Following up on a comment by Myke Cuthbert and a previous post at TechCrunch, here is my wishlist for an ideal eReader / Internet tablet. This list is compiled from a research / academic perspective, so I guess that basically everyone who is in academia or research will be a potential customer. Hopefully academic publishers in the humanities and social sciences will increase their efforts in digital publishing so that we scholars don’t have to travel with one suitcase full of books, microfilms, and photocopies all the time :-)

Hardware

• thin and leight-weighted
• large screen (letter/a4) that can be rotate in iPhone fashion
• touch screen (I agree with Myke that a pen is not entirely necessary, but why not make it optional?)
• color screen (important for scans of documents)
• wifi (obviously)
• large storage (500 GB and up)
• USB/Firewire for direct transfer
• linux-based (like NOKIA’s N800)
• no shiny screen, please!!! (who came up with these in the first place?!)
• no sound for longer battery life
• integrated scanner for scanning ISBN and title information

Software

• Open architecture (for third-party software)
• Firefox
• Bibliographic management (Zotero, JabRef, et alia)
• Adobe Reader
• Image viewing software
• Software keyboard
• Handwriting recognition
• ISBN scanner software
• Newspaper, journal, and magazine subscription software
• bundle all subscriptions
• automatic download

Wouldn’t a tool like this make your life much easier? Please let me know what your thoughts are!