The latest generation, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Scribe 2, Kindle Scribe 1, and Kindle and the upcoming Kindle Colorsoft, all have something in common. When you plug them into USB into your PC or MAC, they no longer appear as external drives. This prevents users from using file managers to back up their books or to sideload new books onto the Kindle. Amazon has also removed the download and transfer via USB option for purchased ebooks from the content page. This will likely prevent people from striping the DRM from the books and sharing them on piracy websites. This is not
IMO battery life is absolutely excellent, I brought it with me on a 2 week holiday last year, read for 30-90min almost every night and didn’t need to charge it during the trip or worry about battery life.