[hakcermani]

For me the swipe / touch has been worthwhile ! The page turn buttons on the regular used to drive me nuts. Others might be used to it. The Paperwhite is a bit smaller, but has no audio, so the old Kindle is still useful to listen to audio books - though the Audible app on iphone/android is what i use nowadays for audio books. Oh and the backlight - very useful. (as @lambdaelite) pointed out.

[listic]

I, on the other hand, love the page turn buttons on my Kindle 5 and reluctant to upgrade for exactly the lack of this feature. I'm afraid I will keep stubbornly refusing to get used to swiping for turning pages. Why couldn't Amazon provide both options (swiping and clicking) for page turning, at least on some of their newer devices?

[to3m]

I've got a version 1 Kindle Paperwhite, and you can tap the screen to turn a page. That's what I do.

Random ramble time... (because this aspect of the Kindle Paperwhite annoys me every time I think about it)

The tapping bit is fine, so reading books is no problem, but to be honest, in general, the touch UI is no more than resoundingly adequate. The tapping is fine, and the swiping works, but it doesn't feel as nice as it does on iOS. For me, swiping works best when the UI updates pretty much instantly as your finger moves (e.g., iOS, Android). The Kindle, on the other hand, doesn't do anything until your swipe is finished and the action has been registered. Feels like somebody who's never used an iPad read was given a one-sentence summary of what swiping was, and then wrote some code to do what they imagined. (Maybe they were worried about the screen going all blurry? Well, that's fair enough. But technical reasons won't make the touch UI suddenly brilliant.)

This makes the experimental web browser rather hard to use - a shame, as this could have been such a great feature! - and the book list a bit annoying.

But, still, compared to the non-Paperwhite equivalent, it has a backlight, and it's a bit smaller. And there's never anything wrong with a few more pixels. So overall, I don't mind, and the Kindle Paperwhite gets a thumbs up. It would still have been improved by some more UX work and/or a couple of physical inputs. I think this is what annoys me about it so much - the device is good, but it could have been better, and it's really obvious.

Ramble over. Phew! Sorry about that.

[swozey]

The thing I loved about my Kindle 1 with buttons on both sides, I could lay on my back/side in bed and go back/forth with one hand. If I mess up and go too far or need to navigate menus, on my PW I have to get both hands involved.

[wlesieutre]

Agreed on that. I have a nook and love the buttons. Forward and backward on both sides so I can turn pages one-handed with either hand while I'm holding it. Comes in handy if you have a cat that likes to plop down on your arm while you read.

One of the buttons is starting to stick, so I'm looking at upgrade paths. The Nook Glowlight dropped its page turning buttons, but if I buy anything other than a Nook, everything I've purchased on it evaporates. Thanks, DRM!