First Look at a Kindle Touch

[shinew]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

With no exception, every proponent of the touch interface says that new users need to "give yourself some time with it," "you'll have to practice a bit" "it may take some getting used to."

Not really and absolutely, it depend on how familiar you are with a touch interface vs button operated devices.

Like everything else, prior experience in using similar technology mostly determines your initial familiarity in how it operates. For example if someone has never operated electronics with any buttons before, will he still find buttons easier to use than touch interface? maybe, but I doubt it. On the hand for someone who's familiar with touch screen user interface like apple/android multi-touch devices(including me), all I had to do when I get the K4 is glance at at the 1st screen that comes up and then I can easily & comfortably operate the device, all other gestured like swipe, pinch, and hold few sec to get more options just come "natural" to us w/o any need to "practice".
So the bottom line is that for people who're not familiar in operating a modern multi-touch interface, yes it may require sometime to get used to it and understandably so(seems to be the minority so far), for others, we can just pick it up and use it "naturally" and "intuitively".

For those who claim to have a lot of experience with touchscreen interface and still find it difficult to use, I don't know what to say to those...

[osnova]

I agree with DiapDealer. I want physical keys. Yes, I know how to use an all touchscreen interface, and I am very "familiar" with it (I am forced to be by the industry), but but I don't like it. They can add a touchscreen to my physical keyboard. My detailed thoughts on Touch are in a comment to this post http://osnova.com/2011/11/22/kindlefir/

"Loss of function" is not the only criterion for assessing an interface. Usability, speed of operation, preferences of large groups of users are a few others. After iPhone, the wants of DiapDealer, me and other similarly minded people are ignored.

[SkyDream]

A physical keyboard is a waste of space.
I prefer touchscreens with just 1-2 physical keys (home, maybe pageturns)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

You can easily change the keyboard for a touchscreen with no real loss of function.

Not if I value this (vvv) as an important feature:

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Right now, I can start jotting down a note by pressing a letter on the keyboard... bam!... the first letter in my note is typed. Can I have the first letter of a note typed on the KT with a single touch (a single touch from the normal reading screen)?

In that instance, the touch interface is adding an extra step to bring the onscreen keyboard up in the first place. Not to mention that the onscreen keyboard itself hides a larger portion of the screen than the tiny "note window" that I currently type in does.

I'm not a luddite. I just know what I want in an ereader (I have it right now). Unfortunately for me, nobody's interested in manufacturing what I want anymore and I'm not interested in compromising. All that means is that my short ebook reading experiment has probably come to an end (when my current ereader comes to an end, that is). That's all.