I think I am going ot get one.  I will still use my basic Kindle for reading. The Fire would be for my daughter and I to share. I would like it for magazines and video.  My daughter would probably want some games on it.   

Some of these questions are probably dumb but I am not a tech person so bare with me.

So my Kindle 3G/WIFI picks up the signal at work (we have a wireless router) adn will download stuff here.  But my 3G/WIFI IPOD will not.  Will the Kindle Fire likely work here?  I spent most Fridays here alone just to answer the phone and most Fridays I have very little to do. It only takes so long to vacuum and dust the office.  Does it need to pick up a wireless signal to watch videos on it? I have Amazon Prime and could watch that at work on Fridays when I have nothing to do.  But if it's like my IPOD and doesn't pick up the signal then can I save free video content on it before I come to work?   If we take a roadtrip with my friend and DD want to play a game or watch a video on it in the backseat-she can still do that  right?

Is 16gb a good memory amount?  I have no clue how much space that a game or app would take up. 

You would need a connection to get streaming video, I don't think Amazon allows you to store any. I've tried moving the videos purchased from my Amazon account to somewhere else to keep them and I haven't figured out a way yet, they store in a unique file type. I googled Angry Birds for kindle and the app is 18.6 mb, the file size on all these things is negligible. 16G is a good deal of storage for a portable device but it's the operating space that's important and that part I don't know about. Like you could have a computer with 4T file storage and only 500mb of RAM and you will have problems using larger apps. Storing videos takes a lot more space than books, a half hour video depending on quality can be from 200mb to 1G, so if the streaming didn't work and you had a download source you could still watch a video or two at a time but wifi is wifi, it works on all devices universally unless there is a problem with your device so there's no reason it shouldn't work. It doesn't really make sense to me that your ipod works with one wifi source and not another. 

I did some playing with my IPOD.  I guess I had to tell it to connect at work. At home it just does it.  But I found where to tell it to find a connection.  So that problem is solved.  With my Kindle I just turn WIFI on and it downloads whatever. I don't have to go and select a connection.  But like I said I am fairly clueless about this stuff. 

I have the original Fire. I own 3 videos that I purchased from Amazon. I can download them to my Fire and watch them in the car or any place with no wifi.

Connecting to my home wifi is a cinch, also have used it at McDonald's. I can't say how it will work at your work.

Most of the games that we have can be played off line, but there are some that require internet connections. As Barb said, streaming content from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu Plus, all require a wifi connection.

I think your best value right now is the Fire HD 16 gb for $199. That is a rocking price! In a month or two, you may find certain stores selling it with a gift card incentive, as they did with the original Fire, if you want to wait for something like that. Just a thought.

I am personally strongly considering an 8 gb Nexus for my kids for Christmas, if they drop the price to $159 or lower (to compete with the updated Fire $159). That's because our only android device is the rooted Nook Color, and I would love to unroot it and let my kids use it as an epub reader instead of an android game player. The Fire does not allow access to the Google Play store.

Fire IS the only Tablet that can get the Amazon Movies!  And You Can download to play anywhere even without WiFi!  Movies take up abour 4 gigs depending on movie!  My 16 gig sd card held 4-5 90 to 2 hr movies.   Now remember this just to give you an idea LOL