At the end of February, Steve Griffiths of RNIB kindly set out the differences between the Kindle Keyboard and the Kindle Fire. What he said was very useful and has more or less set my course to buy a Fire to replace my Keyboard. I have just been very fortunate in having a friend loan me a Fire to try, and now I am not so sure about switching. The following might be of interest to some.
Fire's TTS is (to my mind) superb. I have experience of TTS only on my old VR Stream and Textaloud MP3 on my PC, but it certainly far surpasses both of them.
The facility for white on black for ebooks is terrific. It cuts out the glare that one gets from a pure white background and does not illuminate one's facewhen reading closely!
I was a little disappointed by the maximum text size on the Fire. I measured it at about 8 mm as opposed to the Keyboard's 9.5 mm for a capital letter in the largest font. Not a lot of difference, but it could be critical for some.
I now have to decide whether the advantages of the Fire outweigh the slightly smaller font size. If I take into account the excellent internet browsing facilities on the Fire and the colour screen (as well as the above), I think I willprobably go for one. However, I won't get rid of my Keyboard too quickly!
Trevor Ruane
