• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, December 12, 2011

Several bugs and design flaws are threatening to derail the Kindle Fire, and, with it, Amazon’s chances of becoming the first real threat to Apple’s tablet monopoly.

“The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success with many of its early users,” writes The New York Times. “The most disgruntled are packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer.”

What’s wrong with the Fire? For starters, NYT notes: “There is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky.”

Worse still, Reuters is reporting that the Fire makes it way too easy for children and crooks to order products from Amazon.com. “What happens is that when you order a Kindle Fire … it comes with your Amazon account information preloaded, along with ‘1-Click’ ordering,” Reuters writes. “That means anyone who is holding that device can place an order, whether it's their account or not.”

“Despite the gloomy tone of current Fire coverage, I remain an optimist about Amazon's entry into the market for full-blown tablets,” writes CNet’s Harry McCracken. 

What’s the source of McCracken’s optimism? His experience with the original Kindle e-reader. “None of the original Kindle's multiple flaws ruined Amazon's e-reader initiative,” he writes. “In part, that was because it got the service aspect of the proposition--digital books, downloadable in seconds--so right. But it was also because Amazon worked as hard after it announced the Kindle as it did beforehand. It quickly fixed the bugs and released new e-readers that were much better than the first model.

Indeed, as The Verge notes, Amazon has promised The Times tht it will be releasing a software update for the Kindle Fire "in less than two weeks."