Chinese company eRead has finally launched its STAReBOOK STK-101 (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9481) e-reader to the rest of the world. Previously only available direct from China and Taiwan, the reader can now be purchased from their first international online shop (http://www.eread.co.nz) opened in New Zealand. While New Zealand is probably no closer than the Far East to (most of) you, it's still nice to see the company expanding. A eRead representative told us that the new shop is still under development, but that it is already accepting international orders (the STAReBOOK costs $450 USD, with a flat shipping rate of $50 USD at this moment).

My only wish is that in time they'll go down with prices to be more competitive with other E Ink-based e-readers.

It's nice to hear that the STAReBOOK is going ot be available in more countries (if you look at their website you can see that they are also cooperating with a French company to develop new ereader hardware.

On the downside, the small company seems to have trouble keeping up with demand and the long-overdue Firmware-Update for the STAReBOOK has been pushed back to June...but I still have hope that this might become a nice read-only device for fiction-readers if they manage to get the format-support up and the price down (and the bugs out...).

if you look at their website you can see that they are also cooperating with a French company to develop new ereader hardware.Heh, I expect that would be Bookeen, they seem to be the folks actually building this set of hardware. :tongue3:

Lovely website, especially that little flash thing, with sound and all :D

shame that the price is still so high, but thats an issue that STAReREAD have everywhere.

But it is fantastic to finally see somebody actually selling these to people who are not in taiwan or china. Still, NZ is a strange choice :)

And yeah, the flash is rather funny, but it'll drive you nuts quickly like most flash does.

micro