Room for improvement

[booklover6]

I do miss the fast indexing of the Paperwhite. It seems to be taking days for my Touch to index the 400 books I put on it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by booklover6

I do miss the fast indexing of the Paperwhite. It seems to be taking days for my Touch to index the 400 books I put on it.

It'll index more quickly if you leave it plugged in to the wall charger. But yes, the PW is a lot faster.

[eschwartz]

I want a dedicated home button on the bottom, like my faithful KT has. Amazon is really bucking the trend here, and I'm not happy about it.

[Chi Cygni]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

I don't mind the touch in general, but in cold climate, and having a mild case of Raynaud's, having to always keep one hand outside covers to touch the screen every 30 seconds to turn the page is a real problem.

I've tried gloves with one fingertip cut off, but that just means I have a freezing fingertip, and I've tried a stylus, but the stylus isn't nearly as handy as a finger, it's clumsy to hold and use, and usually takes 3-4 pokes for the touch to register, so I do miss page turn buttons a whole lot.

I have seen gloves with capacitive fingertips on sale in fnac (which is not in your country) but maybe amazon has them too? Perhaps it is worth checking?

eta: amazon uk has a multitude of them.

[BeeTee-Ess]

I have a Kobo Mini. Enough said.

I'd like a Kindle PW Mini.

I'd like it to have a good choice of fonts, with adjustable font weight and sharpness. and adjustable line spacing. I'd like it to have adjustable margins, right down to zero, on all 4 edges.

Top and bottom margins to be configurable as to what (if anything) is displayed. Top and bottom margins to be tappable to make their content interchangeable with text from the book, so that the page can be totally filled with the book.

I don't need to know things like progress information or the title of the book I am reading on a continuous basis. I am happy to tap to have it appear, and tap again to make it go away. Make tappability a configurable option, to satisfy those who do want to see the information continuously.

That way, my Kindle PW Mini would spend most of its time displaying the book I am reading, and I would spend most of my time reading it.

PS: I used to think I could not do without page-turn buttons, but since I got my PW2, I have learned to live without them. That's not to say I wouldn't like them back again along with the touch screen.

Now, all of the above could apply equally to a PW3, (please), and apart from the buttons, it could be the next software upgrade for a PW2 (please), but it is more important in a PW Mini because of the reduced screen size.

[bbpo8]

I have two older Kindles (DX and keyboard) and they are fine for reading. It is hard to properly organize books when you have more than a hundred or so, but I've been able to get around it. Tags or hierarchical directories would solve the problem.

The real gripe I have, and the reason I went over to Kobo, is that Amazon seems to be committed to their proprietary format (MOBI, etc.) Yes, Calibre is one way to solve the problem on an individual basis for those of us who are willing to go through the hassle.

But as a journalist, I see Amazon's attempt to corner the market on books as dangerous for a free society. Books are a different kind of commodity than Hula-Hoops or vacuum cleaners. They represent ideas, points of view, the future. No one company or one government should have exclusive control over them.

So I would like to see Amazon open up to the industry standard of EPUB. Personally, I will do what I can to encourage the use of EPUB and to discourage proprietary formats.

DRM is a big issue too, but that seems to be more the decision of publishers rather than Amazon.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by bbpo8

The real gripe I have, and the reason I went over to Kobo, is that Amazon seems to be committed to their proprietary format (MOBI, etc.) Yes, Calibre is one way to solve the problem on an individual basis for those of us who are willing to go through the hassle.

But as a journalist, I see Amazon's attempt to corner the market on books as dangerous for a free society. Books are a different kind of commodity than Hula-Hoops or vacuum cleaners. They represent ideas, points of view, the future. No one company or one government should have exclusive control over them.

So I would like to see Amazon open up to the industry standard of EPUB. Personally, I will do what I can to encourage the use of EPUB and to discourage proprietary formats.

DRM is a big issue too, but that seems to be more the decision of publishers rather than Amazon.

Like you say, DRM is a big issue and actually the main issue in this respect. If you switch to an epub vendor, all you do is hand control over your books from Amazon to Adobe (or in your case, Kobo, which uses their own fork of DRM'ed ePub, or Apple, which does the same etc)... And if DRM weren’t an issue, there’d be no problem at all switching between proprietary and “open” formats, much like it is no problem switching between AAC and MP3...

[John F]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I want a dedicated home button on the bottom, like my faithful KT has. Amazon is really bucking the trend here, and I'm not happy about it.

Isn't the trend away from Home Buttons (for e-ink readers). The recent Kobo's don't have them, the recent B&N Nook Glowlight doesn't have one (I think)?

I think a home button is a great idea, as long as it is configured to be a page turn button, a library button, other configurations, and can be disabled.

[HarryT]

Given that the Kindle turns on (or wakes up) to the page you were last reading, how often do you find it necessary to press the "Home" button? I only do so when I want to open a new book, and I can't honestly say that tapping the screen twice to get to the Home screen is a burden.

[Angst]

I love the Paperwhite. The addition of the lighted screen made a great product superb!

The only changes I would make would be to allow more user control over which elements are displayed on the bottom task bar. ( I would like to be able to see the time.)

Other than that, it's a great product. I hope they don't screw it up by adding too many "features."

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by John F

Isn't the trend away from Home Buttons (for e-ink readers). The recent Kobo's don't have them, the recent B&N Nook Glowlight doesn't have one (I think)?

I think a home button is a great idea, as long as it is configured to be a page turn button, a library button, other configurations, and can be disabled.

I guess e-inks in general, I have no idea who started it, but no tablet does that. I agree it would be nice if it could be configured. (there's actually a hack for the KT that makes it do page turns.)

Originally Posted by HarryT

Given that the Kindle turns on (or wakes up) to the page you were last reading, how often do you find it necessary to press the "Home" button? I only do so when I want to open a new book, and I can't honestly say that tapping the screen twice to get to the Home screen is a burden.

I don't know whether I'm the best proof of anything, as I tend to switch between several books at once. I do know I'm not the only one with this complaint.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Chi Cygni

I have seen gloves with capacitive fingertips on sale in fnac (which is not in your country) but maybe amazon has them too? Perhaps it is worth checking?

eta: amazon uk has a multitude of them.

I've seen quite a few different kinds of those in shops here, and did consider them, but for some reason they're never of comfortable, non-itchy fabric (or warm enough for that matter). :-/

[meeera]

You can also buy capacitive thread and sew a loop onto the fingertip of your chosen gloves.

[charmian]

Hardware: lighter PW2 (in terms of weight) and thinner.

Software: For words looked up not to be automatically added to flashcards, but only added if I choose. (Because of me having trouble selecting and choosing the wrong word).

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by meeera

You can also buy capacitive thread and sew a loop onto the fingertip of your chosen gloves.

.. I've never even heard of that and I don't even know where I'd get such a thing as capacitive thread! I'll keep my eyes open now that I know, thanks!

I'd still prefer page turn buttons, though. Since this is a thread about wished-for improvements for the Kindle and all.

Not the least because I found using the K3's page turn buttons easier and taking less thumb motion every time than the PW demands (I can't just let my thumb rest in the air over the screen in order to simply touch it down for next page, as it'll cover part of the text if I do that - the K3's buttons were, for me, ideally placed so that my thumb always rested on the page-forward button and all it took was a very light press downwards to turn the page).

So, basically, page turn buttons and pop-up footnotes (I know those exist on PW2 but Amazon has been known to change software features from one Kindle to another before, so it's never a given that something cool in one Kindle will remain there in the next one - see chapter pips) are my two biggest wishes. A better way to handle collections / nested collections would be nice, too, but I can manage with the way they are on PW1 now, so that's not essential.

Also, a way to override publisher font in all books without having to de-DRM an Amazon-bought book and transfer the re-saved mobi back to the Kindle. I don't know why but I can't change the font with all books now.