My father goes to CES every year for his business dealings, and this year I’m honored that he’s there representing my ventures along with his own. He’s spent a great deal of time checking out some ereader devices, and here’s what he thinks of each after going hands-on with them for a while and conversing with executives from each.
Plastic Logic QUE proReader: “Hands down the most impressive specialized device here in terms of design, both hardware and software. It’s ‘specialized’ because it’s really aimed at its very specific niche and it serves that market extremely well.
The hardware is slick and will result in many happy business people on planes since the battery lasts much longer than a laptop. The interface is well designed and puts the content quickly within reach, but having to sync it with Outlook could be the one hang-up. The announcement of a 3G model is a great step, and hopefully will bring along wireless syncing.”
Entourage eDGe: “These guys win for most versatile device. If this thing had a keyboard instead of an e-ink screen, it would just be a rather large netbook. The inclusion of the e-ink screen makes it something really unique and overall, it works surprisingly well.
One of the coolest features is being able to highlight a diagram or table on the black and white screen and display it on the color screen. This is a huge boon for textbook publishers who haven’t yet been shown that ebooks are a viable alternative for them.”
Havnon WISEreader: “What people may not realize in the States is that Havnon is a gigantic name in China, nearly a household name. Many international companies (think Nokia, Sony and Samsung) use Havnon technologies, software and patents in their devices.
Here at CES, they’re showing off some readers, but the more interesting aspect are the features of those readers that will show up in other devices thanks to Havnon’s willingness to license. Their executives are more excited about people coming up to them with OEM partnerships than purchasing agreements. Spefically, Havnon makes very impressive doodling and screen writing software [editor: think Wacom].”
Dad’s still walking around the show, so more impressions when I get them!
