Look Ma, (Almost) No Buttons!

The 2011 redesign of the Kindle line was dramatic. Many of the controls found on the earlier models of the Kindle disappeared. The basic Kindle replaced the keyboard and page controls with four buttons and a five-way controller. The touch-screen Kindles have two buttons -- one to turn the device on or off and a home button that returns you to the main menu.

The basic $79 Kindle doesn't support audio -- there's no speaker or headphone jack. To page through a book, you use the five-way controller. To type in notes or to browse blogs, you can pull up a virtual keyboard and enter keystrokes using the five-way controller. If that seems cumbersome or time-consuming, you can opt for a Keyboard Kindle or get one of the Kindle Touch models.

With the Kindle Touch devices, all your navigation, with the exception of the Home button, uses the touch-screen interface. Once in a book, tapping the right side of the screen advances the page. Tapping the leftmost edge of the screen pages back. You can also use swipe gestures to page forward or backward. A virtual keyboard allows you to type notes and browse.

Unlike the basic Kindle, the Kindle Touch models support audio. The Kindle Touch devices have rear-mounted speakers and a 3.5-millimeter audio jack.

The Kindle Fire is more of a tablet than a traditional e-reader. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to the Blackberry Playbook. Like the Kindle Touch models, the Fire has a touch-screen user interface. But it doesn't feature an E Ink display. Instead, it has an in-plane switching (IPS), liquid crystal display (LCD). It features a special browser developed by Amazon called Silk. Underneath all the flash of the device is a heavily modified version of the Android operating system.

Now let's take a look at what makes the Kindle work.