Posted 02/24/10 at 09:02:53 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Spring Design’s Alex e-reader was slated to come out on February 22nd. It didn’t happen. There was a bit of concern around the interwebs as Spring Design didn’t really release any information. The company did eventually come out with a statement to assure us all that the Alex wasn’t vaporware. The release date has apparently been pushed to early March.

We were a bit baffled when we first saw the Spring Design Alex. Not because of any particularly confounding element of the Alex, but because we thought it was the Barnes and Noble Nook. The Alex fit all the rumors: color touchscreen, additional eink display, Android powered. Turns out that the Alex was just very similar to the Nook, and Spring Design even claims the Nook is based on the Alex (hence the legal issues).

The Alex will have a tie to Borders stores in an effort to compete with Barnes and Noble's Nook. It is expected to retail for $359 when it launches… whenever that is.

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Posted 02/08/10 at 08:04:51 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Are you searching for just the right outing for you and your special someone this Valentine’s Day? Well, look no further, Barnes and Noble will have Nooks available in stores for you to actually buy. Name just one thing more romantic than swinging by your local retail establishment to buy a new gadget. We sure can’t come up with anything.

The bookseller was caught off guard by demand for their ebook reader this past holiday season, with preorders spilling over into January. Barnes and Noble has had limited numbers of demo units in their retail locations since shortly after launch, but now you can actually take one home. This was cited as a main advantage over Amazon’s offering.

The Nook is a compelling alternative to the Kindle for some. The Nook runs the Android operating system, and a dedicated modding community has even gained root access to its Android core. Now that the production delays have finally been sorted out, we’ll see just how many people walk out of a Barnes and Noble with a Nook.

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Posted 01/27/10 at 07:17:18 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Regardless of how you feel about the newly announced iPad, it’s probably going to do a few things very well. But will it be the reading device we’ve all been waiting for? Steve Jobs pushed the iBook store in the keynote, and discussed how the Kindle pioneered ebooks. Jobs then said Apple would “stand on [Amazon’s] shoulders”. Can it work?

The obvious benefit of the iPad is that it has a color screen. There will be more options for text size, search, and even font choices. Magazines and newspapers will look nice, but reading an old fashioned book may not benefit much. The Kindle and other eReaders have a 16 level eInk display meant to be easy to read. The screen on the iPad, being a conventional LCD, may not be quite so easy on the eyes.

Content wise, the iPad may be in good shape. Out of the gate it will have content from Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Harper Collins and Hachette. It will also support the open ePub format, which is more than we can say for Amazon. This means the iPad will have access to Google Books. The Nook has ePub support also, so it’s not a total win for Apple.

Price is certainly of concern. The iPad is clocking in at $499 for the 16GB version sans 3G. That’s quite a bit more than the Kindle and Nook at $260. To get data on the go, you need to purchase an AT&T data plan for the (more expensive) iPad, whereas the Kindle and Nook come with free wireless. Granted, the iPad does much more than eBooks, but buying it primarily as a reading device may be a questionable move.

Check out this much more exhaustive rundown at MacLife.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 01:52:07 PM by Paul Lilly

Get ready for a blue Christmas if the only thing you asked for this holiday season was a Nook e-book reader. The device's popularity apparently caught Barnes and Noble off guard, who has sold out of the its initial supply and said preorders have exceeded expectations.

And if you listed Sony's Digital Edition Reader as your backup gift request, then it's a double dose of 'bah, humbug' coming your way. It too is in short supply, and Sony said it could not guarantee it would have enough to fulfill demand in time for Christmas.

The situation isn't dissimilar from what Amazon went through last year with its Kindle e-book reader, although the current king of the hill has managed to get its distribution channel squared away since then. So why are Sony and Barnes and Noble struggling?

"Even without specific problems in the supply chain, the manufacturing process takes time for new products -- it could be 3 months from the time they place the orders with their factories until they actually ship," Sarah Epss, an analyst at Forrester Research, said in an email. "Sony and B&N wanted to show the market they could compete with Amazon for the holiday season. Consumers responded enthusiastically, but unfortunately, these companies are struggling to deliver on their promise. Now they have to face disappointed consumers with empty packages under the tree."

According to Epps, both companies jumped the gun on their products announcements because neither was truly ready for the holiday shopping season.

Other items you're not likely to find in your stocking this year: HD 5970 videocard, handheld tablet.

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Posted 10/14/09 at 11:20:10 AM by Paul Lilly

Gizmodo managed to get its hands on the first product shots of Barnes and Noble's e-book reader, which will enter what's shaping up to be an increasingly crowded cage match with the likes of Amazon, Sony, Asus, MSI, and several others.

 We're still a week away from Barnes and Noble's official unveiling, but according to Gizmodo, the e-reader will feature a black and white e-ink screen similar to the Kindle, but with a multitouch display like the popular iPhone. The top screen size checks in at 6 inches with an 800x600 pixel resolution, while the bottom touchscreen portion will boast 480x144 pixels.

Pricing is not yet known, but word on the Web is that Barnes and Noble plans to offer significant discounts on the books it publishes compared to the print editions.

More pics here.

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