Is a Kindle Fire the same as an iPad?

[olivo]

Forgive my ignorance, I am a pensioner and not very gadget savvy!! I have been offered a secondhand Kindle Fire (I already have the very first Kindle (grey) and love reading my books on it, but thought this might be good to check my emails, browse Facebook, ebay etc- will this do the job? Detailed answers please, as I dont really know what a "Fire" is for!

[HonestCanadian]

Similar but no.

iPad is an apple device. It has great apps, a fragile form factor, and is all in all a very very good tablet if you are looking for something that can browse and play games.

Kindle Fire is an amazon tablet using a modified Android OS. It is an incredibly strong tablet that really gains its gold star when performing eReader tasks but can also make quick work of browsing as well as a decent selection of apps and games.

Cheers and good Luck (I prefer the fire personally)

[089]

It's not the exact same thing but it's similar. The Kindle Fire runs what's called Android which is a different operating system from the iPad which uses iOS.

Basically that means it has different software. But since Android and iOS are the two biggest mobile platforms basically, they have a lot of the same apps. There's really not much iOS can do that an Android tablet like the Kindle Fire cannot do in some fashion. The only it can't do as far as I know is take pictures or do video chat because it has no camera.

Other than that you should be able to do everything else: Facebook, web browsing, email, games, whatever. I believe it comes preloaded with the Amazon App Store to get apps, many of which are free.

[968]

In basic terms yes they are both "tablet" machines.

It will be perfectly fine for what you have in mind, so long as you have a WiFi (wireless internet) capable router, as I don't think you can connect them via cable.