| Author | |
MelissaClaire
Forum Pro
Joined: May 16 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 475
|
| Posted: Dec 16 2013 at 12:30pm | IP Logged
|
 |
|
My dad gives our family money each year to spend as we choose for Christmas. I usually buy individual gifts for the kids and then a larger "family" gift. This year we're thinking about a tablet type gift, but I don't know where to begin in looking.
How do you decide between an ipad or a kindle fire or that table microsoft has? We currently have an itouch. If we got an ipad could it be synched to the same account to get the apps we've already purchased on there? Does the kindle have apps like stack the states and others like that?
And then there's different sizes--how do you know how much memory you need?
Thanks so much for helping someone very dense about all this technology!
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
JodieLyn
Forum Moderator
Joined: Sept 06 2006
Location: Oregon
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 12234
|
| Posted: Dec 16 2013 at 1:10pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Kindle does have apps including stack the states.. we chose kindle fires for our older kids because first and foremost (and probably the only reason) we want to be able to share books between all the kindles and kindle apps on computers.
They can also watch shows from netflix and the like on their kindle fires.. which is nice when the big kids want to watch big kid shows and the little guys want to watch little kid shows and it's much better to have something everyone can watch on the big tv and let the older kids use headphones and watch on their own kindle fire so that we don't have to worry about the littles accidently watching shows that are too old for them.
__________________
Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Maureen
Forum Rookie
Joined: Feb 15 2005
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 83
|
| Posted: Dec 16 2013 at 10:54pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Kim Komando has a great website on "all things digital." Here is a handy comparison table for tablets. She also has an article here.
Good luck on your quest!
__________________
Maureen, mom to 8 treasures
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
SallyT
Forum All-Star
Joined: Aug 08 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2489
|
| Posted: Dec 17 2013 at 6:44am | IP Logged
|
|
|
We have two Kindle Fires, too -- because of the book-sharing thing, and the availability of so many excellent free Kindle books. We also already had a large Audible library, and those are automatically available on the Kindle Fires, in our cloud. That was a huge plus for us.
Not that Minecraft does not get played a lot on these Kindles, mind you . . . but we do have a good many educational apps as well. Storage is lower, I think, on a Kindle -- we tend to store a lot of apps in our cloud to make room for what we want on the devices.
I would love an iPad for myself. But when our decision was between one family iPad or two less expensive devices for the two children who don't have laptops, we went with the Kindle Fires for the sake of peace. I haven't regretted that at all.
Sally
__________________
Castle in the Sea
Abandon Hopefully
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
MelissaClaire
Forum Pro
Joined: May 16 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 475
|
| Posted: Dec 17 2013 at 6:47am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Thank you!
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
CrunchyMom
Forum Moderator
Joined: Sept 03 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 6385
|
| Posted: Dec 17 2013 at 6:57am | IP Logged
|
|
|
I'm confused. I have a kindle app on my iPad and can have my books from Amazon sent to it or my son's basic kindle or both. Is there another kind of sharing I'm missing?
__________________
Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
SallyT
Forum All-Star
Joined: Aug 08 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2489
|
| Posted: Dec 17 2013 at 8:12am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Probably not, actually. One thing an actual Kindle device does enable, however, is borrowing from the Kindle lending library. I have found this to be of more limited utility, however, than I had envisioned -- a lot of things I might want aren't available via that library. Still, the kids have used it some.
I also like the level of parental control built into a Kindle, though I don't know how iPads compare in that regard. Bottom line for us, really, was price -- that we could get two Kindles for the same price, or less, than we could get one iPad. While it might have been better for my children's characters to have to share, wait, be patient, etc, it's been better for my sanity level not to have to police all the sharing, waiting, and being patient. It's also been far better for my sanity level not to have them on my computer, which I use for work, often while they're doing schoolwork. We do a lot of working-alongside these days, and it's nice that everyone can access his/her Duolingo app, for example, without having to wait in line for the computer on which I am immersed in writing a short story at the same time.
Memory size is one thing I did not take fully into account, and I wish our 2nd generation Kindle Fires had more . . . though the limits have made the kids make decisions about what to keep and what to jettison. I personally would have no problem sacrificing an entire SIMS world in favor of Mathemagica, but this is hand-wringing, gut-wrenching stuff for some younger persons of my close acquaintance. Life is like that, I generally heartlessly say . . .
Sally
__________________
Castle in the Sea
Abandon Hopefully
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
monica4patience
Forum Rookie
Joined: Nov 08 2012
Location: Michigan
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 60
|
| Posted: Dec 17 2013 at 1:58pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
We have an iPad and I love it. Have found lots of apps for homeschool. Loaded Kindle for iPad and have access to all those that I've loaded to my iPod. Also have Adobe so I can download eBooks in Pdf format. I like to browse through those when I'm waiting during basketball practice.
__________________
~Monica (58)
DH(62), married 34 yrs.
DD23, DS21, DS13 (all adoptees)
New to homeschooling 11/12.
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Forum Locked) 
4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Ipads, kindles, tablets, oh my!
