poll: What is the ONE thing that if an ereader has you absolutely will not buy it?

[MorganM]

Keyboard! Takes up a space and looks annoying. I would've bought a Kindle in the beginning but the keyboard puts me off. So therefore I will never buy one.

[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I just happen to be a stickler for ergonomics and immersion.
Conversely, I find it perverse to see so much wasted effort trying to turn genuine digital devices and files into imitation paper and in the process degrade a naturally immersive experience.

Reminds me of the early days of TV when some shows were literally video broadcasts of radio shows and single-camera fixed-focus theater plays.
It's early in the ebook game and a lot of people still don't understand that ebooks are not pbooks minus paper.

Eventualy it'll sink in.

This is an issue with tech in general. Page turn animations in iBooks, record companies trying to force full album sales, real page numbers, etc. It's a shame. But I think consumers are largely to blame. Consumers generally don't have much imagination when it comes to something new. They tend to want familiarity.

Companies (or perhaps consumers) should move on. Microsoft have been using the term 'digital first' to describe the idea that user interfaces and media should be designed to be all digital with no unnecessary ties back to the physical/analogue world. Windows Phone 7 is a great example of this. Why treat your phone's contact list as a rolodex when you can use it to group together all kinds of different information in natural, discoverable ways not possible with a little address book?

An ebook is not a digital representation of a physical book. It is some media in an electronic form that should take advantage of all that the digital medium can offer to improve it.

But e-ink is (at least for me) more about making reading comfortable, and for providing efficient battery life. It's not about imitating paper. I don't find current LCD screens pleasant to read from.

[elizilla]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Conversely, I find it perverse to see so much wasted effort trying to turn genuine digital devices and files into imitation paper and in the process degrade a naturally immersive experience.

When you ask the users what they want, they always think in terms of the processes they had with their old system. You can't really break their minds loose from that, because they're busy - they don't sit around trying to dream up a new system from the ground up - they are all about what you can do for them in their life as they know it now.

Very few users have the vision to get that started, and from where they sit they simply can't comprehend half of what the new technology can offer them. But that is what humans are like - trying to change it is futile. What *I'd* like to do, is come back around to the end users, six months or a year after the software has been in production, and say "Now that the changeover drama is entirely off your radar screen, and you've gotten more comfortable, let's get more mileage out of the technology you already have. What is on your wishlist? But no one wants to pay for that.

Path dependence, sigh.

[CazMar]

No EPUB support, no SD card storage. And I prefer an e-ink screen.

A page turn button would be good to have if device is touch screen, easier to use one-handed. Support for plenty of formats would also get my attention.

And I would certainly agree with the above 2 posts.

[speakingtohe]

Poor functionality.
I will try anything within my price range just to see if I like it. (I paid almost $400 for my first Sony and still love it), but I have bought 4 ereaders for myself since and returned them all because they didn't work well consistently.

I prefer the Sony to the kindle 3 I bought my mother but the kindle 3 is very nice too. My mother, who is 86, prefers the kindle 3. She was dead set against it when she got it in the mail, but now wouldn't part with it.

While I have had minor problems with the Sony and had to return my mother's kindle for a replacement but mostly they just work.

Page turn flashes? Well if I concentrate then I notice them, but less intrusive than turning a page on a large book or even a paperback and they have never caused me to drop the book and lose my place when reading one handed in bed.

Helen

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

.... and they have never caused me to drop the book and lose my place when reading one handed in bed.

Helen

Hmmmm, what's the other hand doing?

[Namekuseijin]

I can't stand cheap emulation of pbooks either. Still, while touchcreens can do marvels to scroll or flip pages, you can also merely press right or left to "turn" pages...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

I can't stand cheap emulation of pbooks either. Still, while touchcreens can do marvels to scroll or flip pages, you can also merely press right or left to "turn" pages...

Yeah, there is this really 'nasty' one in the android Moon Reader. I do like the one in the Google Book Reader though.

The one in Android FBReader is not too bad.

The Kindle App works like pressing the buttons.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yeah, there is this really 'nasty' one in the android Moon Reader. I do like the one in the Google Book Reader though.

The one in Android FBReader is not too bad.

The Kindle App works like pressing the buttons.

The Moonreader page turns look okay on my Streak, although currently I have it set to just scroll. It may be a question of which screen sizes it supports natively - Android devices come in so many sizes.

[AJ Starr]

Originally Posted by djgreedo

An ebook is not a digital representation of a physical book. It is some media in an electronic form that should take advantage of all that the digital medium can offer to improve it.

Well said...

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

ah, a child of the ebook generation!
who never touched on paper;
reading, eager to hard press buttons on
until stuck, returning to maker

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Hardly.
I cut my metaphorical tech teeth on a Bowmar brain.
I've been buying ebook devices since the Palm Pilot days.

I just happen to be a stickler for ergonomics and immersion.
Conversely, I find it perverse to see so much wasted effort trying to turn genuine digital devices and files into imitation paper and in the process degrade a naturally immersive experience.

I couldn't agree more! Just because you have to move your hand in some sort of swiping motion for paper books, does that mean you have to do the same for an electronic book?

Originally Posted by SCION

Will not even consider buying if it's only available in white. Thank goodness the Kobo offers a black model. I would've had to pass. Funny because I prefer the iPad 2 in white.

Forgot that one. Hate white devices...

Originally Posted by NNolan

I'll never buy another ereader that doesn't have a touchscreen.

A touchscreen is handy, but mostly because I like to highlight. If I can do that with some kind of navigational buttons, I could live with that too.

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

I can't stand cheap emulation of pbooks either. Still, while touchcreens can do marvels to scroll or flip pages, you can also merely press right or left to "turn" pages...

And that can horribly interfere with highlighting... Mobipocket has that option. I turned it off asap, because it either turned the page when I wanted to highlight a word that was close to the margin, or highlight a word when I wanted to page...

[AnneT]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

If the ereader has/had an operating system dependency. Like a reasonable percentage of computer owners I DO NOT have a Windows or Mac, so requiring one of those to perform updates wipes that ereader off my list (think Sony, think Kobo with the first firmware update).

Thank you for pointing at this!
I was considering which eReader I should buy next, but I never ever realized that maybe I couldn't perform a firmware update for a Sony. (I'm using a Linux PC)

[astra]

Hardware keyboard

[readit]

• short battery time
• not enough formates (or not even pdf,txt,rtf)
• stupid and unlogic menue handling (involving storage access & folders)
• price (..more than 50)

[Namekuseijin]

Sweetpea, perhaps you should touch the margin?