I'm new to the forum but I'll give my opinion.
I've been researching the last (almost) 2 months on eBook Readers, I finally made my mind, I ordered Kindle 3 Wifi (don't need 3G) and that was after the announcements of both Nook and Kobo, I still chose Kindle without blinking.
Principally because:
- The awesome community kindle has
- Indie writers (some are good and not well credited)
- Easiness to publish books (I don't know I may feel like write a short story or two some day even if I don't charge anything)
- Hackability of Kindle, like programs, alternative OS and other hacks
- Great costumer service
And of course all the other functionality already all over the reviews and videos.
But let's be real, Amazon has to react some way, and as they are costumer oriented they should really listen to some things people have been asking for or they may start to lose people.
I think a new kindle should have:
- Touchscreen while maintaining page turn buttons on both sides, and button for menu and Aa maybe. Could have a d-pad or something similar like kindle 2 maybe (for those that wouldn't like to pan with touch)
- ePUB support, some people may not be buying because of not reading ePUB (as library thing is coming it would be good ePUB came with it)
- More PDF support, because
lots (IMO) at least want to have a nice reader to be able so see them nicely, it's a highly used file.
- Maybe redesign some settings, like Zoom for example to be able to custom zoom or select finer % of zoom, I think a jump from 100% to 150% it's too much
- if they would let's us freely change wallpapers, fonts and such so we could customize our kindle it would be a nice addition, wallpapers shouldn't be changeable on ADS editions tho.
- they
could improve the experimental things or making them "official", like more functionality to the mp3 player, improvements to browser and such but not really a priority.
Of course I would like to be surprised by Amazon with some innovating functionality, but I think there are some things that really should be done. But I think things like color eInk just isn't worth it, maybe have a Kindle Color but supplementary and not instead of eInk Pearl ones.
They could even liberate the .azw file and let other readers, read it too but be the only one to sell .azw books, they would raise some sales with this I think.
Not all of this need to be implemented or even any of this but they really need to take some action
but at their time so they can bring us a nice and trustworthy product even tho I still think Kindle is superior to Nook and Kobo in many aspects.
Well this is my opinion, tell me yours or what you think of it.
PS: Sorry for the long post, I tend to write long texts, hope it's somewhat readable
