Can Cool-er e-reader undercut Amazon Kindle sales?
Interead's CEO and founder Neil Jones has been moving and shaking the past few months, preparing his upstart U.K.-based company to launch a new lightweight e-book reader, the woefully-hyphenatedCool-er, that would sharply undercut the $359 price of Amazon's Kindle 2 with a $250 price tag.
Whoops, looks like a few British bloggers pulled the trigger before the big reveal.
Now that the horse has been let out of the barn, so to speak, here are the facts: the new Cool-er digital reader comes in eight colors and weighs half as much as the competition. It's planned to be available May 29th, and Interead, whose e-book store will tie into the device, is taking pre-orders.
Here are the specs:
- Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.6 x .43 inches (HWD)
- Weight: 6.2 ounces
- Screen Size: 6 inches
- DPI: 170 pixels per inch
- Levels of Greyscale: 8
- Type: E Ink Vizplex
- Touchscreen: No
- Manufacturer: PVI
- Operating System: Linux
- Storage: 1GB
- Memory: 128
- Processor: Samsung S3C2440 ARM 400MHz
- Battery: Li-Polymer battery (1000 mAh)
- Battery Life (single charge): 8000 pages
- Memory Expansion: SD (up to 4GB)
- Wireless: No
- Formats: JPEG, PDF, EPUB, TXT, MP3 (2.5mm headphone jack with a 3.5mm converter included for standard headphones)
- Languages: 8
- Bookstore (Titles): Over 750,000
The Cool-er is compatible with Mac and Windows PC, and while it's sure to fight a heck of an uphill battle against the massively popular Kindle -- from overseas, no less -- it is designed to be more open with its formats, a criticism of the Kindle, and should compete more directly with Sony's e-reader offerings, particularly on Interead's home continent.
Jones has promised to send me a Cool-er to review hands-on, and I plan on doing so for this blog shortly. Stay tuned.