Kindle Touch 3G, Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display

I am writing this review from the perspective of being a long-time Kindle user vs. someone brand new to the Kindle experience.From an overall experience, and considering the price of a Kindle with free 3G, WiFi capabilities, and a touch screen, this Kindle Touch Screen ("KTS") is a pretty good bargain. From a size standpoint, it is obviously not as long as my Kindle Keyboard model ("KKB"), but you wouldn't expect it to be because - ahem - there is no keyboard!I was in for a surprise when I opened up the box: in the little space carved out to hold the micro-USB cable, which you need to charge the unit, had nothing in it. In other words, no power cord to get the thing running. A quick phone call to Amazon's excellent customer support, and a friendly agent named Mary Ann, has a replacement on its way to me. Seeing as I have way too many Kindles in my household, I found a power cord and put it on the charger for about an hour before playing with it.First, let's talk about the "pros" of the KTS model:The display is much crisper and darker than the KKB model. I put a page of the same book on both the KTS and the KKB side-by-side and not in a cover (didn't want the cover to give an optical illusion or anything), and this model's text is much better. I also placed these two models against a Kindle 2, and you can see the improvement in the screen quality with each new model (and the KKB is still darker than the K2 two years into it).Web surfing speed with the WiFi feature on the KTS is a little faster than the KKB. Doing a side-by-side test I tried the mobile websites of Fox News and CNN and they popped right up, maybe a half second faster on the KTS model. Trying the mobile websites of MSNBC and the Houston Chronicle were slower than Christmas, but that is usually the case in my experiences with most mobile devices trying to hit those two websites. I'm not much of a web surfer with my Kindle, so that feature is really hard for me to evaluate. When I have my Kindle, I usually want to read a book vs. surf the web or check email.The on/off button is not a slider like previous versions of Kindles, but is a push-button. You have to make a deliberate "push" with the button to make it go to sleep vs. sometimes my KKB model will bump against my shirt or jeans and hit the sleep mode in the middle of the page. I think this is an improvement.Now for the "cons" of the KTS model:I really don't care for the touchscreen. I thought I would, actually I thought it would be the best thing since sliced bread, but it is a pain in the neck. I also have man fingers - which means my finger pads are larger than most women and children - and there have been many times with my short experience with the KTS I meant to touch one thing and ended up going somewhere else entirely because a link right next to the one I wanted was pressed first. I even pulled out a ballpoint pen top to try to "tap" the right thing, but I had the same problem.There are no page turn buttons - besides the on / off button I mentioned above there are really no buttons at all. To turn a page forward, you need to tap the right-hand side of the screen. To page back, you guessed it, you need to tap the left-hand side of the screen. After using a Kindle for over three years now, I've already been "trained" by Amazon on how to turn pages. Sometimes you think the page forward didn't register, so you tap it again only to find out it did but there was a delay; now you're one page ahead of where you wanted to be. I didn't figure that out until about the third time when I was thinking the author of a short story just wasn't making sense. When I'm reading a book, I get rather absorbed in the process, and "tapping" to page turn gets me distracted (let alone jumping pages ahead of where I want to be). I wonder how much tapping the screen can physically take before the screens start breaking?Navigation is rather cumbersome. If you're in the middle of a book or web page, for example, and want to go back to your home screen (or to a different book), I initially thought you had to activate the menu bar by pressing and holding near the top of the screen, then start pressing the back arrow buttons. I would think most people expect to see a "Home" choice if you push the "Menu" button. There is a "home" key but you would never know it: it looks like 4 horizontal unlabeled lines that I initially took for air exhaust vents (they are actually buttons). It would have been helpful to have a label on next to it or, Heaven forbid, a quick start paper menu to get you up and running.Overall, if you couldn't tell, I'm not too impressed with the KTS model. It seems as there were a lot of shortcuts taken to get the price down lower, and the method of operation is much different than what I am used to - I realize that had to be done primarily because there are no buttons. However, when I'm reading, I want to escape and not have to remember too many specific motions and steps: I just want to read! I hope, however, this new and improved screen is put into all models of Kindle (except the Fire) as it is much superior.If you're happy with your "button" versions of the Kindle, I'd stick with them!