With regard to holding the DX one-handed comfortably. If not planning to type on it, I’ll sometimes turn it upside down and, as you said, the balance is best when you’re holding it around the middle of the vertical mode.

I would care to do this mainly when on a train and holding onto a strap with my right hand — but not with the cover on. (On the other hand I carry my Kindle 2 for that kind of city travel.)

If I place my left hand so the thumb tip is on the Next Page and the bottom of the thumb tip is on the previous page, that works pretty well. That means putting the bulk of the thumb near the line between the two buttons. And it’s more intuitive to have the top one go Next.

It also works if you place the hand just a tad lower and use the thumb for the Next and the 2nd, lower, segment of the thumb for the Prev (not needed as often).

I wouldn’t read in landscape mode, one handed, while standing up on public transprot — but at home what I do when I want to read one-handed when doing something else with the right hand (like use a fork) is place the Kindle so that the buttons are underneath (as you do), and it’s resting on the crook between thumb and index finger.
The thumb tip is used for Next and the lower segment of the thumb is used for the less-used Prev.

If at home I have the cover on (and almost any really protective cover will be at least this heavy if the front cover is folded back), I tend to hold just the back cover with the front cover dangling.

With the unit in Landscape, I hold it pretty much the way I do without cover, which allows the left hand thumb to handle Next and Prev paging.

Still in Landscape mode — Sometimes I just rest the back cover in the palm of my left hand and balance it with thumb and a couple of other fingers forming a V at the top edge, and the weight is not felt that way — but you can’t do one-handed activity that way.

Re the placement of the 5-way — with both the Kindle 2 and the DX, it would take an acrobat to hold it one-handed and handle the 5-way interaction along with being in the right place for Next/Prev…

Last (and apologies for the length of my comments), the price is ‘staggering’ mainly if one doesn’t need the 24/7 wireless anywhere capabilities.

I was showing this to friends yesterday, and the mobile websites pre-set on the Kindles for exploring the web are actually quite fast. I’ve added my own mobile site links too. The problems come with trying to explore extremely complex sites meant for the more powerhouse capablities of a computer.

But a Netbook with 24/7 wireless added (as opposed to WiFi you have to find hot spots for) will cost $60/mo. add’l over the price.

AT&T pilots a program for several popular Netbooks, selling them for between $100 and $200 but they charge $60/mo. for unlimited wireless.

That comes to a total cost, then, of $820 at the least for the first year, and of course $720 for the 2nd year. It’s faster, no doubt, and ‘colorful’ but I wouldn’t be able to comfortably wait in lines with a Netbook open just to read a book.

As a tablet or slab dedicated mainly to reading, with some study features — the 24/7 wireless, for the Net, which I was able to demo in someone’s garden, makes the price very reasonable for those who want to use it (some won’t be interested in that wireless access to the Net).

– Andrys

Thank you for your suggestions! I did not know about Alt-G. That improved the contrast notably. I believe I have seen the font fading that you describe. I’ll take it into the sun today and look for it specifically.

Regards,
David

Until Amazon works on the firmware and even might/should get fuller licensing from Adobe for the annotation features plus support for Table of Contents and hyperlinks in general, here’s something you can do to make things easier if you’re keeping the device.

When you’re on the table of contents (and I’ll use the Kindle2 User’s Guide PDF as an example), and even find no page number to go to!, type two of the words for the chapter which are not likely used in the rest of the book.

In Amazon’s User’s Guide, I just started typing, which brings up the searchbox, and it buffers the keyboard input. I typed ‘whispernet status’ and since ‘find’ is the default option at the right, I just pressed Enter (under Del key) and it went to the first ‘whispernet status’ it found. Then it went to the next one when I clicked on the forward-arrow.

The advantage is that you can use the Back button to get back to the TOC, after reading, since it’s a Jump action.

Since the User’s Guide by Amazon uses numbering like ’1.4′ I tried typing in just ’1.4′ (w/o the single quote marks). This took me straight to the chapter.

And the Back button brought me back to where I was in the Table of Contents.
This type of search can be used for a hyperlink too.

TIP on numbers. While numbers are set up to be (irritatingly) pressed along with the alt-key because numbers share keys with alpha-letters, you can also choose instead to type them sequentially. Alt and then 1, using the same hand.

The same goes for capitalized letters. The Shift key and letter key can be pressed sequentially for the first letter after pressing the Shift key. But it should be fairly close in time.

CONTRAST. I’m a little concerned on that. I have a Kindle 1 which has contrast many feel is better than the Kindle 2′s (which uses different, faster version of the e-ink screen), and the Kindle DX is MUCH better in contrast than even on the Kindle 1. It is very dark lettering against a lightish gray.

Press alt-g 2 or 3 times to refresh the screen and you’ll see a bit more contrast. But if you’re feeling it doesn’t have enough contrast, you should ask them to send you another one so you can compare the two and then return the one which is not as good.

In the few weeks this has been out, I’ve seen one complaint by forum members on several boards about the screen contrast on this, although what you describe had been seen on many Kindle 2′s and Amazon has replaced those.

Also, use the unit in direct sunlight and then turn a couple of pages. Make sure there is no font fading when this happens. It was a problem in some Kindle 2 batches and I’ve seen only one lone report on that happening with a DX but it’s worth checking since you don’t like the screen contrast (which in my unit, seems phenomenal).

Andrys
kindleworld.blogspot.com