At the January 2010 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the ebook reader was all the rage. These devices were then, just a few short months ago, considered to be the biggest trend in technology.  At the CES, there was a wall of ebook readers on display all over the floor and company reps could be heard proudly boasting of their particular ereader as they allowed eager show attendees to give them a whirl.  The air was filled with electricity and the e-reading device was all the rage!

That was then and this is now. We were expecting a flood of ebook readers to hit the market. So what happened? Did the Apple iPad launch pull the plug on the promising ebook reader world?

One of the most exciting ebook readers many people have been (and still are) waiting for is the Que from Plastic Logic.  The slick, super-thin and light reader features a flexible touchscreen display which was certain to make this ereader stand out from the crowd. The Plastic Logic Que should have been in the consumer’s hands by now, but it’s has been delayed repeatedly.  The only thing we are being told now is that the Que will be available ’sometime this summer’. Hmmm.
Another ereader that stirred up a lot of excitement at the CES was the Skiff. This unique e-reader is also thin and flexible that boasts a 3G connection. The Skiff was supposed to be sold in Sprint stores.  Well, now News Corp. is purchasing the Skiff publishing platform and it seems that the Skiff e-reader is not a part of that deal and that Hearst is looking for a buyer.  So until (and if)  someone buys the device,  the Que is sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust.

These are just two examples of how e-readers are seemingly vanishing into thin air.  What exactly did happen between the Consumer Electronic Show and now?  Many people think it was the Apple iPad that happened and maybe they’re right and maybe they’re wrong. Or, it could be that consumers simply lost interest or that many people just were not all that willing to part with a couple hundred dollars for a new piece of technology.  I tend to think it’s a little bit of all of the above and that perhaps even the shaky economy played a role.  But who knows, really?

What do you think is causing the delays in production of dozens of ebook readers?

I was one of the many skeptical people out there that said that the Apple iPad and ebook readers are simply not the same things. You cannot compare the two really as the iPad is a tablet that is designed for, well, playing games, viewing videos, listening to tunes, sending emails and surfing the net.  In my opinion it is a toy for Apple fans who have four or five hundred bucks to throw around.  It does have the ereading capability but I never dreamed that I would be reading the fact that Apple now is already responsible for nearly a quarter of all ebook sales.  Steve Jobs is quick to point out that a whopping  five million ebooks have already been downloaded onto the iPad  and it has only been on the market for a couple of months!

I own an iPod Touch. It’s a first generation Touch that I actually bought used on an online auction site from a young lady who was ditching it for a new iPhone.  The reason I bought it was to see how it did as a ebook reader. The first thing I did was to take the Apple upgrade so that the device had the same ‘guts’ so to speak as the gen 3 iPod Touch. I then downloaded Stanza and loaded a few free books onto the device. I actually was very impressed with the clarity, fast page turns and the opportunity to increase the font size of the text as well as dim or brighten the backlight.

So back to the more interesting news.  Apple is also set to expand its iBooks user base by offering the app to the iPhone and iPod touch users. So this means I can get the same note-taking and bookmarking features, only on my smaller screen and for free! It will be possible to buy a book on one device and then read it on a wide range of iDevices.

While not an Apple fan I do own one of their devices and I do like it.  I simply do not agree with Apple politics and the recent happenings with the ‘lost’ iPhone and how Apple reacted did not sit well with me.  But the fact remains that Apple is doing well with the iPad and obviously a whole lot of people are using it as a e-reading device in spite of the fact that it weighs a pound and a half.

What do you think? Are ebook readers doomed? Please leave your thoughts and comments!

The Aluratek Libre was originally being sold for about $245.00 but now Borders has announced that it will be collaborating with Aluratek to offer the Libre eBook Reader Pro for $119. The Reader Pro is now available for pre-order on the Borders website with shipments to take place in the beginning of July. The Libre will also be sold in Borders stores inside the specially-made digital shops called the “Area-e” in August.

The $119 price tag will make the Libre one of the lowest priced ebook readers on the market. Borders is planning on providing consumers with several choices in ereaders to make sure that anyone who wants one will be able to afford one.  Borders will offer up to ten devices by the end of 2010 which is great for anyone who does not have the normal $250 up to $500 to spend on a digital reader.

To refresh your memory, the Libre has the ability to play music, display digital photos, has an auto-off feature, a page advance function and an Reflect Light LCD technology with great battery life which allows you to continuously  read for up to 24 hours.  Libre owners will be able to download books at the Borders eBook store which is powered by Kobo. The Libre also offers lightening fast page turns on its five inch black and white screen.  Libre users love the fact that there is no flickering and flashes on pages turns which is one down side to e-ink screens – of which the Libre does not possess.

So, if you have been holding out for an inexpensive ebook reader that is very capable, then you may want to pre-order the Libre now.  It it not one of the market’s leading sellers but it does deliver on its promise of providing you with a pleasant digital reading experience, just minus the bells and whistles.

The new reader called the Pandigital Novel (nice name) offers an 800×600 resolution screen, an SD/MMC memory slot for expansion, Wi-Fi connectivity and 1 GB of on-board memory. Due to ship out in June 2010, the Android-powered Novel can handle PDF, ePub and HTML file formats.  While it has no 3G it does sport an ARM 11 processor. The Android OS means that there will be many apps, which is exciting and something to look forward to! You can not only download ebooks on the Novel, but you can also watch video in living color and show off your favorite photographs.

Pandigital already has a whole slew of retailers so you will be able to pick up the Novel at neighborhood stores such as Macy’s, Kohls or Costco.  Pandigital says that a another Novel is on the horizon later this year which will be an 2GB model and that will have access to AT&T’s Edge network which reaches 97% of the United States.  There is also a 6 inch Novel ereader being developed now.

Who knows? With a reasonable price of $199 and a color screen, maybe the Novel is just what is needed right now to rival the pricey iPad and the leading black and white e-readers such as the Kindle and all those that copied it.

The Bookeen Cybook Gen 3 ebook reader is one of the lightest ereaders on the market today. Marketed by the French company Bookeen, the Gen 3 carries the same basic hardware as many of the most popular ebook readers on the market.

The Cybook Gen 3 uses e-ink display technology to offer low-glare, high contrast viewing and  four greyscales on the display screen which is great for general reading but not so great for graphics, compared to sixteen greyscales that are on the other readers offered by Sony, Amazon and iRex.

The Bookeen Cybook Gen 3 was given an overall ‘Freak Score’ rating of 8.9 by testfreaks.com which is quite good for a little ereader with 512 MB of memory, and an SD card slot. The reason it did not get a 9 or higher is most likely due to the fact that the Gen 3 consists of a directory structure that makes it impossible to organize your books in sub directories. Instead, you are forced to keep everything in one big directory which can lead to a lot of confusion and overcrowding if you have downloaded a lot of material.

The Cybook Gen 3’s lithium ion battery is good for 8,000 page turns which is one of the best on the market and it also offers fast page turns which is a big plus in our book as no one wants to wait more than a second or two in order to go onto the next page.

The Gen 3 supports ten file format types and users can gain access to large collections of ebooks via different websites using the encrypted Mobipocket format featured. The Gen 3 sells for $350 which is a bit steep considering there is no wireless connectivity offered and the fact that it is basically just t a good, basic 6″ reader that looks nice and is thin and portable. You can easily find other readers on the market that are very similar to the Bookeen Cybook Gen 3 at far cheaper prices but the Gen 3 has enjoyed brisk sales, which goes to show that people who want a reliable and basic reader are still willing to fork out that kind of money – at least for now.

GoodReads gives the Bookeen CyBook Gen 3 a 4.3 star rating out of five stars. If the price was a bit lower, I would agree, but with the hefty price tag, I would rate it as average.

These results match up with other Kindle experiments being done elsewhere on college campuses. Students are reporting that they enjoy doing personal reading on the device, but that it simply doesn’t cut the cake when it comes to classroom work.

Students were given a Kindle DX instead of textbooks and paper handouts. There are seven schools in total that are taking part in the experiment. At the University of Virginia, the main concern expressed by the students was the fact that the device is too rigid for using in the classrooms where the Socratic method and case-based pedagogy is used, which requires students to be rather nimble.  Students complain that it is not easy to quickly change pages. Nor is it easy to quickly flip through graphs, charts and documents compared to paper.

A mid-study survey was conducted and when asked if they would recommend the Kindle DX to incoming students,  75 to 80% of the participating students said “no”.  When asked if they would recommend the device for personal reading, 90 to 95%  said “yes”.

What this study is telling us so far is that Amazon has a great electronic device available for people who wish to read their books, magazines and newspapers digitally, but it is not suitable for the typical, busy classroom.

Surprising? Not really.  I agree that with the technology we  now have with ereading devices, that they are indeed great for pleasure reading but are not all that practical for classroom use.  You can certainly flip through a paper book quickly when looking for information, fold the corners of the pages and quickly grab a pencil to make notes. The students simply feel that they are not practical  or all that convenient to use.  So, surely the team over at Amazon will probably be disappointed with the final findings of this experiment and it goes to show that it’s clearly new technology with tons of room for improvement.

All About Kindle

The Kobo can be pre-ordered now if you are anxious. Borders will launch its own ebook store in June and also plans to set up special areas in all of its brick and mortar stores to sell the Kobo and other ereaders this August.

The Kobo ebook reader will come pre-loaded with 100 titles – all classics. The Borders eBook store will consist of over one million books which shoppers will be able to purchase at its website as well as through free apps for various devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry and iPad as well as PCs.

The Kobo got some good remarks when various techie sites did a few hands-on reviews, although it was noted that sometimes the download times were a bit on the sluggish side.   If you are in no big rush to load books onto an electronic book reader, $150 will buy you a very capable reader sure to please.

The R7 features a seven inch LCD  800 x 600 resolution, capacitive  color touchscreen that will make reading magazines a wonderful experience as it is capable of rendering sixteen million colors. It is believed that there is a big market out there for ebook readers made specifically for magazine reading, and if Smart gets it right with this reader, it should do well – as long as the price is reasonable.

The Smart R7 will also support PDF files. There is not much information available about the device thus far as it is in development but as you can see by the photo, the case features four buttons on the bottom of the 7-inch screen and it supposedly will also come with a stylus that is built into the body.

Smart Devices is the manufacturer of some very popular tablets such as the SmartQ 5 and SmartQ 7. The latter currently sells for just $250, and we have just discovered that the R7 will sell for just under that price.

The Smart R7 will be tied to an online magazine store where you can buy and download digital magazines directly through the device via it’s on board Wi-Fi connectivity. It will also allow users to play 1080p video and music.

As soon as we find out some more specifics about the R7 such as specs, memory and such, we will update this post.

Executives at Microsoft have reportedly told their team who had been developing the Courier that the project was off. The tablet device had never been officially announced or even acknowledged by the software giant, but it sure did receive a fair share of publicity over the past few months, including from us here at Pulse on Tech.  The outed videos were really very impressive and had many of us waiting to hear about a price being set as well as a release date. Sigh.

The initial leak occurred last year when it was discovered that a prototype model was nearly finished being developed which allowed users to interact with the device both by touch and by pen.

Microsoft’s VP of Communications said recently that the company is always seeking new and innovative ideas and testing them, much like what was being done with the Courier.  He went on to say that the tablet device will be looked at for possible use in the future but that his company has no plans to build and release such a product now.

And that is too bad. The Courier showed signs of being a nifty device that could really take the electronics/mobile computing world by storm.  Maybe the idea was put on hold due to Apple’s huge success it is enjoying with the release of the iPad. We don’t know and we may never know, so rest in peace Courier, it was nice getting to know you!

The Kindle 2.5 firmware will be made available for both the Kindle and the Kindle DX readers at the end of May 2010.  Probably the best aspect of this new firmware is the fact that users will be able to share favorite excerpts of books they are reading directly from their Kindle ereaders to Facebook and Twitter.

In a response to many complaints from Kindle owners who find it hard to manage their content on their readers, the firmware’s  Collections feature  allows users to organizations books and other content into separate categories.

Users will also be able to set a password lock on their device with the new firmware as well as getting the opportunity to see which passages in books being read are the most highlight among other Kindle owners.

Amazon has also added new font sizes on the latest firmware as well as the ability to zoom into and pan around when reading PDF documents to make it easier to see small print and detailed charts and graphs.

The beta version of the Kindle 2.5 firmware is being used by a select group of testers now before its full release in a few weeks.

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