ASUS To Compete with Amazon with Eee Reader
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Credit Engadget
Move over Plastic Logic and Sony. ASUS has other plans for the e-book market. ASUS has already had a big hand in turning the netbook market to what it is currently. But why just settle on netbooks when you can also play a role in e-book reader market as well. The Eee brand contains innovative laptops and desktop PCs. And ASUS has big plans for Eee reader. For starters, it’s a dual screen device that lets you read e-books and do much more while you are on the road. You can use one screen to read your book, while the other can serve a virtual keyboard or an Internet browser. So you can potentially tweet and read your book at the same time.
ASUS also promises us a color screen reader, so we are finally going to get an e-book reader that is capable of displaying college text books in color. The device will also include a webcam, a microphone, and speakers (is Amazon listening?). So essentially, the ASUS Eee reader is a mini-laptop/ebook-reader hybrid. Now how much would a device like Eee reader cost? If you are looking at Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, you would probably guess somewhere in the high $800s. But ASUS is planning on releasing two models, the first of which will cost less than Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.
Since nobody has really tested the final version of this device, it’s hard to tell how it would work. But it certainly has a huge potential. ASUS is known for manufacturing high quality gadgets, so you know you are getting a decent device when you get an Eee device. How ASUS addresses the content issue for its e-book reader is not known yet.
Your take: does ASUS Eee e-book reader have a chance?
