Amazon to release new Kindle in two weeks

Hope you didn't get paid for that "informative" article

I'll get one at Wally World when they are $99.99

Agree. What article? The headline told me more. Stop wasting my time.

Whammo's got it right. They're too expensive, too small, and have no backlighting.

I'd rather buy a netbook, or buy books used.

Not to mention the DRM lock in... don't forget, Amazon prohibits typical book usage like loaning, resale, and even viewing on *other devices*! So, you are not supposed to move Kindle ebooks to any other device. You are locked into their fancy device, and into their ebooks.

Kindle? No thanks.

Complaining that the Kindle doesn't have backlight is like complaining your car isn't edible; that "feature" would defeat the whole point! It is supposed to look like paper because backlit screens are inherently harder on the eyes. And last time I checked books weren't backlit either. The kindle isn't trying to be an oversized PDA; it's trying to be a book. And unlike books, you can keep a booklight clipped to the cover that is always pointing at the page you are reading. Using clip booklights is just awkward with real books.

The areas where people who actually use the kindle want improvements are:

Screen contrast: The background is greyish, not white, which is hard to read in dark areas (but great at the beach since it doesn't have as much glare as white paper)

Faster page turns: It is almost as slow as turning the page in a real book. A faster screen refresh would be nice.

PDF support: Hard to use on the small screen since scrolling around would be awkward, but at least you could use pdfs. The conversion amazon offers from pdf break all academic papers that have charts. Pdf better be on the 8.5x11 kindle one they had rumors about.

Price: Cheaper would be nice. Or at least they could make the first 20 books free.

No DRM would be nice, but the reason you can't loan it like a real book is because you can't duplicate a real book and give it to all your friends while retaining a copy like you can with digital files. Of course you can't resale; with not DRM you could resell the book over and over again. And no one would buy it because they could get it online for free anyway.

Ignore the flamers. I, for one, am glad to know about this.

There are a few things I want in an e-reader before I jump in and buy one. First and foremost, I want it to be like a magazine, I don't give a damn about moving pictures. That's the major thing. If it's about the size of a sheet of paper, that's fabulous, I'm more about having more books with less clutter than anything else. If it's capable of behaving similarly to a regular sheet of paper than that is absolutely fabulous and makes it worthy of my money with just that ability alone. (Assuming, of course, that it can store multiple "pages")

Basically, and I'm sure other people are the same way, I want a Star Trek Padd(I seem to remember them spelling it with two ds, as if it's been patented in the Star Trek universe). Yes, a Star Trek Padd would be awesome.

We are slowly beginning to realize the Star Trek universe's technology in our own literal universe. Obviously, there may be some things that are more out there than others(especially since the first Star Trek seemed to be more about political commentary than the later ones), but we are continuously expanding beyond our previous knowledge and perceived limits.

Part of being human is that our reach must necessarily always exceed our grasp.