When I buy an e-reader, I like…
- simplicity;
- versatility in file formats;
- being able to use the damn thing while it is tethered to a computer for the purpose of charging its battery;
- it to respect any directory structure I have put on any media I may insert into it.
Because I do not like…
- being told to hand over personal data to a company in order to use a device I already have paid for;
- you even having the opportunity to track my reading habits, my poor taste in novels, interest in questionable political economical theory and penchant for boring PhD theses are all mine and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much;
- being stuck to a particular operating system to manage my documents;
- having to browse through thousands of titles when I insert a SD-card into it that happens to contain about 16 GB of PDFs (I am looking at you, iRiver);
- being forced to use a particular ‘desktop application’ to manage my stuff on the damn thing (I am looking at you, Kobo).
It is all really easy: make it a USB mass storage device, allow the user to catalog documents through its directory structure and make it as stand-alone as possible. If you want to add a book store, cloud storage and all that crap, by all means do so, but make it bloody optional and not mandatory. That will be all.
