But perhaps you simply aren’t willing to accept a contract, however, or simply don’t use much mobile data or many cell minutes. If that’s the case, a pre-paid phone makes a lot of sense even when compared to a non-contract monthly plan. So what are the best options?

T-Mobile

T-Mobile offers numerous pre-paid plans including monthly, daily and pay-as-you-go options. You can also purchase smartphones directly from T-Mobile even if you just want a pay-as-you-go option.

For those looking for the cream of the crop, Samsung’s Galaxy S (available refurbished) and the T-Mobile Sidekick are the best options. The Galaxy S is a solid flagship 4” Android smartphone, while the T-Mobile Sidekick is the perfect phone for frequent texters. Both phones are over $300, however.

A more affordable option is the LG Optimus T, which typically costs $179.99. CNET called it one of the best entry-level smartphones due to its combination of performance and affordability. The 3.2” touchscreen is small by the standards of today’s flagship phones, but it works well enough.

AT&T GoPhone

Pickings are slimmer at AT&T, which offers prepaid under the brand name of GoPhone. Plan options are not bad, however, and include monthly, daily and pay-by-the-minute options.

The best phone option is certainly the Samsung Captivate, an aging 4” Android smartphone that still appears reasonably modern. It’s nearly $500, however, which is a difficult price to pay for hardware that’s not cutting edge.

Unfortunately, there are not any affordable smartphone options sold for pre-paid users. The $349.99 Palm Pixi is the least expensive offering, but spending that much for a device with limited future support seems dubious. You’ll want to look at another carrier if you want a solid but inexpensive pre-paid smartphone.

Verizon

You’ll only find monthly and daily pre-paid plans at Verzion, and if you go for the monthly unlimited or daily plan, your phone selection is reduced to “basic phones” – either flip-phones or feature phones. This is obviously not going to be acceptable to many geeks.

The only way to grab a decent phone is to select a monthly 3G plan. If you do that, you’ll be able to select from a number of quality options including the Droid X2, the Droid 3, and the Xperia Play. Prices aren’t outrageous, either – the Play is about $250 and the Droid X2 is just a hair under $300. This is arguably the best selection of off-contract phones available directly from a carrier.

However, you’ll be paying for a monthly minute allowance regardless of how often you use them. If you want to go pre-paid because you don’t use many minutes or much mobile data, these plans aren’t going to save you any money.

Boost Mobile

Created specifically as a low-cost, no-contract carrier, Boost Mobile offers a number of plans with monthly, daily and pay-as-you-go options. However, the pay-as-your-go and standard monthly options lock you into basic and feature phones. You need to go for a daily or Android/BlackBerry monthly plan to obtain a smartphone.

Unfortunately the phone options aren’t going to blow you away. There’s only a few smartphones to choose from regardless of plan, the best being the Samsung Transformer Ultra, an Android 2.3 phone with a slide-out keyboard and an okay display size of 3.5 inches. This will set you back $229.99.

Less expensive is the Samsung Galaxy Prevail, is $149.99. But you’re downgraded to Android 2.2, have to do with a 3.2” touchscreen, and don’t receive a keyboard. Though this phone is decent for the price, but the LG Optimus T available through T-Mobile is better.

Virgin Mobile

This low-cost carrier only offers no-contract monthly plans. Virgin Mobile’s PayLo plan is the least expensive, offering 1,500 minutes for $30/month, but the phone choices are terrible.

If you go with a regular plan, however, you can buy some of the best value-oriented Android phones on the market. These include the LG Optimus Slider for $199.99 and the LG Optimus V for $129.99. Rates are good for the plans, as well.

Other Options

Notably missing from this comparison is Sprint. I could not find any pre-paid options for the carrier. This is probably because they own Boost Mobile and have a contract with Virgin Mobile allowing the smaller carrier access to Sprint’s network.

Depending on where you live, there may be a regional carrier offering additional prepaid smartphones. In my area, for example, we have Cricket Wireless. These options are worth looking at before buying, but check customer reviews of the service.

Another option worth considering is the purchase of a used or new off-contract phone through a third party. Though this is often the most expensive way to obtain a phone, you can use that phone on any network supported by the phone’s cellular radio without signing up for a contract. You might even be able to use it on a daily or per-minute basis. Call the carriers you’re considering to make sure the phone you want to use is compatible with their network and pre-paid plans.

Oh, and the Kindle Fire is originally a US-only device – so if you’re outside of the States, this may be your best chance to get one. Let’s get started, shall we?

Introduction

The Kindle Fire is a 7-inch multi-touch tablet. It has a dual-core processor, a resolution of 1024×600 pixels, and 8GB of internal memory. It runs a custom build of the Android operating system – so heavily customized, you won’t feel it’s Android most of the time (more on that later). At $200, the Kindle Fire costs less than half of an iPad 2.

As noted above, Amazon has opted to make the Kindle Fire available only within the US. This means that if you’re outside of the US, many parts of the Kindle experience will not be accessible for you (for example, the App Store and movies). I tested the device in Israel, and this review reflects that user experience. There are ways to circumvent Amazon’s regional protections, but they tend to be convoluted, and since I wanted to keep the device in a pristine state for a lucky reader, I did not try them. So, this review is mainly about the hardware, and what you could expect from the Kindle as a hardware platform.

Initial Impressions

The Kindle Fire arrives in a sturdy no-frills box. In the spirit of the times, Amazon clearly made an effort to use as little packaging material as possible. If you’ve ever bought a “regular” Kindle, the Fire’s packaging should be familiar. Within the cardboard box you’ll find a molded “holder” for the Kindle. Under the Kindle you’ll find a power adaptor, and that’s about it:

Design

Above you can see the Kindle Fire sitting on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. While the Fire has a smaller screen, it is significantly thicker than the Galaxy Tab:

This is a side-by-side view of the Kindle Fire and Galaxy Tab. The Tab is tapered so it feels even thinner along the edges, but even when you compare the base thickness, the Kindle is noticeably thicker.

For another size comparison, here’s the Kindle Fire next to a Kindle 3:

This is much more similar – in fact, the Kindle Fire is almost exactly the same size as the Kindle 3, only much thicker. Unlike the Kindle 3, the top of the Kindle Fire is completely unadorned – not even an Amazon logo in sight. No buttons, either. It’s just a bezel with a screen. You can find the Kindle logo embossed on the heavily rubberized back of the device:

The rubberized back, combined with the device’s compact width, make it easy to hold. But at 413 grams (14.6 ounces), the Kindle Fire is not a lightweight device, especially not when held with just one hand. So while size isn’t an issue when trying to grip it with just one hand, for prolonged use you will probably find yourself using both hands to hold the device, or propping it up against something.

Controls are bunched up at the bottom of the device, much like on “regular” Kindles:

There’s a headphone jack on the left, a Micro USB port, and a power button. Let’s compare that with the control layout on a Kindle 3:

Above is the Kindle 3, and below is the Kindle Fire. As you can see, Amazon has done away with the volume button on the Kindle Fire: It’s not located anywhere else – it’s just gone. Another significant change: The power button isn’t activated by sliding, but by a simple push. Both of these are actually big steps backwards for the Kindle. Changing the volume requires fiddling with the touch screen, and I’ve turned the screen off by accident many times just by holding the device. I hope Amazon improves the control layout on future revisions of the Fire, and makes it more similar to the Kindle’s proven layout.

The Kindle Fire also includes two speakers:

As you can see above, the speakers are lined up on the device’s “top” side – i.e, opposite of the controls. This is a very strange place for the speakers, given the fact that videos must be watched in landscape mode. When you turn the device over to watch a video, both speakers are on the same side. It’s also very easy to muffle the sound accidentally when holding the device. A much better position for the speakers would have been on the wide side of the device, for actual stereo when watching videos.

Using The Kindle Fire

This is what the Kindle’s main interface looks like in landscape orientation. At the very top is a heavily modified Android status bar. Directly underneath is the list of content types the device can display, and under that is a display of your recently viewed items. You can swipe between them in a CoverFlow-like display:

Under the recently used items you will find wooden “shelves” containing your favorite apps, books, and other content:

To place something on the shelf, simply grab it from the “recently viewed” display and drag it onto the shelf. Couldn’t be simpler, really. Now let’s look at the video store:

The Kindle Fire comes with a 1-month free Amazon Prime membership, which entitles you to view lots of content for free (if you’re in the US). If you’re outside of the States, you’ll have to make do with trailers:

My screenshot tool won’t show the video, but you can see the control interface. When you don’t touch the screen, the interface disappears, leaving nothing but the video you’re watching. The top-left button lets you rewind ten seconds back; on the top-right you can see the volume slider, and at the bottom is a scrubber. Very simple, really.

Now let’s look at reading a book with the Kindle Fire:

Amazon WhisperSync works pretty well, and the Kindle Fire usually syncs to the last page I’ve read in the book. The reading app interface looks like this:

This is in landscape mode. The app is virtually identical to the Kindle Android app, except that controls are laid across the bottom bar because the Kindle Fire doesn’t have a Menu hardware button. Tapping the screen’s right side flips to the next page, tapping its left side flips to the previous page. This is nice in theory, but it’s very easy to tap the screen edges by mistake when holding the device. Tapping the middle of the screen pops up the control interface you can see in the screenshot above. When you’re just reading, the app looks like this:

You can pick one of three different background colors and several fonts, and also change the font size. Pretty much what you would expect from a Kindle Android app, really.

Next, let’s look at reading a magazine on the Kindle Fire:

This is the January 2012 issue of Popular Science (you can buy magazines internationally in the Kindle Store). There’s a strip along the bottom for quickly scrubbing through the magazine. A spread looks like this:

This particular magazine is a perfect copy of its paper counterpart. If you were expecting crazy interactivity, embedded videos and other cool stuff, you won’t find it here. To be able to read anything, you’ll need to pinch to zoom and then pan around with your finger. The maximum zoom level isn’t very high, either. So while magazines can display well on the Kindle Fire, the small screen size makes them difficult to read.

Some magazines are offered in a “Kindle native” format, which looks more like an eBook than a magazine. Take Fantasy & Science Fiction for example:

As you can see, this is much like reading a Kindle book. This format works very well for text-heavy magazines, and is perfectly readable.

The Silk Browser

One of the Kindle’s main selling points is Amazon Silk, a “revolutionary cloud-accelerated” browser (Amazon’s words, not mine). The Silk browser uses Amazon’s cloud to make browsing faster. Amazon says: With each page request, Silk dynamically determines a division of labor between the mobile hardware and Amazon EC2 (i.e. which browser sub-components run where) that takes into consideration factors like network conditions, page complexity and the location of any cached content.

That sounds slick, and should translate to blazing-fast browsing times. Unfortunately, in regular use, I would be hard pressed to say that Silk made any noticeable difference. Gizmodo took around 15 seconds to fully render, and MakeUseOf took around 20-25 seconds. The page was usable before it completed rendering, but it didn’t feel blazing fast.

On a positive note, page rendering was spot-on perfect:

Flash content works silky-smooth, and the whole thing feels very solid. Pinch-to-zoom is highly responsive, too. All in all, browsing with the Kindle Fire is a lovely experience.

Living With the Kindle Fire

In my day-to-day life, I usually spend quality time with my Kindle in bed, right before I go to sleep. With a regular Kindle, this means I have my reading lamp on, and I read it like a book. When using the Fire, I didn’t need a reading lamp, which was nice. The downside was that after a couple of hours reading in the dark, my eyes hurt. This happened even when I used a black background.

Another annoyance was software-related. As I mentioned, there are no hardware buttons for controlling the sound volume. You can turn the volume down using the top control bar, which looks like this:

However, even with the volume muted, the Kindle sounded an audible alert when battery dropped below 15%. This was late at night, with my significant other lying in bed next to me, trying to sleep. Pretty irritating.

Due to the Kindle’s heft, I had to adapt a new reading posture. I couldn’t really lie on my back and hold the Kindle over my head; I also couldn’t hold it vertically because I kept turning it off by mistake. Eventually I was able to read by moving to landscape mode and gripping the Kindle with both hands.

Should You Buy It?

If you’re in the US, my answer would be an unequivocal YES. For $200, the Kindle Fire is a lot of tablet. The UI is very responsive, and with Amazon’s tempting content options (Kindle lending library, videos, etc.), the Kindle Fire would probably be a joy to use. I would not, however, buy it instead of an e-ink Kindle. For just reading books, the regular Kindle still wins.

If you’re outside of the US, the answer becomes more complicated. On its own, with its default Amazon firmware, the Kindle Fire is not such a great choice. The Amazon App Market doesn’t work outside the US, which means you won’t be able to install any apps (that’s why I didn’t review that part). You also won’t be able to watch videos. However, if you are interested in the Kindle strictly as a hardware platform, it is a lovely device. Alternative Android distribution CyanogenMod is available for the Kindle Fire, which means you can reflash your Kindle Fire, utterly void any sort of warranty, and have fun with a slick 7” tablet. Whether or not you choose to go down that path is up to you, of course.

We’re giving this Kindle Fire review unit away to one very lucky MakeUseOf reader. Here’s how to join the giveaway.

How do I win the Kindle Fire?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from our Facebook page.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

This giveaway begins now and ends January 31st. The winner will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Interested in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the form at the of this page.

If you’re shopping for certain items, you may need to go elsewhere for the best selection and prices. That causes another problem, however. How can you trust smaller online businesses that you’ve never heard of?

Google It

Search is one of the best ways to arm yourself against potential scam websites. There are places set up for people to post if they feel they were ripped off, or given generally poor customer service. If you Google the name of the business, followed by the word “scam”, you’ll often find the complaints – if any – against it.

Please keep in mind that a single nasty report about a website may not be representative of a business, but when a illegitimate site appears, it rarely takes advantage of one person and then fades away forever. There will likely be many complaints from many sources. So keep things in perspective.

One issue with doing this, however, is time. If a site is new, there may not have been time for complaints to surface. That’s why you should use at least one other means of checking for a legitimate online business.

Use Retailer Search

Besides looking for scam reports, you can also use Google to check for general reviews through Google Shopping. A large number of retailers are found on this service, and users can rate their experiences. In addition, Google lists reviews from some major review sites.

Strangely, Google doesn’t seem to make any effort to organize these reviews, so you’ll usually have to find them by searching for the store’s name or by searching for an item the store sells, and then finding the merchant on the price comparison page.

If you don’t want to do that, or you can’t find the merchant, try BizRate.com. This site is another online shopping search website, and it does offer you the chance to browse and search retailers to find what others thought of them. If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for you might also try Reseller Ratings, which unlike Google Shopping or BizRate, exists only to rate online retailers.

You can also try older organizations, like the BBB, or local and national consumer affairs websites. Sometimes they have useful data, but usually you can find information about a retailer far quicker from BizRate or ResellerRatings.

Install Web Of Trust

Web of Trust is one of the most useful extensions for any browser, and it is available for all the most popular options. It catalogs user experience data to develop a profile for a site, which is then shared with all WOT users, giving every user access to the experience of all users.

After you install the extension, you will be able to see the rating of a website in Google search and when directly visiting the site directly.The extension has a specific “Vendor Reliability” section, and also ratings for privacy. If anyone else in the extensive WOT network has had a problem, they’ll downrank the site, and that will show up in your browser.

Better still, you can open the scorecard for specific sites which, in turn, will give you specific details about how well the site ranks and provide you with any reviews that have been written about the site. All of this information helps you determine not just how reliable the business is, but also how long it’s been around. If it is a new site, it won’t have many WOT entries, which will show up in the extension and in the site’s scorecard.

Conclusion

If you use the tactics above, you should have no trouble verifying a legitimate online business. The only sites you may need to be wary of are those that are new, since few people will have used them. If a site is new, ask yourself what you’re really saving by using it. $5? $20? $100? And is that saving worth more than the risk?

With his calm and collected British wit; Ashens is a highly successful YouTuber enjoying more than 150,000 subscribers to his channel. Representing the other side of the pond is Lazy Game Reviews, and whilst the subscriber count isn’t in the same league the videos certainly are.

What’s more, both producers release a new video every week. Prepare to learn and laugh in equal doses!

Macintosh 128k Computer (LazyGameReviews)

With the passing of Steve Jobs a few weeks ago, it seems fitting to kick off this article with an Apple review. Steve himself worked on this model, and it was in fact his decision to ship the machine without a fan to ensure quieter operation as well as better marketability (though unfortunately there were overheating problems down the line).

In this short but informative review, LGR leads us through the pros and cons of the system and demonstrates the ease of use, revolutionary GUI and mouse input. The machine sold fairly well initially, though a lack of raw processing power saw those numbers take a sharp drop not long after release.

The Vectrex (Ashens)

The year is 1982 and the obscure console is the Vectrex, a 1.5MHz games console with an in-built vector screen capable of displaying beautiful, smooth wireframe graphics. The only problem with this is that the Vectrex was rumoured to cause permanent retina damage even at medium brightness – a minor flaw, I think you’ll agree.

As many arcade games of the time shared vector technology, the Vectrex enjoyed a number of arcade ports, though the in-built Asteroids rip-off MineStorm is impossible to beat as the game crashes on level 13. Oh well, at least you can enjoy it from afar without affecting your vision!

IBM PCjr (LazyGameReviews)

When IBM decided to finally take their first strides into the home computer market (note that previous IBM computers were considered too expensive for the everyman) they royally messed up with the PCjr.

If you’re looking for a reason why – here’s 3 of them: the IBM PCjr was not 100% compatible with IBM’s own PC standard at the time and thus couldn’t run all that much software, it shipped with a rubber chiclet keyboard which was smaller than the standard IBM PC offering and was not suited to long bouts of typing and it cost way too much (twice as much as a Commodore 64 at the time).

Game.com Handheld (Ashens)

Back in 1997 Tiger Electronics decided that “Game.com” was a great name for a new handheld, though the product was pronounced “Gamecom” in marketing material. The “.com” aspect tied in to the unit’s internet capabilities, which required an external modem and the Internet cartridge (as well as manually configuring an ISP, with misprinted instructions on how to do so in the manual).

There’s probably a good reason you’ve never heard of this (and if you have you probably know what’s coming) and that’s because it was a bloody awful Game Boy competitor in a market full of other bloody awful Game Boy competitors. Early touchscreen technology and broken online features made this one to miss, check out the Ashens review for the evidence.

Top 17 Worst PC Games Ever (LazyGameReviews)

A highly entertaining and brief look at LGR’s own worst games list. Unlike the usual lists of terrible games that feature the likes of Daikatana and the recently released Duke Nukem Forever, this list is populated with little-known older PC gems.

This means you might not have encountered many of these horrors, and trust me it’s worth seeing through to the end.

Game King (Ashens)

One of Stuart Ashen’s main passions (judging by the many, many videos in his YouTube channel) is terrible cheap tat. This includes rip-off PSPs and DS handhelds, but also this particular video reviewing the Hong Kong original Game King.

Ok, so this isn’t strictly retro (2003) but it’s certainly obscure and many of the games produced are indeed rip-offs of retro classics (complete with stolen music, huzzah). Those of you intrigued by the Game King will enjoy the additional video Ashens produced showcasing some of the games that somehow saw release (below).

Conclusion

If you’ve enjoyed these videos then you will probably benefit from subscribing to both Ashens and Lazy Game Reviews on YouTube for regular fixes of geeky humor. If you’ve enjoyed some of the horrors in this article don’t forget to check out our video game vaporware article. We’ve also got some very funny Star Wars reviews and a short round-up of awful films!

Did you enjoy these videos? Have you seen the uploaders’ efforts before? Any other funny reviews we all must see? Share and comment below!

Users can sort apps by a number of parameters including the highest rated, the most popular, staff favorites and whether or not the applications are free. Each application offers a quick little breakdown to let parents know what it offers for children. This gives parents a quick overview of whether or not an application is something they think their kids could benefit from or not.

They also offer a quick section called “Cool” which lists the positives of an app and “Drool” which quickly goes over the main negatives in the application.

With the countless amount of applications available on iTunes and the Android Market, a website like this is an incredible way for parents to find the right things to entertain their children.

Source: TechCrunch