Just weeks after lowering the price of the Kindle e-book reader from $259 to $189, Amazon unveiled a fully revamped Kindle on Wednesday. It’s sleeker, better looking, easier on the eyes — and starts at $139.

This new Kindle, Amazon’s third generation, is smaller by 21 percent, and 15 percent lighter too. It has much improved contrast, 50 percent better than before, answering a significant complaint among dead-tree purists who compared the device’s e-ink screen unfavorably to real paper. It’s available in two colors: graphite and white.

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Teleread’s Jean Kaplansky has a review of the Nook. Jean is an XML pro and violin-lover who lives in upstate New York with her husband, three dogs and five cats. “I’ve been doing the e-book thing,” Jeans writes, “since the emergence of Peanut Reader for the Palm way back in the ‘90s.” Why not visit a nearby B&N and share your experiences? Will successful software updates be enough to win you over? Or is this one DOA? – D.R.

I’ve had my hands on the Nook, and I was disappointed in what almost all the reviewers seem to be disappointed in. But first some positives.

The Nook offers battery access, its only unique feature. Also, it’s pretty, and comfy in the hands—the back is curved with some nice ergonomics. Once I got to an e-book, the Nook’s quality matched my Sony 300 in terms of resolution for text, and the page turn lag was as expected. The Nook offers no bold, but three different fonts that are easy on the eyes, including Helvetica.

The Nook is slow, however, and the navigation is hard to figure out. Compared to the Nook, the iPhone’s navigation wins hands down.

Even more confusing is doing the swipe thing on the capacitive touch pad to navigate the screen. While I knew that the E Ink screen was not a touch screen, my intuition kept telling me that was where I needed to swipe to navigate the lists up there. At first I thought this was a holdover habit because I own a Sony 700, but then one of the B & N associates told me that he, too, wanted to swipe on the Nook screen. In addition, there are some registration issues with the touch screen. It’s not always responsive.

The Nook also re-formats whatever you’re reading every time you access the file, even if you’ve opened it before. My husband made a big show of twiddling his thumbs while two B & N employees and I waited for the Nook to format the latest Charlaine Harris novel.

Read the full review on TeleRead

Charlaine Harris, E-book, eink, Handhelds, iPhone, Nook, Sony, Touchscreen