Barnes & Noble and Plastic Logic’s New eBook Reader vs. Amazon’s Kindles no comments
From the information leaked so far about Sony’s new ebook readers, I think we can safely say that they will not pose a serious threat to the Kindle 2
not actually hit the street yet (they should be out by the end of August), so it is always possible that Sony’s new devices will have more features than we know about now. So unless something comes out of left field or if Amazon should shoot themselves in the foot again (highly unlikely), it looks like the next major challenger to the Kindle family will be the Plastic Logic ereader due out early 2010.
What we think we know so far about Plastic Logic’s ebook reader:
- Reportedly will cost around $300 (this is apparently incorrect – see the update at end of article)
- It will have wireless connectivity powered by AT&T (oh dear); unclear if there will be an additional charge for this, no internet
- E ink Active Matrix Display
- Unbreakable screen, touchscreen
- Screen size is said to be larger than Kindle DX. Device size 8.5″ x 11″.
- Document support for: PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, JPEG, PNG, TEXT, HTML, BMP, RTF, ePub; not clear yet which DRM’ed formats will be supported
- Operating system is a version of Microsoft’s Win CE
- It will be supported by Barnes & Noble’s ebook store
In preparation, the Barnes and Noble eBook Store is now open, so I decided to have a look-see. Until the new ereader comes out, you need to install their eReader software on your computer or supported device to access their books. There are versions so far for PC and Mac, iPhone and iPod Touch, and Blackberry. All versions support bookmarks, note taking & highlighting, and have customizable fonts.
Whichever version you choose, you will get a few free ebooks to start with. Unfortunately, you don’t get to choose which books: the included titles are Dracula, Last of the Mohicans, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. Since Barnes and Noble made a big deal of having a half million free books from Google, I had hoped that I could at least choose my titles. There doesn’t appear to be a “Free eBooks” link on their site, so to access the selection of free titles you have to choose a category and then sort by price. When you do this, there are many duplicate titles in the free price range, presumably digitized from different issues of the same book.
Compared to shopping on Amazon’s website, the Barne’s and Noble site is less finished and a little clunky. Curiously, when I clicked on the Sci Fi & Fantasy ebook category, I was told there were no results for my search; though when I typed in an author’s name and tried again some titles were found. I compared prices for a double handful of titles with Amazon’s Kindle store, and in almost all cases the Kindle books were a little to significantly less.
Purchased ebooks are tied to the credit card that B&N has on file for your account, so gifting ebooks through their system will be difficult (although this is an area that is problematic for Kindle and other ebook readers as well).
Of course we will have to wait until the Plastic Logic reader comes out to see if buying books wirelessly is the painless experience it is on a Kindle, but at this point Barnes & Noble seems to have more work to do to make shopping for ebooks at their site as easy as it is at Amazon.
Update (08/09): Plastic Logic has denied the $300 price for their upcoming ebook reader. In an email reported at ireaderreview.com, they say that ” we plan to be competitive in the eReader category, where prices now range from $199 to $800. But we won’t be at the low end of the market.”
