Online Retailer, Kindle Fire 2 | featured news

Amazon says buyers of its new Kindle Fire HD tablet will get the option to turn off the advertisements that appear on its standby screen for $15. The online retailer showed off the tablet last week, and said there would be no option to turn off the ads. That was a departure from Amazon's previous policies. It has shipped Kindle e-readers with "Special Offers" ads on the standby screen, but users could pay to have them turned off.

Amazon.com Inc. is expected to unveil a new Kindle Fire on Thursday as it seeks to take a bigger bite of the tablet computer market and boost sales of digital goods like e-books and movies.

Amazon.com quenched the Kindle Fire on Thursday, saying its first tablet computer is now "sold out." The Internet retailer has a major press conference scheduled for next Thursday in Santa Monica, California. It's widely expected to reveal a new model of the Fire there, so the announcement that the first model is "sold out" suggests that Amazon halted production a while ago to retool for a new model.