Shares of Amazon.com (AMZN) were down more than 2% Monday afternoon as investors fretted about a report in the New York Times detailing a litany of woes affecting the Kindle Fire. The newspaper likened Amazon's new tablet computer to Ford's Edsel -- one of the biggest flops in the history of corporate America.

As the Times noted, the Kindle Fire is enduring a torrent of negative reviews on the company's website, of all places. This is a huge headache for Amazon, which is counting on the Fire to fuel future growth. "Slightly more than a third of the 4,500 reviewers of the Fire on Amazon have given it mixed to negative reviews, three stars or fewer," according to the newspaper.

Analysts had high hopes for the Kindle Fire when it launched in November, forecasting sales of 5 million by year's end. One of the reasons why Wall Street was so bullish was the tablet's price -- $199 versus the $499 entry-level price for the Apple(AAPL) iPad. The problem with such a notion is that it's not a fair comparison. Remember, the iPad can do everything that a Fire can, but not vice versa.

My wife and I decided this weekend to buy an iPad. Although it is twice as expensive as the Fire, it is also twice as good. We found the Barnes & Noble (BKS) Nook to be inferior to the Fire. Like many consumers, we are not oblivious to price. Quality, though, is important. The iPad, to many minds -- ours included, is by far the best product.

After reading the Timesstory, I realized that we made the right decision. One surprising tidbit was that some people found the Kindle Fire's performance as an e-reader to be worse than the original Kindle. Amazon, of course, told the Times that fixes were in the works.

The parallels to the Edsel, a car brand that flamed out during the 1950s, are hard to avoid. Like the Kindle Fire, Ford Motor's (F) Edsel over-promised and under-delivered. The Edsel was hurt by quality problems that earned it the nickname: "Every Day Something Else Leaks."  Owners of the Kindle Fire are complaining about the device's lack of an external volume control and the poor placement of the "off" switch, according to the Times.

Ford pulled the plug on Edsel after three model years (1958, 1959 and 1960) and about 118,000 vehicles. According to Failure magazine, Ford learned from its mistakes. "Many of the new technologies developed for and charged to the Edsel’s budget were applied to future Ford models," the publication says. "For instance, the Edsel was the first car to have self-adjusting brakes; by 1962 all Fords were equipped with self-adjusting brakes."

The next few months will be critical for the Kindle Fire. Early adapters are a key constituency for tech companies because their opinions are solicited by potential customers. Amazon had better figure out a way to make its aggrieved tablet owners happy or risk having the product wind up on the scrap heap of technology history -- along with Microsoft's (MSFT) Zune, the LaserDisc and the Apple Lisa.

--Jonathan Berr expects that his 5-year-old son will not be eager to share the family iPad.