Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Another eReader Update

I gotta get out of this habit of doing two and three posts in a day. However, I'd just finished publishing my post about MSN's www.live.com search engine when I saw an item too delicious to ignore.

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I am very interested in the development of eReaders. My personal belief is that the only thing standing between an explosion in popularity of eBooks is the release of a really user-friendly eReader.

I last blogged about this on July 24th and July 27th in posts titled "An Update on eReaders" and "Follow-Up on eBook Readers."

Today, I have links to TWO of the upcoming eReaders.

The first is the Sony PRS-500. The release of this eReader has already been delayed multiple times. Its expected retail price is around $350, and there are rumors that it will be released later this month. Sony still states its expected debut is scheduled for "around the holidays."

Sony has published a photo on their site, but Make magazine has a better look at it on their site here:

I printed the Sony's specs on July 27th. It's reported to be 6.9" by 4.9" by .5" with a weight of 8.8 ounces.

There has been a lot of grumbling among authors in recent weeks as books, which had been carried on Amazon.com, suddenly disappeared from the site. The rumor was that Amazon is moving all books marketed on their site to their proprietary format (Mobipocket). I suspect this is Amazon's way of providing support to both their format and their upcoming eReader, Kindle.

Engadget got a look at the Kindle and has a photo here:

Engadget also gives the specs for the Kindle. The size is 4.9" by 7.5" by .7", making it slightly larger than Sony's eReader. Its weight is 10.2 ounces, making it slightly heavier than the eReader. Still no word on the launch date or the price.

Stay tuned. I'll provide more details as they come available.

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