[civiliza]

Apologies for not replying earlier, I hovered over this thread for half an hour after posting, then with no replies gave up and watched TV.

To answer:
@Gilmartin, I have a Linksys WiFi router connected (eventually) to Virgin Media, not straightforward admittedly, but everything else in the household has no problems with it.

@Xendula, I'm afraid that with less than perfect eyesight, I found no defects with either screen. The wider bezel of the Paperwhite did need more screen lighting to compensate for the larger black area, but since both were a step up from the K3, I was happy with what both offered. The Kobo's Menu "problem" (thanks for solving that @Lyn2012) was bugging me, but generally I liked the Kobo apart from the experiences of trying to connect it and download / sync content.

Unfortunately with the Kobo comfortable at a lower illumination level, it would be unfair to compare the screens - at it's higher brightness the paperwhite was whiter, but who's to say I could not have turned the Kobo up to a similar level and seen equal whiteness? At 35% lighting I did see two cones of shadow at the bottom of the Kobo screen, but they didn't spoil the reading experience in any way.

As a reader, the Kobo was a nice device, but it's connectivity was a total bust for me personally, and the Kobo desktop app was positively glacial as a sync'ing tool. By comparison using Adobe Digital Editions to sideload epub's on it was a delight (spent the majority of my time rereading an epub version of an old sci-fi book). I just wasn't prepared to risk the wear and tear of plugging in the USB cable each and every time I wanted to download a book.

On my limited and less than ideal run in with Kobo, I would say that I have seen nothing from Kobo that contradicts their less than perfect reputation on this forum. I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, but my WiFi and Customer Service experiences are eerily similar to disparaging threads in the Kobo section of this forum.