Exactly what I'm thinking! We have no idea what any new Kindles might have as far as specs.

I damn sure won't pre-order any more Kindles with built in lighting. The PW was a big fail for me and after trying several replacements I sent them all back and kept my Touch. Any lighted model will have to prove itself before I will even consider ordering it. If I see trusted friends here sending back multiple replacements of any new model with lighted screen, like we did with the PW, then I will wait until the model is available in local stores so I can assess it in person.

I personally fear Amazon will not make any major improvements on eInk devices as they no longer have any major competitors in that market. I hope I'm wrong. But since an estimated 2/3 of all eBooks sold in the USA market are sold by Amazon, they can turn out lackluster eInk readers and get away with it. Sadly, I think Amazon will place more focus on new Fire models and less focus on eInk readers in the future.

And let us be honest, the major players have always turned out lackluster eInk readers. Not one eInk reader from Amazon, Sony, B&N, etc. ever really satisfied us. They never give us the formatting we have cried for for all these years. Instead they give us new hardware with a few improvements and usually with a few deletions from the previous model. (Like memory size, sound, etc.) I would be much happier to see firmware changes that bring real personalized formatting capabilities to existing models than I would for new lackluster hardware.