Amazon Kindle Fire...no longer a rumor.

The wait is over! Amazon has entered the tablet market and they've done it with style. The Kindle Fire (I'll be calling it Fire from here on out) is a 7" tablet with respectable hardware specs although one significant missing spec is a camera. Amazon has streamlined the UI to be more consistent which is a frequent complaint about Android.

The nitty gritty is where this device gets really fun. Amazon has introduced a "split browser" that harnesses the strength and speed of Amazon's cloud computing (far too complicated to explain) to help render mobile web pages faster. This means that you're probably going to find pages loading faster on your tablet than your desktop or laptop. This is really good news and perhaps the single biggest advantage that Amazon is bringing to the user experience. This may be the reason that Fire is the proverbial "iPad killer" (although I think it just makes Apple work harder...which is good).

Some of the other awesome that was brought down from the Amazon gods is the improved and easy access to all of your content, from music to movies and books it's all simplified and unified in the Fire. Access to the Amazon Apps Market brings the flexibility, games, usability, and ease to your tablet and places you well ahead of Nook with access to a significantly larger library of apps. This is not a low grade tablet. This is a practical tablet with access to the fastest growing content library on the planet. This is something you need to get your gadget loving uncle, brother, sister, wife, husband. It's not as fancy as the iPad but what it lacks in fancy it more than makes up for in content, price, and simplicity. All of these can be found in the Gadgets section of my store so please go there to pre-order yours today.

UPDATE: There's a great video at Gizmodo showing the Fire in action.

BONUS:
To make today all the more exciting Amazon refreshed the entire Kindle eReader lineup with even better prices. Here's the breakdown:

Kindle: Newest version of the kindle without a keypad but still using buttons and smaller than the originals. $79 wifi only (ads) $109 (no ads).

Kindle Touch: Finally a touch screen. Doing away with the keypad and bringing you two choices. Wifi only $99(ads); wifi & 3G $149(ads). This is a big deal. Touch screens will make things easier, smaller, and ultimately more book-like.