Mr. Bezos:I was an early adopter of the Kindle and don’t regret my decision in the least. I carry it with me constantly in the tote bag attached to my wheelchair and delight in reading on the paratransit coming home from work (I nap on the way to work).But as happy as I am with the Kindle, I won’t be buying a Kindle 2 and I’ll tell you why. Your whole goal seems to have been to make it look as much like other e-readers on the market. Unnecessary. Also, I am unimpressed with text-to-speech. Oh, I’ll admit to having the odd audio book, but if I do it’s for the reader (David Brinkley reading his own book, for example). I read books quite well by myself, thank you, and will continue to do so using, of course, my Kindle.I’ll miss the SD slot, probably sacrificed for slimness, but I can understand the argument that, with Amazon’s policy of backing up all Kindle purchases, it’s not really necessary. Besides, it’s not all that hard to back them up to my PC if I want to.The expansion of the onboard memory is a plus, but not enough to tip the scale. The improved gray scale is doubtless nice, but again, not enough since you probably could’ve provided it on the original Kindle as well.But the biggest disappointment for me was the lack of an internal reading light. Now, we all know–or should–that e-ink can’t be backlit, but you could’ve included side rows of LED’s like the latest Sony. I have a Mighty Brite and it’s adequate, but there are problems with it, problems that an attached light would’ve solved.Now, I’ve mentioned the Sony e-reader and your response might be that I should get one if I’m dissatisfied with the Kindle. But I’m not dissatisfied with the Kindle and one of the main reasons I will not be is the Whispernet service. Keep that in place–and free–and that places much weight on your side of the scale.With that endorsement, however, comes a request. Stop hyping the number of books available for the Kindle. I haven’t checked the number today, but you and I both know that a large percentage of these are multiple editions of public domain works. Nothing wrong with those, but that leaves the reader with the dilemma of which edition to purchase for the best reading experience. Instead, please concentrate on getting more of what’s out there which may not be in public domain. One of my frustrations is having some works in a series (featuring the same characters) but not others. I downloaded the first book in a Victorian detective series by Will Thomas then discovered that the third and fourth are available for Kindle–but not the second. This is ridiculous; the Kindle would be perfect for having all the works by a given author so they could be read in order. But not if there are gaps in the sequence. I also discovered today that the works of some authors have been pulled from Kindle availability, presumably because of a controversy over the text-to-speech feature vis-a-vis audio books. Just more evidence that that feature was ill-conceived from the get-go.Alsoi, there’s apparently no way for the owner to change the battery on the Kindle 2. Did you really have to copy this feature from the i-Phone?So that’s why I won’t be buying a Kindle 2 and will wait hopefully for the Kindle 3. Of course, if my Kindle should break . . . .rollingkindle

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