New Sony Touch Screen PRS-700 EReader: Kindle with Keyless Entry!

I like my Kindle. A lot. But the keyboard is nothing short of horrid. It is reminiscent of Commodore 64. I'd imagine that the upcoming Kindle 2.0 will offer a major improvement.

But Sony's upping its game with its new eReader, now on sale in parts of Europe, and a-comin' to the US ASAP.

Sony readers didn't set the world on fire, but did OK. And one of the problems they see, according to this article on Ars Technica, was that people don't like the IDEA of ereaders very much, but tend to like them when they get hands on experience. Ars Technica reports:

To overcome this, Sony's trained 1,000 people that will be set loose in some of the 3,000 retail outlets that carry the Reader in an effort to expose more of the public to it. The company is also launching a program that will see it donate Readers and eBooks to schools.

...

The key feature is its touch-sensitive screen, which allows users to manipulate the device with either the included stylus or a finger. Reader users can now directly select text, type on an onscreen keyboard, and page through content with gestures, swiping pages to turn them or shuffling rapidly through a book with a swipe-and-hold gesture. The E Ink screen seemed more responsive than the Kindle's, which makes the responses to gestures seem fairly direct. The onscreen typing, however, still feels a bit sluggish.

John Timmer of Ars Technica later stated:

In my brief hands-on time with it, the Reader's hardware seemed superior to the Kindle in nearly every way, but it still lacks some of the Kindle's killer features: brand recognition, a huge content library, and always-on wireless. Haber made it clear that all of these are in the works. Sony plans to have 100,000 titles available by the holidays (although that's still just about half the Kindle's content) and its trained sales teams should be in the stores by then. Wireless will come, too, but Haber said, "it needs to be on an open foundation" before Sony will release it.

I think the crux of the challenge for Sony is in their brand versus Amazon. Sony=electronics, Amazon=books. And a prospective ebook buyer wants assurance that a reader will offer a good bookish experience.

But that doesn't mean I won't be looking it over...

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.