Things to do with an old Kindle Fire

The Amazon Kindle Fire has moved on to its second generation and maybe you??re thinking about picking one up. The problem is, what do you do with the last one you bought? It??s not as cool looking, but that old Fire still has some heat. I??m Donald Bell, and in this episode of Top 5 we??re counting down the best uses for your old Kindle Fire. Starting things off at #5: make it a dedicated IMDB for your couch. How many times do you find yourself searching for some actor on IMDB trying to figure out what movie you saw them in where they played Kevin Bacon??s father??s doctor? Amazon owns IMDB, so their Kindle Fire app is actually pretty great. If the living room??s too crowded, how about the kitchen? At #4: turn it into a digital cookbook. Amazon has great apps from Allrecipes, Urbanspoon, and Jamie Oliver. If you??re a terrible cook, maybe this will help inspire you. And if you spill some wine on your old tablet, no big deal. At #3: use it as your own personal bedroom TV. Actually, I kinda assume most of you are already doing this. When your significant other wants to watch something horrible on the main TV, break this thing out and watch some Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Video with your headphones on. She gets Jersey Shore, you get Scarface, and your kids take a moment to put child protective services on speed dial. Speaking of kids, why not hand this thing down to your child? If you have more than one kid, just have them share or pick the one you love the most. There??s tons of great kid-friendly entertainment on here and even, dare I say it, some books. Amazon also offers some useful parental controls now for locking out the internet, so you can rest a little easier. And finally, my favorite thing to do with an old Kindle Fire. At #1, turn it into a jukebox. Rig this thing up to the aux input on your stereo and you have the coolest cloud-connected music system on the block. Amazon??s Cloud Player gives you 5GBs to upload your favorite songs, plus you have the storage that??s built into the tablet. You also have great streaming options like Pandora and Spotify. So there you go, those are the top 5 ways to keep your old Kindle Fire burning. For more Top 5s like this, check out Top5.cnet.com, and for all the latest tablet reviews, check out CNET.com/tablets. I??m Donald Bell, thanks for watching.