[MBCook]

Did you own a previous Kindle before your Paperwhite?

I got a chance to try one earlier this month, and compare it to my 3rd gen Kindle Keyboard. The backlight was nice, but I had a few problems with it.

The lack of physical buttons for page changing and the menus drove me nuts. If I'm holding a Paperwhite in my left hand, then to change to a new page I have to move my thumb out far enough, tap, and them bring my thumb "back in" so it doesn't cover the page. I found this to be rather annoying, having the buttons on both sides was so much easier.

The other problem I had was font rendering. The Paperwhite was supposed to have a sharper screen than my 3G, but I couldn't notice a difference in text. I'm guessing it's only obvious on pictures. But I did notice that fonts looked noticeably worse. There were little blobs where it looked like things weren't being kerned correctly. I could compare it directly to the same page on my old Kindle and see the difference. I found it quite distracting.

Other than that they made some small changes I didn't like. The fact that you just have to 'know' where on the screen to touch for certain things was a little odd. I kept accidentally turning the page when I wanted to bring up the menu. I really liked that it could estimate I'd be done with the chapter I was reading in 15 minutes, but I missed having the progress bar available.

I could probably survive the lack of physical buttons, but the font rendering issues really annoyed me. I'll happily keep my Kindle.

[gambiting]

Few things.

To change pages with your left thumb you don't have to move it all the way to the right - you can make a little swipe motion on the left side of the screen and it will skip a page.

I used to have the Kindle Keyboard(Kindle 3) and my god, its resolution was driving me crazy, like it was never sharp. Paperwhite is a lot better in that regard. HOWEVER - fonts get really jaggy after a few page turns, and that's because the paperwhite only refreshes the entire page every 5 or so turns. You can go to settings and tell it to refresh the entire page every turn - then the fonts are always super sharp.

From my personal perspective - I would NEVER trade my paperwhite back for the Kindle 3. I don't mind the lack of physical buttons, and the backlight makes it fantastic.

[MBCook]

That's true, you could do the swipe. Either way I just missed the buttons.

> HOWEVER - fonts get really jaggy after a few page turns, and that's because the paperwhite only refreshes the entire page every 5 or so turns. You can go to settings and tell it to refresh the entire page every turn - then the fonts are always super sharp.

I know there is an option for that, but I didn't think to give it a try. Maybe that was the problem. I was just amazed that out of the box the font rendering was noticeably worse than a model that was at least 2 years older.

[to3m]

I don't know what the non-paperwhite ones are like, but the paperwhite screen quickly looks like a real mess if you have it set to refresh irregularly.

The paperwhite screen is nice, but whoever signed off on the paperwhite's touch UI exhibited some poor judgement. The onscreen keyboard is fine; the page turning is merely adequate; the book list and web browser scrolling is terrible. (The scrolling uses touch-and-drag, but the software doesn't actually scroll the screen until you release your finger, which makes it very hard to judge what's going on. Touching and dragging requires low latency and a high refresh rate, making it a very bad choice for an e-ink screen.)

A few physical inputs would make this device twice as good. Two buttons and a dpad would do it...

[MBCook]

I will say I was very impressed with the on-screen keyboard. I could just hammer the little keys as fast as I could type a word, and while the screen couldn't update fast enough it didn't lose keystrokes.

It's sad that that's impressive, but that's where embedded software is today.

[TylerE]

I have owned a Paperwhite since release day, and a Kindle 2 for several years before that. My feelings are mixed. I do REALLY miss the next/prev page buttons, and would happily shell out the money for a Paperwhite with buttons. I don't really miss the keyboard at all though. I mostly read at night so the lit screen is a bigger deal than the buttons, honestly. Couldn't ever go back. But both would be killer.