you will.

Thank you, suela! That's way more info than I had before to get me started (especially since I didn't do any of my usual research on the thing before getting it). I'm definitely feeling the limits on wacky DRM and the amazon-only app store. But hey - free tablet? Not gonna worry too much about it.

I'm looking at two Samsungs: [link] or [link]

Am I correct that the second one uses LCD with LED backlighting? Both get great reviews, so it's hard to choose.

I don't care about sound or number of inputs or smartness, since it will effectively be a monitor hooked directly into an a/v tuner that also has a Mac Mini connected to it.

Hmmm... Crutchfield describes my first link above as an "LED-LCD HDTV" with "LED edge backlight for high picture contrast", so maybe THAT's the technology you were referring to, Drew?

[link]

Traditionally, LCDs have been backlit with fluorescent tubes. LCDs backlit with LEDs are brighter, have more consistent colors(and blacker blacks), and don't use mercury. It also allows the TVs to be thinner.