Kindle Fire HD 7" 3rd Gen 16GB

When I bought my kindle, looking for hidden gotchas was simply not part of my calculation. I expected I was buying a device...if there was a popup during the checkout process that said this product is ad support, I absolutely would not have bought it.

Interesting. I bought mine from Amazon.com and it was quite clear that I had a choice of ad-supported or, for a higher price, ad-free. All of this info was on the product page, and it never felt like anything was hidden.

I think this page is pretty typical: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CU0NSCU/ref=kin_comp_dk_...

There's a clear choice of "With Special Offers" and "Without Special Offers" with a link to a popup that explains what this means.

If you bough yours from a different site or if the Amazon page did not indicate these options then I can understand feeling cheated.

I also had planned on rooting my device (at least to the extent that I could replace the ads with my own images) but I was never able to accomplish that. For me it ended up to be not a big deal, but I knew from the description of the product I was buying an ad-supported device in the first place.

Ultimately I think we may be of different minds about what we consider acceptable consumer/merchant relationship.

Well, since I agreed to the Kindle deal I'm OK with it. Amazon.com was quite upfront about what they were selling. I would not be OK if there was nothing to indicate I would be seeing ads.

This is something that annoys me with Tivo. I don't recall that they were as clear when I ordered the service that in addition to an annual fee I would also have to look at stupid banner ads on assorted screens. Also, as far as I know, there is no way to opt out of this (such as by paying more, as with the Kindle).

Sure they do

"All Kindle Fire tablets are powered by the latest version of Fire OS—Fire OS 3.0 "Mojito", which starts with Android ..."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CU0NSCU/