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Comment by kuschku | Hacker News Reader

Why 15 years? Why should I ever have to accept things getting worse? Isn't the point of progress that things get better?

There's multiple touch zones (which aren't visible or marked), there's multiple gestures you can interact with, and it's so slow and janky enough that you never know what will happen when you touch it.

Will it go forwards? Or backwards? By one page? Or a dozen? Will it open the settings? Or change the brightness? Or just close the book? You never know.

I want to lose myself in the book, I want to forget the device even exists, not fight the device for half a minute whenever it decides to go forward by 11 pages, open the settings, change the font and brightness just because I wanted to go one page back

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I've never had this issue. And I use Koreader - which has much larger touch zones than the normal Kindle software.

Are you normally reading in a moving vehicle or something?

Reading in a moving vehicle?

Is this something people aren’t supposed to do?

Depends on each individual's propensity for motion sickness when doing so. If you don't get it, read on!

So being prone to motion sickness can be a contributing factor to touchscreen misbehaviour?

Is this what you’re saying?

> Are you normally reading in a moving vehicle or something?

Indeed I am! My primary use case for the kindle is to use it on the train.

> which has much larger touch zones than the normal Kindle software.

That may actually be the reason why. The regular software is extremely sensitive to gestures and has small touch zones, so it's easy to miss the zone, or trigger a gesture, instead of clicking what you want to click.

I also frequently have to go back a page or two and re-read a section or two, so if I read physical books I always have my fingers placed so I can go back a page or two easily, and on the kindle that works a lot less reliably (especially due to the ~500ms latency on the paperwhite).

Wheras on the Kindle 4 with the forward/back buttons on both sides it was really convenient to actually go back and forth (and instant, as flipping a page back or forth on the kindle 4 never triggered a full display refresh)

Kindles are much cheaper today than they were 15 years ago (adjusted for inflation). Seems like progress!

I've gone back to physical books. Even if that means carrying huge hardcover textbooks that weigh more than a pound, the reading experience is much nicer than a Kindle if I can flip between e.g. an explanation and the corresponding figure easily back and forth.

Which I can't with a touchscreen kindle with a "back" zone that's 5mm wide and easy to miss. And even then the back zone only works if I keep the finger perfectly still, as even the slightest movement is interpreted as a "forwards" gesture.

And no, it's not cheaper. They were 40€/80€ back then, which would be 54€ and 108€ respectively, and now the equivalent model costs 109€.

Kindles for extended backpacking trips, though ... a godsend. Unless you're one of the younger crowd that is somehow OK reading books on a phone (though that uses way more power).

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