As trees still fall, Sony reboots the drive for electronic reading - The Boston Globe

By Mark Baard
Boston Globe Business Section
April 10, 2006

Many high-tech companies like to talk about e-ink and e-paper, the technologies they hope will replace books made the old fashioned way. But the next time you tuck into the latest installment in the ''Left Behind' series, it will probably be at the expense of a tree somewhere. E-books are off to a pretty bad start in the United States. Sony Electronics hopes to move the e-book market forward this summer, with a new high-contrast, high brightness, and flicker-free hand-held device called the Reader. The Reader simulates the experience of reading newsprint, with similar page brightness and text resolution. But the black-and-white Reader's big selling points are its storage capacity and portability, said Sony Electronics vice president Ron Hawkins.

The Reader (about the size of a paperback) can store 75 or more e-books. Users can download RSS feeds and other Web content to the device. The Reader will deliver popular titles through its Connect website (www.connect.com), Sony's alternative to the iTunes Music Store. The content for the Reader will appeal to boomers, as well as younger folks, who prefer pictures with their text, according to Sony. You can read the text from any angle and in direct sunlight, two things you can't do with ordinary hand-held LCD computer displays. And because the Reader's e-ink display material is not back-lit, it cuts down on eyestrain, according to Sony.