Kindle Fire Is Sold Out Forever 309
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from geek.com: "Amazon has released a rather bizarre bit of news today. The Kindle Fire has completely sold out. You can no longer buy one, and the wording of the press release suggests there won't be any more manufactured. In nine months on sale Amazon claims to have secured 22 percent of tablet sales in the U.S.. With that in mind, Amazon will definitely be selling more Kindle Fires, however, the next one you'll be able to buy will probably have a '2' at the end of the name. Jeff Bezos said that the Kindle Fire is Amazon's most successful product launch so far and that there's 'an exciting roadmap ahead.' He also confirmed Amazon will continue to offer hardware, but there's no detail beyond that." Also covered on Slashcloud.
you mean until next week (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/23/us-amazon-event-idUSBRE87M0XH20120823 [reuters.com]
Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Informative)
>>>any pending orders would get upgraded to the new models automatically, which was pretty cool of them.
Unless you didn't want the new models, then it would suck. For example I wouldn't want the new 4S phone because it has a dualcore that drains the battery faster than the old 4 model. If I order the "4" then that's exactly what I want..... not Apple to upgrade me.
Another example of this is where I ordered a stick-shift Beetle and the dealer "helpfully" upgraded me to the Automated Shift because "it gets +2 more MPG". Yeah. True. But I wanted to shift the car myself.
He lost a sale that day.
Then he begged me to keep the business.
So I told him to knock $1000 off the price. His foolish behavior cost him some cash. A customer wants Exactly what they what, not a a car dealer's or Apple's switcheroo.
Re:get a real car (Score:4, Informative)
What *are* you talking about? Maybe *you* don't know how to drive a manual.
Re:get a real car (Score:2, Informative)
These days basically all torque converters have a lock-up feature -- a mechanical clutch that eliminates slip after the engine and vehicle speed get close. You're still spinning all that oil around, but no slip means negligible losses to fluid friction. As to whether a slipping torque converter with computer-controlled fuel-injection blipping to match revs with minimal power loss is more or less efficient during an upshift than a clutch (with some driver-selected portion of slip, wheelspin, and throttle adjustment), it depends on the driver, but it's a small fraction anyway. There's more efficiency difference among driving styles or among different transmission models of the same type than between manual and automatic as a whole.
But the one place automatics are, and always will be, inferior to manuals, is that they can only react to control inputs -- so I can't shift in preparation for a planned maneuver (e.g. downshift preparatory to passing) or upcoming road condition without actually beginning the manuever.
While I'm enough of a gearhead to like manipulating a good 5-speed, I can't make an argument that it's mechanically better than a modern automatic-like (torque-converter & planetary gearing) transmission, provided it has paddle and/or push-pull interface to directly select gears. (Of course, the funny bit is that automatic transmissions are increasingly changing to conventional design, with the shift yokes and clutch controlled by a computer.)