The Kindle "Fire" is released

Not two, not three, but four new Kindle models from Amazon today!

And such lovely prices! From a non-touchscreen model at only $79, to a full seven-inch color model ("Fire") at only $200! That's aggressive business, folks!

... Lame, though: the UK price for the basic model is £89, that's $140! Sixty dollars more than the US price. Oh my gawd. (That must be an ad-free version at least.)
Also, they don't even sell the Touch models in UK yet. I wonder why, since it's the same content, unlike the Fire, which also gets video etc.

The small one is the only one on show on Amazon UK... and yes, like suspected, they won't even ship one of the others from America. Heck and Durnation. I wonder how long it'll take before The World can get a color Kindle?
I could have one shipped on a via, but I'll bet anything it's useless over here, at least as far as buying Amazon content goes. Once the UK Amazon ebook store opened in 2010, I was no longer able to buy ebooks on the US store.
I wonder if, like Barnes And Noble, they will check your position not only buy your account info (credit card), but also by IP? So even US customers can't buy if they are outside the US?

I emailed Kindle support, and they answered:
"Kindle Fire is designed presently for US and will have all the features working in US and for the residents of US. The Kindle Fire if out of US will work like any other normal Kindle."

Since the "littlest Kindle" (smaller than Kindle 3) has no touch-screen nor any keyboard, I  guess things like Search are out. [Update: it has an on-screen keyboard which can be used with the five-way controller. Better than nothing. Also they still sell models with keyboards for a higher price.]
As as one might guess, the 80-bucks price only goes for the "special offers" model, meaning it shows ads on the screen saver. I guess if I were pressed, I could live with the ads (there are none in the books themselves I'm sure), and I never liked the Kindle keyboard and quite rarely use it, so...
I must say the small size (the K3 was already small) and the light weight, 170 grams, appeal to me, it's a real pocket model.

The Kindle Touch looks great, but sadly it only uses the "graystoke" (my derogatory term) screen used in earlier models, the screen which I dislike due to the dull gray background. I had really hoped (but not very optimistically) for some kind of non-backlit display which managed a better contrast range.

The Kindle Fire is exactly as I'd imagined it: a low-end, but still pretty capable Android 7-inch tablet, with the Android interface hidden away behind a slick Amazon media store interface, and capable of running Android apps, but only those from the Amazon app store. (Unless it gets hacked, which it probably will.) From a tablet viewpoint, I don't see any great reason to get this, apart from the very good price, but from a Kindle viewpoint, it's a very interesting step up.

As I'd predicted, the Kindle Fire is wifi only, no 3G. It stands to reason they can't deliver video for free to millions of devices over the cell phone net! They have to pay the cell phone providers per megabyte, and even just for books it's not a trivial expense.

By the way, as one might also have predicted, Amazon clearly wants this to be seen as a "ereader plus" rather than an iPad competitor. And that's surely wise, given the restrictions of the price area they want to be in. And also given that so far iPad competitors are all dead on arrival pretty much.

The UK site states that the Kindle 3 is/was the product they sell which has the most five-star reviews. Considering the enormous number of products sold on Amazon, one must admit that's quite a statement!