20150923_144723_HDRSo, today I went down to my favorite local brewpub for lunch and, before the arrival of and after finishing my wings, I read the first chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me on my new Paperwhite. It was a remarkable success.

Thanks to the backlighting, I was able to read perfectly well in the dim environment, something I could never have accomplished with my Touch without some kind of external lighting. Something tells me I’m going to get a lot more reading done with this device. I also liked the way I could tap at the top to bring up the menu and it would estimate how many minutes I had left in the chapter. That helps make up for no longer being able to flip a few pages ahead in a paper book to see how much was left.

screenshot_2015_09_23T11_14_59-0700Connecting to the local Wi-Fi was no hassle at all. I simply connected to the network, and it logged me in via my browser. Happily, Scotty’s uses a very simple Wi-Fi capture screen for logging in, though it might be more complicated with a more complex screen such as those used by AT&T. Will see how that works down the road.

screenshot_2015_09_23T12_14_49-0700Also experimented a little more with browsing the web and checking my email. It was interesting to note that Gmail still detects the Kindle’s web browser as being an Android browser. Every time I log into either Gmail or Inbox, I’m prompted to download the Android app for it. Which of course I can’t do on a Kindle. (At least with Gmail, I can continue on to a mobile browser version of the app; Inbox doesn’t let me do that.)

I’d have thought by now they’d surely have evolved some way of communicating to websites (or websites like Gmail could have evolved some way of noticing) that they were a Kindle, not a tablet that could install Android apps. It’s annoying to get a splash screen every time I log in. That’s one of the few unpolished spots that remains in the Kindle experience. It definitely could be better.

I’m very happy with how easy it is to take screen captures. Just tap on the lower left and upper right corner simultaneously, and the screen blinks to let you know it’s taken a shot. That’s even easier than holding down the button for three seconds then tapping the screen on the Touch.

I’ll make more observations as I have them, I suppose.

2 COMMENTS

  1. The Kindle Paperwhites use a front light, not a back light, so there isn’t that much of a problem. In addition the light amount can be adjusted until it barely lights up the screen, so it doesn’t really impact your ability to go to sleep. Amazon got this right, and it works far better than a tablet.

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