Re-kindling the e-book reader

If you held the Kindle Paperwhite launched 6 months ago in one hand and  the  all  new Kindle in the other, you'll be  hard pressed to tell which is which. They both have six inch monochrome e-ink screens; They  are both feather weight, the new one slightly  lighter at 191 gms. 

Both need  WiFi to connect to the Internet and  do it lightning fast. The controls are identical except that the latest kindle  has a fractionally lower resolution than the Paperwhite  and doesn't have  built-in lighting.  In three days  of using the new Kindle, I couldn't really  say this  mattered e-ink makes the big difference from normal tablet screens, when it comes to sustained reading  and who wants colour when reading a book anyway?

 Yet the latest Kindle avatar is  priced at Rs 5999, almost half the price of the Paperwhite and if reading is your vice, this is a steal.

 And despite Amazon leading you by the nose to buy its books at the Kindle store, you can  shun the overtures in the opening menu,  click open the hidden 'experimental browser' and  Google your way to  whatever you please on the Net: email, online stores, travel sites or whatever.

By the way while Kindle book downloads cost from Rs 191 for the latest fiction bestsellers (  "Gone Girl"  on which  this week's film release in India is based)  to  as low as Rs 60 for some Indian books, they also point you at some 30,000 free titles, mostly classics out of copyright.  I can see myself  using the new Kindle for years without spending a single rupee at the Kindle store -- and I'm guessing, so will a lot of others for whom the best part of this Kindle is its asking price.