Smile-breaks
The Light Touch
Darn. I should’ve paid extra and got the one with the automatic light settings. I wouldn’t be sitting here looking at a page that turns darker, then lighter, but is never quite right. I have twenty-four choices on a sliding scale from bright to dim. Shedding light on an e-book page isn’t easy, if you want to get it right. If you don’t have an e-book, read on. . .
You’ve seen people with e-books, those flat pieces of plastic with all the books between their covers. The covers are melded together so to get to the books, you have to tap or swipe at the right place. You know what tapping is. “Swiping,” well, that’s stealing, right? But now it’s also “moving one's finger across a touchscreen to activate a function,” according to Google.
I was excited about getting the Kindle PaperWhite e-book with its built-in light and touchscreens. No more setting my Kindle aside in a dark restaurant; no more sore thumbs from pressing the page turner at the side of my old e-book over and over. Automatic light setting seemed like overkill and the PaperWhite was cheaper so that’s what I bought. I’m paying for it now.
Ohmigosh. This new Kindle is totally different than my old one. Instead of a list of my books, the PaperWhite shows pictures of three covers. To see the rest of your books, you have to tap the page in the right place with the right amount of pressure and yay! It’s a list! About ten taps is my average for getting to the list. Then I have to start swiping to get to the rest of the list. Swiping for me is like taking a chance on the lottery. Every now and then, I get lucky.
A great feature of the Kindle is that it remembers where you left off reading and opens to that page. Supposed to. Mine must have a ghost lurking under its covers because half the time it opens way ahead of where I left off. Sometimes I accidentally brush my fingers across the part of the page that takes you backward or jumps ahead or brings up font choices and changes the font to HUGE or tiny. And then there are the light settings—non-automatic light settings.
“In brightly lit rooms, use a high setting,” it says on the screen. Huh? Why not a low setting if the room is brightly lit? And “Use a low setting for dark rooms.” A dim light in a dark room? Contrary as I am, sitting in the dim evening light on the patio, I set the light to high.
The page was kind’a hard to read so I tapped the light bulb icon at the top and waited for the sliding scale. I tried a lower setting. Better, but not good so I ramped it down to the lowest setting. Now it was way too dim. Like Goldilocks, I went to the middle and it was just right.
Aren’t you glad you don’t have an e-book?