Amazon’s new Kindle Paperwhite e-reader comes with frontlit screen | Hacker News Reader

Amazon’s new Kindle Paperwhite e-reader comes with frontlit screen

arstechnica.com

84 pointstaylorbuley32 comments

As an engineer this may finally solve one of the most vexing problems I deal with, data sheets. They are all PDFs these days and they are unreadable on the old style Kindle (kinda ok on the DX) nice but a bit of overkill on the 3rd gen iPad.

The reason I want an e-ink screen device for data sheets is that it often sits on my desk for long periods on the pinout page or the 'example circuit' page. On an e-ink display it just sits there forever, on an iPad the display goes to sleep or if I keep it awake I burn through power too fast.

What's the problem with datasheets on the old style Kindles?

If I zoom them to be readable they look like crap (and its very tiring to read them) I've got an Illiad V2 which I originally used for this (167 dpi) and its "ok" but not great, and not enough real estate for the whole document. My 3rd gen iPad is quite nice but has the issues noted above. I had hoped the Plastic Logic folks would have made a dent here but alas that was not to be.

Illiad V2 looks nice.

My dream is just having an e-paper monitor next to my regular monitor to which I can just pull text over to read. I wish I could just get my hands on an e-paper screen of a decent size to hack.

The Kindle treats each page of a PDF as an image that it scales to the width/height of the screen. You can zoom in and move around, but it's not at all like reading a book.

Given the PDF format, this is really the only way you can really deal with PDFs that might have images, columns, etc. Much more inherent formatting than with just a text .mobi.

Kindles also go into screen saver mode after a while.

I feel a bit sorry for Kobo, who have announced essentially the same thing but with less fanfare: http://www.kobo.com/koboglo/

The kobo is great but I love the Kindle due to the integration with Amazon. Wirelessly getting books via whispersync is awesome.

How is that different from what Kobo does? I have a Kobo Touch (and my family have their own Kobo Touches on the same account) and I have Kobo apps on my Android phone and tablet, Windows and Chrome/Chromium browser. They all stay in sync, when I buy a book it appears on all the devices, and when I read a book on one, the others all update their bookmarks to where I stopped. Does the Kindle sync offer anything more?

Does Kobo have a similar collection of books? Allows you to purchase from Amazon? Otherwise the difference (and a huge one at that) is the collection of books available on Kindle.

The biggest news about the new Kindle lineup is the one-year 4G subscription for only $49 available for the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G.

Is there a data cap?

Yes, 250mb/month. Not exactly an incredible announcement, if you ask me.

I wonder if this actually makes it less easy on the eyes than regular e-ink.

I really like e-ink technology but the Kindle approach scares me a bit with it's reluctance to give me proper ownership over the device and content I buy.

I have bought only 3 books for my Kindle over Amazon -

I use calibre to convert all kinds of e-book-formats to mobi/azw on Fedora, then a USB-cable to transfer them over (I think WLAN works, too). 3G is never on. Calibre also has a plugin to remove DRM from Amazon-books so that the few ones I bought are actually mine.

You can also install alternative OSes like Duokan for even more control, haven't really tried that out - deinstalled an old version after a short bit of trying when the book was displayed "smudgy".

Thank you for the pointer.

Thank god for front lighting, my wife keeps me up reading every night.

Get her one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Kindle-Lighted-Leather-Paperwhi....

So these don't have side-mounted page turn buttons? Only touchscreen to turn pages? Can anyone comment on how that compares (usability wise) to the old buttons?

No side mount buttons, just touchscreen. Tap or swipe.

The hardware buttons are better in my experience.

Even after months of practice with the touchscreen, I find that one out of every 10 or so page turns I get a response different from my intention: the page turns in the wrong direction, turns two pages instead of one, triggers "open menu" command incorrectly, or does no action. I've found the swipes somewhat more accurate, net-net, than tapping, but they are a little awkward one-handed.

I've had miscues with the hardware buttons as well, but they're much less common.

The touchscreen's advantage is its on-screen keyboard. I found this a little better than the physical keyboard (which added too much size/weight) and d-pad selection. Though I only use that function once in a long while.

Yeah, I have the same problem every once in a while. --Probably not every 10 pages, more like every 30-50, but still.

But it looks like the Paperwhite Kindle now has a capacitive touchscreen (rather than using IR sensing as the Touch does), so that may help.

I guess I'll stick with my v1 Kindle. The light seems nice but not worth giving up hardware buttons.

I am excited whenever I hear of better eink displays. I am waiting for the day I can get an eink laptop so I can work outside.

This doesn't seem to be an e-ink display though. Am I wrong? I hope they aren't planning on getting rid of e-ink I much prefer it to any screen.

Yes it is e-ink, higher res and whiter background then previous versions.

Yes! Same here. I feel like I'm part of a niche group that wants an e-ink device that at least reads web content rather than having to download or email myself articles. Are there particular technological limits aside from the cheap processor/e-ink controllers that are preventing an e-ink device from having a really usable web browser?

A Pixel Qi display may fit your needs. There's a 10" DIY display available http://www.makershed.com/Pixel_Qi_display_p/mkpq01.htm although you may just want to pressure your favorite consumer electronics company to include one by default.

By the way, the earliest version of the Pixel Qi technology was used by the first OLPC XO laptop model.

Edit: Pixel Qis are not actually E Ink.

Good devices but I hope that Amazon updates their devices more often: the Kindle devices haven't the same firmware (Kindle keyboard, Kindle touch... different firmware).

Can you turn off justification on the Kindles?

Turn off... justification? o_O

I don't need to justify this with an actual response.

He means to ask if you can turn off text justification and have a ragged edge. The answer is no, at least on my Kindle Keyboard 3G running v3.3 of the Kindle Firmware.

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