Quote:
Originally Posted by NorthernReader
P.S. Just wondering... Does RAM matter for e-readers? And how much RAM do the PW2, Voyage and Aura (HD / H2O) have?
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You may already know this, but a lot of people confuse RAM with the built-in non volatile storage, so I'll start with some definitions:
RAM: Temporary working space that gets cleared when the device is turned off. (You can loosely think of it as the scratch pad that the Kindle uses to keep track of what it's doing). The amount of RAM is generally not published because it doesn't really matter. They include enough for it to do what it needs to do. In some cases more can make the device run faster, or allow it to handle a bigger book with bigger images, but in general this is NOT a limiting factor. More RAM can mean reduced battery life due to the need to refresh the chips periodically since they 'forget' what they're holding in a very short amount of time. According to Wikipedia the Paperwhite has 256 MB of RAM, which is more than sufficient for the task that it performs. 512 MB might help for PDF handling or big images, but again, see my comment about battery life -- and PDF isn't the target use case.
Flash/non volatile storage: Semi permanent storage that retains its contents "forever" when the device is turned off or has a dead battery. This is where your book are stored. Think of it as analogous to a USB stick that you plug into your computer to put stuff onto. This is typically 4 GB on most ebook readers, which is sufficient to hold thousands of typical text only books. Unless you're one of the people who likes to keep their entire extensive library available at all times it's way more than sufficient. I keep 20-30 books on my reader at the most and my 2GB model is about 15% full.
I suspect you were asking about the latter. If so, you may want to read some of the never-ending discussions here about whether an ebook reader needs an SD card slot.