Asus DR-570 colour e-book reader by end-2010
With e-readers and online book formats gaining unprecedented acceptance, companies are lining up with their versions of the e-book reader. The latest company to do so is Asus, which plans to launch its Asus DR-570 color e-book reader later in 2010.The Asus DR-570 is a colour e-book reader comes with a 5.7-inch high-definition AMOLED display screen with a resolution of 76 8x 1024 pixels. It can be used for 122 hours with just one battery charge.
Photo: Asus DR-570 e-book reader
Amazon’s Kindle, in contrast, has a 6-inch screen E-Ink screen that supports 16 shades of grey, and can run for up to 168 hours on a single charge.
But, reports say, that the Asus DR-570 scores over the Amazon Kindle in term of page turns. It is said to offer fast page refresh in just 0.03 seconds.
The Asus DR-570 will also support Adobe Flash and come with Wi-Fi and 3G wireless connections.
There is 4GB flash storage, a SD/SDHC card slot, 412 MB of RAM, RSS Reader, video player, text-to-speech facility, and a full web browser.
Asus had earlier announced plans to launch an e-book viewer, widely expected to be called the Eee Reader. But, it’s going to be the Asus DR-750 e-book reader that will see the light of day first.
Asus is reputed to be a budget electronics maker, so everyone is waiting for the company to reveal the prices for this device. It is expected that the price will not go beyond 150 euros.
Asus’ chairman Jonney Shih had announced the company’s plans for an e-book reader last week. He also added that the company is developing a dual-touchscreen tablet PC with added e-book functionality.
There was not much talk about the Asus DR-570 e-book reader at the Consumer Electronic Show at Las Vegas that happened early in January 2010. But the company gave out some information on the e-reader to a newspaper.
Some of the other companies planning to launch e-book readers are Samsung and Interead.
Samsung displayed four e-book readers at the CES 2010, the Samsung E6 (6-inch), E101 (10-inch touchscreen), a smaller 5-inch model and a 6-inch model e-reader.
Interead will launch its 6-inch Cool-er e-reader with WiFi and 3G in mid-2010.
Barnes & Noble had launched its e-book, in October 2009, at a price of $259. It compares well with the Amazon Kindle, the world’s biggest manufacturer of e-book readers. The Sony e-book reader daily edition, reader touch edition and reader pocket edition have also been launched.