There are a lot of reasons to like and dislike Amazon, but I did want to mention one thing that impressed me today.

I have a Kindle Touch. Which is not the most recent Kindle (that’s the PaperWhite) .  When the PaperWhite first came out, which was well over a year ago, the Touch was even removed from the Amazon website for a while (though I notice that it’s back now).

But this morning my Kindle Touch got a major software update, including adding (as much as possible) the new features which came along with the PaperWhite.

Now, for me, some of those features are unnecessary (parental controls), and some of them are silly (a thing that guesses how long it will take you to finish a book based on how long it’s taken you to get to where you are now), but the interface seems better, and at least they didn’t take away Text-to-Speech just because the PaperWhite doesn’t have it.

In one way of looking at it, it’s nice of Amazon to continue to update older hardware, but I think it’s really more “smart” than “nice.”

They know, I think, that Kindle users are mostly not techno-geeks. Kindle users are readers (who may also be techno-geeks, of course). Kindle owners don’t automatically lust after every new Kindle model that comes out. (I see a lot of older Kindles on the subway – and in fact I still see the Touch more often than the PaperWhite.)

So, it’s pretty smart to work to keep the existing user base happy. Because then they’ll keep buying more books.

On the other hand, Amazon did just give me a credit of 16 cents (plus 2 cents tax!) because an item I’d purchase had dropped in price after I’d placed my order.

That was nice, right?