Kindle Fire First Impressions

[G+_Andreas Ebbert-Karroum]

Originally shared by Andreas Ebbert-Karroum

 

Kindle Fire First Impressions

 

So we got our son a kindle fire for his 8th birthday. This happened two days ago, and I am already wondering, if this really was the best decision. The device itself makes a high quality impression, but main driver for the decision was the ability to setup special kids profiles.

 

Here's what I am currently missing, or just don't know how to do that.

 

Setup: My parent profile is linked to my amazon prime account. I see music in my cloud, and I can play  instant videos. Our son has a FreeTime Profile.

 

1) Music It is not possible to grant access to music to the kids profile. So if he wanted to listen to music on his Fire HDX, he needed to access it via my parent profile. #showstopper  

2) Videos I thought I might like how the Kindle Fire handles Amazon Prime Instant Video. So far we can only stream videos to our TV via the Wii U, so here is another device capable of playing them (maybe not to the TV though...). First I granted access to the Instant Video app to the kids profile, but the app doesn't even show up. (Same for the amazon app store, BTW). Then I downloaded a video from my profile, but I cannot grant access to it (in contrary to books, which are all available)

3) E-Mail I only managed to setup E-Mail in the parent profile. At least with the default tools. I managed to install an E-Mail client from the Amazon Store (K9 Mail), give permission to the kids profile, and configure it there. Quite some hoops to jump through.

4) Contacts For contacs I probably have to do the same, as for E-Mail. 

5) App Store As I already said, I seem to be unable to make the app store appear in the kids profile. I hoped if it did, that it'd be available only in a limited form, showing apps only for a correct age group, disabling purchases, etc. Instead, I cannot grant access to it. At all. 

 

So ... are there better options available how to setup the parent/kids scenario on the kindle fire? sideload all the google tools? how well does that go together with the Kindle Fire tools? Thanks for sharing some thoughts with me :)

[G+_Joseph Cappellino]

Nexus 7 and Restricted Profiles FTW.