Amazon Lowers Price Of International Kindle, Drops US Version
By Chris Scott Barr
Are you tired of e-reader news yet? Well since I can’t hear anything other than the voice inside my head, I’m going to assume you’ve answered no. Well as a follow-up to my piece on the Nook the other day, I thought you might find it interesting to know what Amazon did actually think. While they’ve not responded with words, they have done a little trimming to both the selection and price of their Kindle.
Amazon has decided that they no longer need two versions of the regular-size Kindle, so they have dropped one. The International Kindle has had its price lowered to $259, while the US-only version was kicked to the curb. This brings it in line with the Nook, which I don’t regard as enough to help their cause. Yes, the Kindle has become something of a household name (in terms of e-readers), but if customers can get something with a touchscreen LCD (and other features) for the same price, they probably will.
Barns & Noble Announce ‘Nook’ eBook Reader
By Chris Scott Barr
The last month has been a pretty big one for e-book readers. Some of the highlights include Sony’s touchscreen e-reader, another from Irex and the international version of the Kindle. Well another big name has decided to throw their hat into the ring, and it’s a damn-good looking hat.
Barnes & Noble announced that they will be launching their own reader, dubbed ‘Nook’. The first thing you’ll notice about the Nook is that it has a pair of screens (not unlike the Alex Dual Screen we saw on Monday) instead of just the traditional one. There’s not much to say about the top 16-color e-ink screen, but the bottom is a full-color 3.5 inch touchscreen LCD. This can be used to browse through your library, or as a virtual keyboard for input.
The second screen isn’t the only thing the Nook has on most popular e-readers. In addition to having 3G service (through AT&T) for downloading content, it will also feature Wi-Fi. Why this has been left out of readers like the Kindle, I still don’t understand. As for content, it will support PDF’s natively, along with EPUB and various other eReader formats. They claim that you’ll have access to over a million ebooks.
Other notable features include 2GB of internal storage (expandable by 16GB via microSD), the ability to play MP3 audio (but no text-to-speech) and the ability to share books. That’s right, you can “loan” out an e-book to friends using compatible devices for up to 14 days at a time. How cool is that? The only requirement is that your friend needs to have a device that is running the Barns & Noble software.
The Nook is going to go on sale sometime in November for the price of $259. With all of these features, you have to wonder what’s going through Amazon’s mind right now.
[ Barns & Noble ]
Spring Design Alex Reader Hands On Video [Readers]
Such fantastic timing for the Spring Design Alex reader to show itself on video. Dual-display, Android…feels familiar and looks good too. Now if only we had some pricing and release info. [YouTube via Engadget]
Posted: October 20th, 2009
at 11:40pm by Rosa Golijan
Topics: Ebook, Ebooks, Spring Design Alex, Spring design alex reader, readers, spring design
Spring Design Announces The Alex Dual Screen eBook Reader
By Andrew Liszewski
I hope you’re not tired of eBook readers just yet, because something tells me the forecast for the next few months calls for a downpour of new models. But at least companies like Spring Design are keeping it interesting with their new Alex reader. It’s one of the first to include a 6-inch monochrome electronic paper display as well as a 3.5-inch full color LCD display just below it, combining the best of both worlds.
The device is powered by Google’s Android and allows full web browsing over WiFi or 3G, EVDO/CDMA and GSM mobile networks. An SD card slot ensures storage capacity is essentially infinite and a headphone jack as well as built-in speakers allows multimedia content to be enjoyed on the lower screen. And to prolong battery life, web content can be captured and cached from the LCD display and viewed on the EPD display instead. Pricing and availability weren’t announced, though the press release claims that “Spring Design is currently in discussion and enlisting major content partners and plans to release the Alex device for selected strategic partners by the end of this year.”
[ PR - Spring Design Announces Dual Screen E-book Reader, Hyperlinking Text with Multimedia ]
Que: Plastic Logic’s Capacitive-Touch Ebook Reader [Ebook Readers]
Plastic Logic is a dark horse in the ebook reader business, having shown off prototypes of a large, decent-looking capacitive touchscreen ebook reader. Today that reader gets a shiny black finish and an official name—Que.
Yes, they’re calling it the Que, not like “what” in Spanish, but like the letter Q, as in “queue.” It will have a letter-sized (8.5″ x 11″) screen that’s not only “shatterproof” but has a capacitive touch layer that does not appear to get in the way of the E Ink display. We saw this at the D conference back in July, and it looked great then—way better than Sony’s joke of an ebook touchscreen, and doesn’t require a stylus like IRex’s. Even so, Plastic Logic’s boss, Richard Archuleta, told me that the faint honeycomb you can see in the video we shot is now gone, too. It is, from what we can tell, the best ebook touchscreen out there.
Other features of the player include AT&T 3G and Wi-Fi, and the ability to sketch and play with documents. (See Blam’s video below for a general idea.) It will come in a sleek metallic black casing, like what would happen if a Naboo Cruiser went over to the Dark Side. The company is only showing off these teaser pics of the new look, though you can get a pretty good sense of the overall design by comparing the teaser pics with the prototype’s shape.
As nice as it is, Plastic says again and again that it is not going after the Kindle market. They promise to reveal, at CES in January, a comprehensive platform for mobile professionals, namely document management. The goal is to have this thing replace all of the pages that people print out when working away from their offices. Even though Barnes & Noble is a content partner, it seems reading pulp fiction on it will just be a side perk. As you can probably tell, this sort of pitch screams out that the as-yet-unannounced price will not be low. [Plastic Logic]
Posted: October 19th, 2009
at 12:51am by Wilson Rothman
Topics: Ebooks, Plastic logic que, Que reader, barnes and noble, ebook readers, plastic logic, que, que proreader
