Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Kindle Fire HDX: The businessperson's frenemy - Geekwire

firehdx1 When The Kindle Fire HDX was first released, I read reviews That raved how this Kindle finally added business-friendly features, enough to garner it the blessing of corporate IT Departments.

Apparently, none of the Reviewers had actually tried to use Those features.

Sure, the HDX is beautiful and the moonrise the most functional Kindle Fire yet. I purchased a 7-inch WiFi model to replace both an ancient second-generation e-Ink Kindle That I used for airplane reading and an aging originals Fire That I occasionally used for web browsing.

By comparison, the HDX is stunning: a 323ppi display (downloaded 1080p video looks remarkable). It’s speedy with a quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and improved Silk browser. And, it’s light. At 10.7 ounces, it’s virtually indistinguishable in my hand from the 10.2 ounce second-gen Kindle. Plus, it’s slightly smaller.

HDX is work-app friendly

HDX ice work-Mobile friendly

At a Recent professional conference, an attendee seated next to me watched as I took notes, browsed and tweeted on the HDX for a few minutes before asking if I, like her, had an iPad Mini. A flight attendant on the return trip from Atlanta peppered me with questions before concluding it had all the functions she needed. It’s that much of an improvement for Amazon’s Fire line – and a lot less money than buying Apple.

But the hard-core business features? In a word so far: Meh.

As a road warrior, I’m more likely to relegate this fire to a table nearer the executive assistant than the corner office. With that qualification, there is plenty of general productivity goodness:

  • Email and calendar. The integrated email and calendar apps were unexpectedly fast and painless When it came to setting up my personal Gmail and my business Google Apps account. (This is even more surprising When You Realize That no Google applications are available from Amazon’s arch-rival in the Appstore.) Amazon says it overpriced smoothly & Q Microsoft Exchange through ActiveSync on the HDX, a connection I have not yet tried.
  • video conferencing. The Skype app is readily available and, with a Fire-first front-facing 720p camera, works smoothly and well for remotely attending meetings.
  • Battery life. Amazon touts 11 hours “mixed use.” Thanks to the relaxed FAA personnel electronics rules (I bought my HDX During Amazon’s one-day “Thank You FAA” sale), I used the HDX gate to gate on a two-hour and then connecting six-hour flight, watching a movie ( Amelie , a free Prime Instant Video download – itself a new HDX feature), reading a Daniel Silva novel, connecting to Gogo Internet, and doing an absurd Amount of tweeting and emailing. I still had 30% battery life left after all that.
  • Apps. There Appear to be more available apps in Amazon’s care fully walled garden of an app store for the HDX than for the original Fire, including Those I Consider business and travel essentials: Evernote (notes) , Remember the Milk (tasks), Lookout (antivirus), HP Print Plugin (remote printing), UberSocial (Twitter), AccuWeather (weather), Alaska Airlines (travel) and Words With Friends (networking). I was able to replicate my usual Android smartphone business app contingent without any trouble.
  • WiFi. The WiFi settings make it extremely straightforward to setup or quickly re-connect to a familiar network. It’s what you’d expect from Android (the HDX’s Fire 3 OS is based on Android 4.2.2), but the HDX is the dual-band, has dual WiFi antennae and & Q 802.11 protocols from a through n , easing connections.

    • Coming Soon, but do not blink: THESE changed almost overnight

    ComingSoon, but do not blink: THESE changed almost overnight

    Then, there are the business disappointments, all Of which looked good on the spec sheet but in real life, deserved an asterisk or two:

  • Office Suite . Amazon’s claim: “view Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.” Reality: That’s it – view. OfficeSuite is embedded into the HDX; it does not show up with other apps on the main screen and the only way to DETERMINE it’s even there is to go deep into Fire’s settings. Office Suite’s File Browser function (oddly Listed in its linked help file) is disabled, and forget creating a document since you can not launch Office Suite Directly. The single method I could find to open a Microsoft Office file was to click on it when, say, it was attached to an email. Should you and then click Edition? You’re prompted to “Install Office Suite Pro: Create and edit documents on the go.” For $ 14.99, discounted when i tried it to $ 4.99.
  • Keyboard . Amazon claims, and the HDX indeed had, a touch keyboard. But it is of the most vanilla variety. What business person does not need a % key? Even my standard Android smartphone keyboard has one. So does the original Fire. But just try to find % on the HDX. I could not. I pressed and held keys at random until the % popped up as one of several options for the # key. It’s the same with some other special characters. (Perhaps Amazon DECIDED having accounting symbols handy was not helping its P & L calculations, so why bother?) And the Amazon Appstore offers no alternative keyboards that i could find. I gave up looking and Quantity one of many external Bluetooth keyboards that Work well with the HDX.
  • VPN . Amazon’s claim: “a native VPN client to connect remotely to your corporate network using the IPSec, L2TP or PPTP protocols.” Reality: When I first tried to DETERMINE how to use it to connect via the popular VPN service WiTopia (Which I did on my much-older Android phone), there was no way to access the VPN settings on the HDX itself. David and Travis at WiTopia support and I Exchanged Several emails And they noted That it looked like the HDX only Directly would “support corporate ‘enterprise’ VPNs” that issue security certificates. Then, literally as I was writing this, Amazon pushed out Fire OS 3.1. It now Allows VPN profiles to be Directly added. Great, but no points for the EARLIER wasted time and confusion.
    • Dueling teamwork feature pages confuse, for now

    Dueling teamwork feature pages confuse, for now

    Clearly, as the VPN back-and-forth shows, some of Amazon’s asterisks are self-inflicted. Features are promoted online but only vaguely described or labeled as “Coming Soon” (and not always consistently, across two web pages extolling the Fire’s work friendliness). Either still to come or alreadycreated Implemented for the enterprise are device encryption, single sign-on and certificate enrollment.

    The unevenness reminds me of the frustration educators INITIALLY encountered When They wanted to buy Kindles for classrooms. Schools had no easy way to manage apps or content across all devices, and there was a mystifying five-device-per-purchase limit (not quite workable in 30-student classrooms). Amazon has since Overcome both obstacles, so there is hope as the rollout of Fire OS 3.1 and its features work portends.

    Would I recommend an HDX to the individual business road warrior

    Based on the price – for in-transit mail, calendar management and entertainment – it’s not yes, it’s hell yes. (Just make sure you buy the $ 269 32GB model; the $ 229 16GB base version does not have quite enough usable storage to download more than about three movies at 1080p for offline viewing, and a from continuing Fire drawback is the lack of an SD card slot or other expandable storage.) moonrise I’m getting my money’s worth without popping an eye-popping AMOUNT for an equivalent iPad Mini, or moving to the less mature or integrated content ecosystem of a similarly priced Google Nexus 7.

    But for everyday productive business use or for the enterprise, it’s still a hopeful, qualified maybe. Amazon’s Fire HDX in the workplace, overall, deserves the digital label, “Coming (Fingers Crossed) Soon.”

    Editor’s note : Geekwire’s Todd Bishop has been testing the Kindle Fire HDX as a family tablet for the past few weeks, and will be sharing his perspective in the coming days.

    Frank Catalano (@ FrankCatalano ) is a strategist, author and veteran analyst of digital education and consumer technologies Whose regular Geekwire columns take a practical nerd’s approach to tech. See the column archive. He has overpriced Dominant JFK , the Ninth Gate and the Goonies for his HDX from Prime Instant Video, if you must know.