Kindle Convert

Reading up on the kindle paperwhite, I find this statement confusing:

> Unlike a backlit tablet display, Kindle Paperwhite guides light towards the surface of the e-ink display from above so that the light never shines directly towards your eyes.

The light will still end up "shining directly towards my eyes". That's the whole point of it. Is this just a marketing twist on lighting an e-ink panel, or does it have a real benefit over backlight?

Side note: I'm converting away from Kindle after being disappointed by sloppy conversion from paper to kindle. Like: they won't convert a picture necessary for the text (and it's up to me to realize that there should have been a picture there), or they'll mess up chapter navigation tags, or text will be self-referential to the medium (like referencing the number of words on the current page). It's painfully clear that there is a very minimal editorial process to kindle books, if any at all.

I also converted. Plus, much better for me than the amazon ecosystem, there is calibre with all its automatic creation of news source documents and format conversions that usually just work. I wish they would just make the actual readers more bulletproof since I seem to break one on an annual basis but at today's cost I'll deal with it.

I was also skeptical of ebooks until I got my hands on a Paperwhite. It's not going to replace my library, but having dozens of great books to choose from while away from my shelves, plus a comfortable reading experience in essentially any environment is more than enough to make me a convert.

A very important corollary note: You can often ship books via media mail at the post office for incredibly cheap. All my college textbooks cost < 30$ to ship.