eBook Reader from Sony launches for pre-order today

Smaller than a hardback but with more than 160 times the words, the Sony Reader handheld eBook is here.

Weighing in at 260g, the Reader stores and displays PDF, RTF, TXT, JPEGs and MS Word in e-ink with enough battery power for around 6,800 page turns in one charge, which is apparently enough to read War and Peace five times over. Once will do me fine, thanks.

You can order pre-order it today from either Waterstones or the Sony Style store but as interesting a piece of kit as it is, does anyone really want to use it? It’s debatable as to whether the general public is ready for the audio-visual format change from DVD to Blu-ray and I’m not so sure people will put down their books so easily when there is no improvement in quality.

To help persuade us otherwise, the Sony Reader comes with 14 pre-loaded excerpts from recent books as well as a CD of 100 classic titles including The Jungle Book, Pride & Prejudice, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Great Expectations. On 3rd September, when they actually hit the shelves, there’ll be 10,000 or more eBooks ready for you to buy.

It doesn’t suffer from glare, so you can read it on the beach, and, although it has a waterproof case, I’d interested to see how it fares after I spill my pina colada all over it.

The connection and upload is all done through USB and SD cards – so as not to confuse the hell out of people – and, just to make sure it wins a place in your jacket, it has audio functions as well.

So now the only thing that stands between the Sony Reader and mass acceptance is the price and at £199, the public could take a fair bit of persuading.

Sony Reader

Related posts: Esquire gets on the e-ink | Amazon Kindle spotted in the wild