The new Kindle Paperwhite and Giveaway Winner

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway for The Casual Vacancy!  The contest has ended and the winner is:  Lacey @laceyblossom  Congrats!  And I hope you enjoy the book!

Friday I received my new Kindle (after much anticipation!).  I spent most of Friday evening playing around with it and organizing my library and I pretty much love it!  My first Kindle - the Kindle Touch which I bought only eight months ago had to be retired when I saw the new Paperwhite.  This is what I didn't like about the Touch:

• Response time of the screen (when you are used to capacitative touch, and especially the extremely responsive iPhone screen, the Kindle Touch is pretty slow.


• The interface - reading is a breeze, but navigating my books is not, because creating collections is a major pain if you have a lot of books and you didn't get them all from Amazon.


• How many times have I had to put my Touch sadly away when it became dark out and I could no longer read.  (Never did buy the book light I was always planning to get)

I named my Paperwhite "Idris"

So I was so thrilled when they announced the Paperwhite (+ miffed I was "forced" to get another Kindle) and after spending a day and a half with it, it's pretty much my new love.  The glow screen is great - even if I'm walking around the house reading and not all the lights are on, I don't have to stop reading in the dark patches.  The touch screen is better - still slow, but better.  The interface looks and flows nicer - though they have made it a little less easier to turn off your wifi access.   I like that they took off the home button and made the navigation buttons on the top (instead of top and bottom on the Touch when you are reading).  The new reading progress feature was the Thing I Didn't Know I Wanted because how awesome is it to have a guesstimate for how much longer it will take to finish a book?  And sometimes with a physical book I flip forward a few pages to see if I will finish the chapter soon, and with the new feature, the Paperwhite can tell me by giving me the time to the next chapter.

Creating collections is still a pain, but a little better with a marginally more responsive touch screen.  I also got the special case Amazon made for the Paperwhite - the one that puts it to sleep when it's closed and wakes it when it's open, and it makes the Paperwhite look and feel more like reading a physical book.  Perhaps the only thing I kind of miss is having speakers and an earphone jack, but I never listened to anything on my Kindle Touch anyways.  It's just sad to lose features. Overall though I am very happy with my purchase and I really hope this Kindle will be my one and only for years and years.