[ale] I Win, I Win!

Tue Feb 14 13:02:43 EST 2017

In my shopping expedition for a new laptop yesterday (see under the
recycling thread), I noticed that Staples (or maybe it was OD) had several
versions of Kendals, including Fires and Paperwhites. The wife unit has
owned several of the older Kendal, but they all seemed to self brick after
about 6 months. So I kind lost confidence in the class as a whole. That
said, we got a Fire TV for the wife's birthday last summer and I have been
impressed with it. Maybe I'll pay the store another visit and see what OS
version they are running. I'll also take a look at the offerings at Swappa.
Thanks for the detailed info.

I presume the quality of the development is inversely proportional to the
number of beers consumed?

-- GC

On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 12:43 PM, Charles Shapiro <hooterpincher at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hmm.  I bought the 7" Kindle Fire from Amazon on sale for $40 on the 5th
> after seeing a note on boingboing ( http://boingboing.net/2017/02/
> 05/amazon-fire-tablet-on-sale-for.html ). Until you gain root access to
> your tablet, it is basically owned by Amazon. They won't let you use it for
> much that doesn't involve giving them money.  That may or may not bother
> you.  It's possible to install the Google playstore app on an un-rooted
> Fire, which gives you marginally more control. I didn't bother with the
> shipped UI much, but from what I saw it was very difficult to load and use
> non-Amazon apps on it. You can't change the launcher on an un-rooted Fire.
> Some Google apps also may not run on the Fire builds of Android. The Fire
> as shipped has a plethora of garbageware which you're not allowed to remove
> without root access.  The Fire I bought has an SD card slot, but it only
> contains 8 gb of internal storage.
>
>  I lucked out.  My tablet came with FireOS 5.3.2.0 installed, which is
> downgradeable to FireOs 5.2. I was able to find that version by groveling
> around on the web a bit. 5.2 is vulnerable to Kingroot (
> https://kingroot.net/ ). The next point release (the current one) is
> 5.3.2.1. Trying to roll back that version will brick the device.  It may
> not be rootable although some reports hint at success with Kingroot.  I
> cannot say whether the device you buy from Amazon today will have a
> rootable version of FireOS on it. Swappa ( http://swappa.com ) has a
> bunch of Kindle Fires in various prices, ages, and conditions. Those
> devices almost certainly have older, easily rootable versions of the Amazon
> ROM on them.
>
> Sound quality is good but not great. It's loud enough to hear from across
> the room in a quiet place.  I wouldn't try to use it for music while
> practicing though. The speaker is in the lower right rear of the case. A
> paper clip will stick to the magnet there.   I haven't experimented with
> ROMs beyond the Nexus Lollipop build I have on there right now.  Other
> software might change the sound quality.  CyanogenMod comes with a fairly
> sophisticated mixer. You can still find the CM 12 build for the Fire out
> there. I tried to put that on my Fire but did not succeed.  So far to the
> best of my knowledge there are no Lineage ( http://lineageos.org ) builds
> for the Fire.  I hope that changes eventually.
>
> The 2 MP rear-facing camera is also mediocre.  But heck, for $40 it's
> great for sitting on the couch drinking and browsing. And it keeps me off
> my computers, where I have a tendency to get involved with development
> after a beer or two. This has generally been a Bad Idea.
>
> -- CHS
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 11:11 AM, Greg Clifton <gccfof5 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Two questions for CS:
>>
>> 1) Whence come this Kindle Fire?
>>
>> 2) How good is the audio on the device sans head phones? I listen to a
>> lot of streaming radio and my iPad has issues now and this could be cheaper
>> than fixing it.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 10:34 PM, Charles Shapiro <
>> hooterpincher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> It was Sunday.  Mostly the NYT.
>>>
>>> --CHS
>>>
>>> On Monday, February 13, 2017, Chris Fowler <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> *From: *"Pete Hardie" <pete.hardie at gmail.com>
>>>> *To: *"Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!" <ale at ale.org>
>>>> *Sent: *Monday, February 13, 2017 3:00:32 PM
>>>> *Subject: *Re: [ale] I Win, I Win!
>>>>
>>>> "read the paper while"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I read a "paper white".  I think it was 40 to 80lbs.  25 years ago?
>>>>
>>>
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>>
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>
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