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I spent some time the past couple of days going over the available information on Amazon's Kindle Fire - and having a friendly tiff with a friend who is an owner and avid fan of Apple's iPad. My findings from both:

• The Fire doesn't have a camera, but the iPad does. Opinion: who really wants a camera on something as bulky as a tablet?
• Both work on WiFi - although the iPad has an option to access the Web via AT&T or Verizon. Opinion: I don't like the add-on charge for such access. But I lament the WiFi only access for Fire.
• Amazon's app store is likely to be competition for Apple. And its cloud-based web access innovations should make downloads a lot faster.
• I wish Fire was a tad larger. But it's also lighter than both the iPad and the Kindle DX.
• Fire is touch based, as is the iPad. 
• Fire cand handle email, web access, and WORD documents, giving it, as far as this writer is concerned, the best features of a laptop - something I'd hoped tablets would provide.

With this being said, the stage is now set for a complete revolution in book and magazine reading and publishing. So that's the direction in which this writer is headed.