Portable Ebook Reader

Samsung E6 and E101 are the first e-book readers from the manufacturer which were recently revealed at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Both e-book devices are touchscreens: the Samsung E6 comes with 6-inch E-ink display, while the E101 features 10-inch one. Unlike other portable devices, Samsung E6 and E101 were introduced with handwriting capabilities directly onto the display. The tool allowing users to annotate their reading selections, calendars and to-do lists is an electromagnetic resonance (EMR) stylus pen which utilizes EMR technology. The Korean giant was also serious about low power consumption of e-books’ displays delivering natural reflect light similar to that of printed paper.

The Samsung e-readers support a wide range of file formats include e-pub, PDF/a, TXT, BMP and JPG. The E6 and E101 are equipped with Samsung’s text-to-speech (TTS) built-in technology. Both models come with Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) capability allowing customers download books and newspapers wirelessly as well as transfer them from other devices thanks to built in Bluetooth 2.0. The readers are powered with 2GB internal memory and microSD memory card with maximum 18GB storage. The company’s partnership with Google means there is a lot of content available for E6 and E101 users. When speaking about battery it may deliver up to two weeks of use only with 4 hours of charging.

Samsung E6 should be available in March for $399 with black and white colors. The 10-inch version of E6 will cost $599.

Speaking about digital readers, you may have noticed new marketing models for e-books being developed as of 2010 and bringing along new electronic gadgets that take the world by storm. E-readers can enhance the reading experience with their design and form, ease of use, and advanced features. Having the world’s largest e-readers series IRex Technologies pick all the incredible features you’ve come to expect in IRex digital reader.

Coming in the market at the end of the first quarter 2010, the impressive IRex Digital Reader 1000s is the largest, yet thinnest e-reader ever and it is packed with features. The 1000s completely substitutes paper, not only featuring store ebooks and different documents, but also letting you to make your own handwritten notes in your documents. Yes, you are not mistaken; using a conventional pen, you will write on your digital paper as you would on original. Let’s continue see other interesting details that are starting to emerge in IRex’s new reading device.

The 1000s e-book reader is a light as a real book, has a sleek design and easy to hand it everywhere. Dimensions of the 1000s include being only 1.2cm deep and weighing less than 570 grams. As sharp and natural as reading ink on paper, user will enjoy DR1000s digital reader and will be able to get access to the largest online newspaper kiosk offering over 1020 newspaper titles from 81 countries, including The Telegraph, Washington Post, USA Today, Die Welt, NRC Handelsblad, Le Figaro and The Wall Street Journal Europe.

One of the most obvious distinctions you will find on the IRex DR1000s is its huge screen. At 10.2 inches, this e-book offers ideal reading experience almost with any digital document, even A4 or letter-sized documents look great on the IRex digital reader. IRex have integrated Wacom Penabled touch sensor input with stylus. Use its stylus to navigate freely around your digital library, or even to annotate your books and documents and manually enter your notes. Around the edge of the screen you will find also nine capacitive buttons that are dedicated to fingertip use.

A good e-reader starts with a good base- an exceptional operating system. Interestingly, the iLad runs an open Linux operating system, allowing developers to create third party applications for it. Still, the company was serious about that level of functionality, it would surely have provided some enhanced features beyond. The IRex digital reader is a great device for its intended purpose of document management in a fully electronic office. Currently supported formats include PDF, Mobipocket, TXT, HTML JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF and BMP and is expected additional formats to be supported in the future. All these file format documents can be directly printed into a readable format on your IRex Digital Reader, allowing you the convenience to always have all your paperwork at hand.

For connectivity 1000s is equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and features a basic browser. The 1000s don’t have wireless access to an ebook store but as noted above, IRex 1000s will have access online newspaper kiosk offering over 1020 newspaper titles from 81 countries. The digital reader comes with 2GB of storage, which should hold around 1,500 books. The battery used is a lithium iod and with software version 1.0 the reader consumes about 150 mA per hour, resulting in about 8 hours of battery life.

The IRex digital reader 1000s finally offers a way for companies and individuals to cut out the billions of pages of printed paper they produce each year. The IRex digital reader 1000s can be a great choice for the business professional, offering great readability for large digital documents, a lightweight design, and connectivity. It does, however, retail for $750 USD.

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Plastic Logic is a spin-off company from the Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory and specializes in polymer transistors and electronics. Plastic Logic’s Mission is to lead a revolution in the way people acquire, organize and consume information. The headquarters of Plastic Logic is in Mountain View, California.

Plastic Logic unveils QUE, the first proreader designed for the business professional. QUE is built using unique plastic electronics technology, and was designed to have the benefits of paper, but without weight and clutter. The Plastic Logic QUE ebook reader was designed by industrial design firm IDEO and is the best-looking device in its category.

The QUE borrows a certain Apple-like quality as it’s both extremely thin and very minimalist. The Plastic Logic QUE is an e-reader that enables you to carry reading material wherever you go. After three different debuts, we know QUE will be size of 1/3 inch thick and weighting 16 oz (453 grams), less than many periodicals (about a pound). Besides compact size the QUE is also a beautiful device. The company clearly put a lot of effort into everything from the design to one-touch navigation.

QUE features a crisp, clear screen that looks and reads just like paper. QUE has a lighter 10.7 inch display which is possible more durable than a glass screen. The screen displays your latest emails and calendar, pulled from Outlook along with your favorite subscriptions and books. The user is able to interact with the documents with the touch of a finger. Today the QUE has the largest E link display among ebook readers, as well as the touchscreen interface.

The device’s touchscreen display includes a virtual onscreen keyboard allowing the user to add notes, to include comments, highlight text, scribble free form, and even add a stamp to emphasize a point. No stylus is needed for the QUE.

Plastic Logic’s strategy is to aim its product at business professionals, given the large screen and support for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDF. Plastic Logic has also given it email and calendar support, together with Outlook sync. QUE users will be able to connect to content and download wirelessly via Wi-Fi and AT&T’s 3G network, the nation’s fastest 3G mobile broadband network. With the QUE software, it’s easy to quickly transfer content from your PC, Mac computer, or BlackBerry smartphone to your QUE.

The company has also lined up a host of business publications to provide content for its platform, including the Dow Jones Company and The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and All Things Digital, Forbes, and Fast Company. The standard 4GB model can hold 35,000 documents or so, and an 8GB version pumps that up to 70,000 or so and the latest adds 3G connectivity. As nice as it is, Plastic Logic promise to reveal the Plastic Logic QUE in March. Preorders for the QUE proreader will be priced at $649 USD for the 4GB model with Wi-Fi or $799 USD for the 8GB model with both Wi-Fi and 3G.

Here’s the original preview article we posted in May 2009 about the QUE. Seems like Plastic Logic is really taking their time to get it perfect.

Are you tired of carrying around multiple gadgets? Nowadays, people of all ages use many different technological devices. An average person usually has at least one cell phone, an audio or video player (an iPod perhaps), an e-book reader, a laptop, and the like. What if I tell you that there will be a gadget available that can serve as your audio/video player and recorder, e-book reader and a netbook or notepad - all in one? Will you be interested? If so, then this is for you.

Come March 2010, this device will be out in the market. It is called the enTourage eDGe, the world’s first dualbook. As I mentioned, this will combine features of an eBook or an electronic reader, a notepad/netpad and an audio/video player and recorder, letting you read, send emails, and instant messages, listen to music or watch videos, surf the net, take digital notes, and a lot more - anytime, anywhere! What more can you ask for? As for file transfers back and forth your enTourage eDGe, you can use an SD card or a USB flash drive, it also has the netbook feature so no worries about all those limitations of other e-readers.

Having the netbook feature allows you to view images, a contact list function, an alarm clock, a library to manage your files, and even open a virtual keyboard. This enTourage eDGe dualbook also is flexible in the sense that it allows other applications to be installed, it lets you flip through pages around 180 degrees, and it’s so portable that it fits easily in backpack, briefcase, or even a tote bag. Some say that the main advantage of this enTourage eDGe is that it has two screens. You can allow a different application to run on one screen and read an eBook on the other. With your stylus, you can also take notes. It lets you go back and forth between two screens, plus you can annotate texts and create bookmarks as well.

At about $500, this device is indeed very impressive. Just by looking at its specifications, you are sure to be awed. It has a dimension of 8.25″ by 10.75″ by 1.0″ when closed, approximately 3 lbs, has an internal memory of 4GB, a 1024 x 600 pixels LCD touchscreen display, uses Penabled / Wacom as input, powered by a Lithium-ion battery which lasts 16+hours when using the e-reader and up to 6 hours when running the LCD screen, and has a 3.55mm audio/microphone jack. It runs the Linux with Google Android operating system, plays audio formats such as mp3, wav, 3gpp, mp4, acc, ogg, m4a and video formats such as 3gp, mp4, and Adobe Flash lite.

The enTourage eDGe is something new in the market, actually, it has yet to be released. I tried to research about it and some say that there are still bugs that needs to be ironed out, but like any othertech gadget these days, there’s no bug that an update cannot fix. And besides, the makers still have one more month to fix ‘em, and by that time I bet all will be well. We cannot really tell as of now, March 2010 is a month away to judge it by ourselves. But as the saying goes, “Knowing is just half the battle”, so let’s just wait and see.

Have you ever gotten irritated by piles of books and papers in front of your desk waiting to be read? Have you ever been upset by loosing very important information due to the fact that the paper where you wrote it down was thrown out? Well, I have and I know that this must stop. So I went online and looked for different gadgets and devices. I ended up seeing this magnificent gadget that sure suits my need. It’s the iLiad 2nd Edition by IREX Technologies.

Just as I needed, the iLiad is an electronic device that can basically substitute paper. The main feature is to store ebooks and different documents. It doesn’t end there though. Aside from its electronic paper display style, you can transfer documents, annotations, and comments between this iLiad devices and even computers, it supports other media application such as sudoku or crosswords, plus you can switch between portrait and landscape settings. Another thing I like is the fact that I can read newspapers on it - not just local newspapers, but international! It has this devise to devise compatibility, so that when you for example needed someone to edit a part of a document, you just need to annotate it and pass it on, then it can be corrected. And take note, it isn’t just compatible with iLiad devices, but to other computers as well. As for technical support, you can log into MyiRex so that you will have free access to updates and softwares you can encorporate with it. Something that did not strike my attention that much is the fact that it only has a little available internal memory, and that the battery life is only around 15 hours, compared to others that may last weeks and has gigabytes of storage.

The specifications are quite impressive. The display is 8.1 inch diagonal and has a 768 x 1024 pixel resolution, 160 DPI. It uses an Intel 400MHz XScale processor with 64MB RAM. Internally, it has 128MB flash memory accessible to the user. It may seem small, but it is indeed expandable MMC cards. This device has a built-in rechargeable Lithium Ion battery which takes which takes about 3 hours to charge via a power adapter. It also has a built-in stereo speaker and a built in WiFi 802.11B/G wireless network ability. As per price range, it is usually about $599 - $699, depending on where you desire to purchase.

Overall, I can say this is one magnificent device. It may fall short on some aspects, but it definitely was able to catch up with its other “wow” features. This is something to recommend to someone irritated by dozens of books to read and comments to write. I can say that this is indeed a must have for book lovers.

The iLiad 2nd Edition can be found at:

• i-Pmart for $539 USD
• Amazon for $599 USD

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As anticipated, Amazon recently announced the release of the brand, spankin’ new Kindle DX! It’s now available for preorder at Amazon for $489.

“Personal and professional documents look so good on the big Kindle DX display that you’ll find yourself changing ink-toner cartridges less often,” said Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos. “Cookbooks, computer books, and textbooks - anything highly formatted - also shine on the Kindle DX. Carry all your documents and your whole library in one slender package.”

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