I Want a Kindle Killer

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.

Re:The Nook is/was excellent

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Hell, I don't think that there's anything wrong with the Kindle. When I'm looking to relax at the end of the night, I don't want a multitasker. My Kindle does one thing and one thing only, it lets me read my novels and keeps them synced with my Windows 8 (shudder) tablet at work for when I get bored at lunch. If I want to make annotations, read comics or tech books, I reach for my Nexus 7. If I had to do it all over again, I'd do it with a Nook and use MoonReader+ to keep everything synced. If Kindle weren't first to market with the Paperwhite, I'm sure I'd be a happy Nook owner now.

Kindle had some better features pre-touch.

[spd_rcr]

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.