I Want a Kindle Killer 321
lpress (707742) writes "Amazon's Kindle is a good e-reader and they've sold around 40 million units, but it is far from perfect. It could be significantly improved with speech recognition for commands and text entry, a well-designed database for marginal notes and annotations, and integration with laptop and desktop computers. Google, Apple and Microsoft all have device design and manufacturing experience as well as stores that sell books and other written material. A Kindle-killing e-reader would be low-hanging fruit for Apple, Google or Microsoft — think of the competition if they each built one!"
Handwriting as an input method would be nice too; a friend in college had one of the experimental Windows XP tablet PCs, and it was great for note taking and document annotation.
The Nook is/was excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Nook is/was excellent (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Nook is/was excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
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I have a kindle but almost never use it. I tend to read on my nexus7 for books and Nexus 10 for magazines and comics.
Kindle had some better features pre-touch. (Score:4, Interesting)
The "paperwhite" backlighting on the latest Kindles is killer. I checked out the latest Nooks and they just aren't up to par as far as an even backlight is concerned.
The only multi-tasking ability I wish they would add (back) to the Kindle is the MP3 player/audio. I hate having to use a second device to listen to music while I'm reading and I miss the option of having an audio-book play while I'm cooking or such.
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Agreed, I want a paperwhite with the back/forward physical buttons. And that's all.
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"Agreed, I want a paperwhite with the back/forward physical buttons. And that's all."
I second that. Also the screen should differentiate between a fly and my finger.
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I don't care for your keyboard idea, but yes about the rooted Nook. I'm not sure why no one came out with a full fledged android device with an eink screen. If you are mostly reading emails, reading internet articles, reading twitter, etc, it works great and is very functional.
Re:The Nook is/was excellent (Score:4, Informative)
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Same here...I am/was a happy Nook owner. Shame the line has ended...the Nook could read about any format you threw at it, had fantastic hardware specs (including a microsd card reader), and could be rooted if you needed all the fancy apps the submitter is mentioning. No idea how the Kindle destoryed the Nook market when you can take both devices side by side and find the Nook to be quite better (in specs and functionality).
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The Kindle's lower up-front cost and much longer battery life had a lot to do with it.
But don't discount the way the cheap android pads & phones and the expensive Apple equivalents also cut into the Nook's demographic niche.
The Google Nexus 7 sitting next to me has SIX e-reader applications installed, including Nook and Kindle and FBreader apps.
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No idea how the Kindle destoryed the Nook market when you can take both devices side by side and find the Nook to be quite better (in specs and functionality).
Because the original non-Android Kindle was the best book reader in the pack. It still is because it doesn't try to be anything else. It doesn't have the overhead of a large operating system, a color display, the infrastructure to run a bunch of applications that have nothing to do with book reading. And you didn't have to worry about charging it on a daily basis because it just sipped it's battery, not drank it like a man dying of thirst. It was just a plain effective book reader that magically rece
Windows XP Tablets (Score:3)
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Carried one for several years when I was a network tech at a local college; aside from the decidedly chincy (sp?) rotating hinge for the screen, I absolutely loved using that thing.
Pretty sure it was an IBM Thinkpad variant.
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I had one. Loved the thing. I could type my notes in classes that lended themselves to that, and then flip it over and hand write notes and homework for other subjects, like physics and math. The reason for poor sales was likely due to price vs benefit. For a lot of people touch input is only useful in front of the TV, and for that $1500 is a lot of money for anything without an apple logo. Mine was a Toshiba Satellite, and I finally replaced it last month with a ThinkPad Yoga, because I really did not
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My friend had a Gateway XP tablet PC. Not bad for browsing the web but not that great for much else unless you hooked a keyboard and mouse to it. It was single touch and if you used your fingers to try and press the tiny maximize button on a window, you may accidentally close it. So the sylus was a must, if you didn't loose it.
If it had multitouch, pinch zoom, and gestures to manipulate windows then it might have been better. Its on screen keyboard was also a disaster and typing URL's was painful. But I wil
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Price, performance. They were luxury notebooks costing more than double what other notebooks did at the time for the same specs ( minus pen input). I had a coworker that got one. It was nice for everything, except playing Quake 3 or any other graphical needs. One note was spectacular.
Amazon sells Kindle killers (Score:5, Funny)
They're called "hammers."
not a hardware problem (Score:2)
it's a **copyright problem**
that's it...we have plenty of digitalia of all shapes, sizes, and makes to display the text
most use programs called "apps"
all are subject to backwards-minded legal copyright holders who misuse artificial scarcity
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So, the answer to the "Kindle Killer" question is -- use a real tablet, not a book reader. They all have book reader apps and interface with desktops just fine. I don't use voice input becau
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I don't use voice input because I don't choose to announce to everyone within earshot what I am doing..
I am skeptical that the larger market cares about voice control at all. I like it for hands free phone dialing in the car, but that is about it. Its definitely important for those with disabilities, but otherwise voice control still seems more "gimmicky" than it is useful.
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That's my impression of the voice control in those Kindle TV ads with "Find Gary Busey." If we had that in my house, I know just what would happen. My kids would get into a shouting match:
Kid 1: "Play Show A"
Kid 2: "No, Play Show B!"
Kid 1: "Play Show A!!!"
Kid 2: "PLAY SHOW B!!!"
Me: "TV, TURN OFF!!!"
Then again, perhaps that last voice control part could be useful. (Recognize the parents' voice and then ignore the kids.) Still, I think we'll stick with plain, old remote controls.
digitalia do that already (Score:2)
most smartphones & tablets have voice input
so...what was your point again?
if someone wanted voice input & note taking *AND* an 'e-reader'....you can easily envision an app that does exactly that
your 'e-reader' app wouldn't have any books in it though, would it?
the listed features are **already available** on most digitalia I refered to
maybe you should think more about what an 'e-reader' really does
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so...what was your point again?
Pretty simple question. You claimed that copyright issues had something to do with a lack of voice input and note taking applications that the article asked about. I asked you what the hell you were talking about.
your 'e-reader' app wouldn't have any books in it though, would it?
I don't know what the hell you are talking about, and I don't think you do, either. All of my "e-reader apps" have plenty of books "in them".
maybe you should think more about what an 'e-reader' really does
I know what an "e-reader" does. I also know that copyright problems have nothing to do with what other apps are on the device I use to "e-read".
Feature Creep V2R1 (Score:2)
How many features do you want to add to this before you kill it completely?
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For me, it's about expanding it as a reader. If the Kindle had a gmail app and an rss reader I'd pick one up tomorrow.
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It has the experimental browser.
and cheap! (Score:2)
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I was kind-of annoyed that they left that off but truly, I don't really miss it.
Of course, they also dropped the audio option from their newer e-ink readers so it's not like you'll be loading them up with large media anyway (and the media player was a joke anyway)
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that the Kindle is an excellent device primarily because it does one thing - its an eReader. I don't normally write all over my paper books and have no desire to do so on the Kindle either. Far from a luddite, I've got a ton of technology devices, but sometimes simple task-focussed pieces are better. My paperwhite is easy on the eyes, the battery lasts for a long time, its very lightweight, and I never have to troubleshoot it or wonder why its various components aren't playing well with each other.
Not every device needs to expand its footprint until all are equal. Want to read on a Fire or an iPad? Feel free. Don't try to turn the regular Kindle into a poor version of one of those.
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What I got from this.
I want a supercomputer, that is small and lightweight, full of every sort of sensors and inputs, has excellent battery life, and needs to be priced very cheaply.
In short, I don't realize I live in a world where you can get everything for nothing, and you need to make tradeoffs in life.
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I believe that the Kindle is an excellent device primarily because it does one thing - its an eReader.
If it supported ePub natively, the Kindle would be a real eReader.
In reality, it's a device for consuming Amazon content.
Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
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"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'"
-- Henry Ford (unsourced)
You don't write on books because it's permanent and possibly damaging; Post-Its caught on as a way to work around that.
The (e-ink) Kindle solves the speed+versatility vs power+weight compromise by specializing in a task that requires little of the first two. Arguably, virtual Post-Its don't require a change to that compromise; a better, more interoperable implementation doesn't cost extra.
PC integration? Sure, just sync in a simple, flexible way (i.e., not iTunes) to a PC/Mac app or to your account through
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Have you tried a Kindle Paperwhite?
Works great in both low and high light.
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I use the Kindle app on my Android phone. I would never buy a standalone reader because I read when it's convenient. My phone is almost always with me and fits in my pocket.
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My iphone's great for reading on the road, but at home, I prefer the Kindle's larger screen.
It's a reader, not a writer (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing I would want them to improve on the kindle is the speech output.
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I think that's for the note takers, either for book clubs or for electronic textbooks.
...paper replacement (Score:5, Insightful)
All I want is a paper replacement.
There are large e-ink displays, but they all lack high resolution input - as high as a 0.5mm pencil can get you.
15 years after I graduated, I still carry engineering paper, and I get it from the same bookstore. All that's changed is I take pictures of my notes instead of scan them now.
Come on Apple - want to innovate? Figure that one out. I triple dog dare you.
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Problem is, Apple was just given the smackdown by the DoJ.
No doubt they're not going to be pursuing anything that i
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Dead wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
While your suggestions speak to my inner geek, I think if Amazon does add those features they will kill the kindle.
That product sold 40 million because it does NOT have those features. It is already far more convenient than using a paperback, looks bright enough to read even in low light conditions, and can hold tons of books. For those 40 million people who bought a Kindle, that's more than enough. Add more features and you'll make the product cumbersome, suddenly it needs more processing power, suddenly battery life sucks...
No, I say the Kindle should remain as it is, and this simplicity is its strength.
No thank you to all that (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a kindle. I don't want it to be anything other than a book replacement. I don't want to input text, annotations (in fact I think ebooks are horrible for anything you would annotate, like a textbook- you need to be able to flip through those), or anything else. I care only about ease of reading the text and battery life (where it excels). If I wanted a tablet, I'd get a tablet.
About the only thing I'd want changed is faster page loading times and better tools for organizing books (list of authors and series, for example) that I've bought.
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I agree.
One thing I do NOT want is a touch screen. I don't want my screen to be covered in fingerprints.
One thing I would like is the ability to have a (wired) remote page turn button - so when I'm reading in bed I don't have to move my hands from a comfortable position to turn the page.
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You mean like how the iDevices are tied to the iTunes Music Store and a very limited, non-expandable audio and video format?
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Oh come on. Books have never been "vendor neutral." Publishers for many hundred years have done all kinds of weasely things.
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Check out Calibre one of these days.
Calibre's conversion to .mobi or .azw3 leaves a lot to be desired. It basically re-formats the entire book so it's completely generic...every book looks the same. Part of this is due to the horrid older .mobi format that Amazon used (among other things, no support for discrete font sizes, only old-style HTML font sizing), but part of it is Calibre.
It's also a pain if you have multiple Kindles of different ages, as you would need to convert multiple times unless you want to live with only that really bad ol
I Fail to See ... (Score:3, Informative)
If note taking in books was such a massively popular thing, we'd see more books with large margins for doing just that. Reading is a largely relaxing activity
What is being described here is more of a "goto E-reader" for research and/or students. Those aren't features I need when reading the latest novel. The notes or highlights I do take are minimal enough that I don't need anything too special, and certainly nothing that makes this the central aspect of my E-reader. Amazon did a pretty good job of understanding that people (the majority of readers at least) didn't want or need a ton of bells and whistles out of an e-reader. They needed something as similar to a book as possible. The book has been around for centuries and done a pretty good job, after all.
How about some e-Ink ones? (Score:2)
What the OP suggests would probably be doable with existing hardware. This is more of an iOS/Android update than designing a new device from scratch.
IMHO, everyone wants something different in an e-Reader. For example, some want a tablet with a Nook app. Others want an e-Ink device that is easy on the eyes that can be held in one hand like a paperback and has a simple, efficient, no-frills UI.
I'd like a rev of e-Ink devices myself. We have plenty of media-playing items, and if one wants to run apps and
What I would like in a Kindle (Score:2)
Extra storage via microSDxc
HDMI out
some other way of charging besides microUSB (although it could still use microUSB for connecting to other devices. )
miniUSB is way more reliable for charging, the microUSB cables just fall out if you breathe.
And something all android tabs need - a Hard Reset Button for when it locks up, and you have to wait for the battery to go flat before you can use it again.
Disclaimer: I have a Fire HDX 8.9" and I am generally happy with it apart from mentione
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I don't recognize your problem with the microUSB kabel falling out.
Occasionally I hang mine (Kindle Paperwhite 2) in the charging cable at work, and it haven't fallen out yet.
And doesn't most tablets support "holding down the power button" for hard reset, much like a power button on PC does?
Both my iPad and Nexus does.
They have those. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're called tablets. :-P
Maybe you need tablet, not ebook reader? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebook readers (the real ones based on e-ink) are good as they are. The less features the better, bookmarks and integration with vocabularies are enough for reading through a book.
If you need fancy stuff - get a tablet, it has features that you mentioned and much more.
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A good PDF engine is one that displays the document exactly the same way on every screen or printout, that is what the PDF specification demands. A bad PDF engine rearranges words on the page, changes fonts or font sizes, or removes margins in order to make it easier to read.
Personally, I want a PDF reader that can detect and automatically chop off margins and the binding-side gutter in order to maximize space for text (or at least allow me to manually set even/odd page clipping rectangles
The gillette razor/iPod problem (Score:3)
Everyone rampaged around looking for an iPod killer and we never got one, until apple made the iphone, and popularized the convergence that everyone else had been trying to popularize in smartphones for years.
Samsung tried to make an iPhone killer, but could never really be successful without the true killer: Google Play/Android Marketplace
The iPod wasn't "the thing," iTunes was.
The Gillette Razor handle isn't "the thing" the cartridges are
The kindle isn't "the thing" the bookstore is.
Trying to beat the kindle with better hardware is completely missing the point. Even more so with the fact that Kindle has an app for most devices that lets you read stuff you buy from Amazon anyway (and vice versa).
The kindle is king because nobody (yes I am counting barnes and noble as "nobody") has any reason whatsoever to compete with it.
Why Apply Doesn't Make An EReader (Score:2)
I want a simpler KIndle (Score:2)
My problem with the Kindle Touch that changing pages frequently invokes some unwanted function. It is infuriating to change page and get the Change Font, or Annotate, or Save Clipping dialogs. I understand that some users like these functions. I don't, I hate them. I wish I could switch them off.
Keep Kindle as a single purpose device (Score:2)
Seriously. The current Kindle does one job - reading long texts for leisure - really, really well, and is pretty much crap at anything else.
The e-ink display is very restful to read for long periods, even in bright sunlight and gives incredible battery life, but at the expense of a glacial refresh rate and the need for pixels to be regularly cycled to black. Its no good whatsoever for the sort of fluid touch interface that you'll see in a 'proper' tablet or smartphone.
The Kindle is my go-to device for 'si
OP should get a blog (Score:2)
This is slashdot, damnit.
40 million sold? Bullshit (Score:2)
Amazon has never told anyone how many kindles they've sold. Where did that 40 million number come from?
Good news -- they exist! (Score:3)
They're called "tablets" and "tablet PCs".
What, you think handwriting recognition and voice recognition are cheap? That they're no-consequence modules that can be simply bolted on to another device that somehow, magically, doesn't impact cost, performance, battery life, or complexity of use? And that adding handwriting recognition to the e-reader app itself is easy? LOL. "Low-hanging fruit?" Hardly.
Do you REALLY think OEMs want to make yet ANOTHER class of device that fits between tablet computers and dedicated e-readers? How large do you think the market is for a device that does more than an e-reader and less than a tablet? It's already a pretty compact market space with razor-thin margins. The low-end for tablets (7"+) that aren't complete junk is about $99 and the high-end is $299. (8" iPad mini) Low-end tablet PC laptops start around there. (As will the Surface, on clearance, soon. :D ) Super-cheap tablets and dedicated e-readers go down to about $59. Don't look for another product category -- especially not one with such limited appeal -- to be squeezed into this narrow range any time soon.
Nonsense (Score:3)
I would've included battery life, but that's been a solved issue with the Kindle from the beginning.
None of the "killer" features listed would do a damn to improve the reading experience, and some of them would be very annoying. Didn't the whole Siri debacle finally demonstrate that no one wants to yell at their devices?
I have a kindle killer already (Score:2)
I refer to it as an iPad
Why not ask for a Jet Engine on a Motorcycle? (Score:2)
First, I concur, I don't understand how something like this actually makes the news page.
Second, it sounds like they want an iPad, not a Kindle.
The poster misses the entire point of Kindle, and why it's done so well - it's for people that mainly want to read books. They added Fire to the lineup for folks that want to consume other media, as well. But there is no reason for it to have something like voice control - since it's mainly a book reading device, do you really need voice control to tell it to wh
It nearly exists (Score:2)
The EARL is pretty close an android with an eink display that lights up. So you can read a book on a good display and have the OS and processor to do pretty much everything but gaming and watching videos.
Missed the obvious (Score:2)
I would like to *easily* print pages from a kindle ebook.
no (Score:2)
No... you're not the target audience. The kindle is perfect for what it was designed to do which is sell you books. It's incredibly easy to search for, find and read books on the device. All the additional features you're talking about would get in the way of those core functions. I have 3 kindles, and I spend the majority of my time in each of them actually reading. (who'd have thunk?) The touch capable ones are super annoying because... well... touching the screen does stuff... and while reading a 2000+ p
I don't want any of that. (Score:2)
I have one of the older e-Ink, Wi-Fi only Kindles. Still has a physical keyboard, which I rarely use. My wife has the ad-supported one with no keyboard, and she doesn't seem to miss it.
The old e-ink kindle is great. I love it. They nailed the user scenario for me -- it is actually _better_ than a physical book. I can use it anywhere I'd use a physical book, I rarely worry about battery life. It's easier to read than a real book when laying on my side in bed.
I am completely uninterested in a color e-re
I want a REAL kindle killer (Score:2)
I've owned several e-readers, and I love them for what they are -- a book replacement. For me it's all about having a high contrast, readable screen with excellent battery life, and e-ink instead of any kind of light-emitting display. I've used one each of a Sony, Kindle, and Kobo.
In every case, I've loved the hardware, but the software drives me insane.
Mostly I want all my reader software to talk to Calibre (or some other central database) to sync the last page read, keep notes on which books I've read a
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The only reason the kindle can be sucky is because Amazon's got a grip on the content now. Doesn't matter that the competition can be faster, better, flashier, etc., it's all about the content, and Amazon's locking it up faster with authors and dumping it to lock in more customers.
Nonsense! There's plenty of free content to be had. And there's plenty of "grey" content to be had if you lean that way.
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Is the kindle really sucky though? it's a simple device that was designed and engineered to do one thing very well, deliver content purchased from amazon quickly and easily. (Ok it does two things, it lets you read books also.)
In all seriousness though, my Luddite father is an avid reader, and even he loves his Paperwhite. If someone like him (who asks 'do i right click or left click?' when opening a file) enjoys using a kindle, it clearly is doing its job.
As parent said though, Amazon does have a vice-li
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Because Kindles are cheap and Surface is not.
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For reading books, I'm not going to get a full blown Windows device that costs several hundred dollars. Heck, for just reading, I think my Nexus 7 is way overpriced, but because I use it for other things like remote administration, it serves multiple purposes.
Re:Get a surface, or a Note (Score:2)
For what the OP wants to do, he wants a Surface. Or just an app for the Note series of tablets. Both have digitizers (which means a real pen interface for note taking), and both require only an app which allows annotation. Get someone to write a note-taking app similar to what ForScore for the iPad does with musical scores. You can even match an audio file to the score. The problem isn't hardware, it's software, unless you have an absolute need for an e-ink screen with this device. A dedicated device with
Surface is crap, according to our real world users (Score:3)
My employers bought a couple of the Microsoft "Surface" boxes.
They got passed around, starting with the CEO, proceeding through around ten professional IT staff, and then through business middle management, then through the secretarial staff. Each of these users decided that the surface was not meeting their needs and gave it back, and we gave it to the next starry-eyed patsy.
Now they sit in a drawer in the IT support room, and every time some new hire comes in we ask them if they'd prefer a conventional l
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Actually, Google does have an eBookstore: Google Play Books [google.com]. They also sell Movies, TV shows, and music on their Google Play store.
Re:Low hanging fruit but where's the juice? (Score:5, Informative)
That's odd. Since in the last year I've read several novels, not to mention technical papers, essays and a few non-fiction books... all on my Nexus 7. Don't install much in the way of apps, and see no more ads on it than I do on my notebook or desktop.
Oh, I get it. You had this incredible attack against tablets, and you're not actually interested how they may be used on the ground. Do carry on with your biased and self-serving arguments.
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How about compared to a book?
Or compared to an e-Reader after you pay the extra $20 for them to quit bothering you with ads?
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And what ads are these? I use the Kobo and Kindle apps, and the only ads I see are in their home/library screens, where they have book recommendations (most of the time having nothing to do with anything I actually read). Once I select an ebook I don't see ads at all.
You must be using some weird hardware.
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No kidding. I use both the Kobo and Kindle apps, and while they bring up recommendations if you are in their "home" screens, I never see them while actually reading the book.
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Hisense Sero 7 Pro 7" Tablet (Score:3)
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If all I'm doing is reading, my battery life is pretty damned long. As with any tablet, it's about all the other crap you might have running. I do agree that e-ink has its advantages depending on lighting conditions, but the first thing I learned was to switch to black background with white text, which solved some of the problems.
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I am trying to improve tablets for reading books. I recently wrote Android drivers for a novel pressure sensor mounted under the LCD on a tablet so that you can switch pages by pressing firmly on the screen allowing you to change pages without changing your grip. People are working on this.
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No, this is where you keep your finger in exactly the same place but just apply a little extra force.
The Kindle 1 had this. It was called a "button".
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What a load of bollocks, seriously.
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Yep. I don't think the wife ever logs into the PC anymore, unless a site is so badly engineered she can't use it on the Nexus 7.
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Pads and Palms (Score:5, Insightful)
lpress wants a Kindle, but with "speech recognition for commands and text entry, a well-designed database for marginal notes and annotations, and integration with laptop and desktop computers."
That's not a Kindle, which is a single-purpose machine for reading; that is a general purpose machine. Apple already makes the machine desired: it's the iPad.
Handwriting as an input method would be nice too
Ah, now you're re-inventing the late lamented "Newton", not to mention the Palms of yesteryear (where the "handwriting" had to be in their unique graffiti alphabet)
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/... [amazon.com]