Rumors Emerge that Sony Will Unveil English E-book Reader in January, 2006

Posted on December 30, 2005

The latest rumors say that Sony will be launching an English version of its hot e-book reader, the Libre, which is now only available in Japan. The English product will supposedly be revealed in early January at CES in Las Vegas.

Expected to be one of the buzz words for 2006, E-ink works by charging thousands of capsules to display certain information. Charged capsules turn black while uncharged ones turn white. After the initial charge the capsules are locked into place and give a flicker-free and crisp image equal to that of a newspaper. Because of the lack of power needed after the first charge, the battery consumption is very low.
Due to cumbersome Digital Rights Management (DRM) Sony�s Libre device has so far failed to take off in Japan, however all that is rumoured to change when Sony launches its new e-Book with .PDF support next week. The move means that anybody will be able to create and access .PDF files on the new reader to read on the go.
Tied-in into the launch is the news that Sony is also expected to offer an e-Books download store similar to Apple�s iTunes and music tracks.

Is this really ever going to happen? This entire e-book thing is incredibly irritating. Get the technology perfected, get the price down and make the thing available to those of us who are ready to buy one today. We can't help it: we get very emotional over the glacial pace of e-book technology.