Got my two Kindles yesterday. Picked one, opened it, turned it on, manually registered its serial, then the two documents (welcome letter; transferring old Kindle content to new Kindle) queued up and got sent to it fine.
It looks like I have the plastic buttons. I'm pretty easygoing on my electronic devices, so it's unlikely I'll see wear/fading on the buttons, but we shall see with time.
My page turn buttons on the left have a little more click in them. The back button on the right makes almost no noise if I press it at its lowest point. No big deal...I expect some variance in an electronic product that's as inexpensive as this.
Like my wife's Kindle 2, every so often when I press page turn it doesn't do anything. It's so infrequent that I can't be sure if it's a software or hardware problem, because it's impossible for me to replicate.
Nice device though. I like the slightly faster page turns, increased contrast, and extra font choices over the Kindle 2. The d-pad is a little harder to use than the Kindle 2's joystick though. It's because the left/right/up/down "frame" is so darn thin and tiny. Would've been better to make it more like a Nintendo controller.
I've explored all the options on it so thoroughly that I think the only thing left to do is, er, start using it for reading. Which yes, I did actually do some of last night and this morning.
Thanks to everyone for their help and input,
-HM