I was waiting for this to happen. Juicebox (http://www.positron.org/projects/juicebox/index.shtml) shows us how cool an E-Ink device can be if not manufactured by Sony. It is small (50x56x3.7mm), has a multimedia card interface, includes a MP3 decoder, and of course features the wonderful E-Ink panel.

The great thing about this project is that it gives the schematic and source code (alas excluding the confidential sources for the E-Ink display) for download (http://www.positron.org/projects/juicebox/links.shtml). Btw, the smart guy behind the project, Holly Gates (http://www.positron.org/people/hgates/), has actually worked for E-Ink (http://www.eink.com/) since 1998. Why on earth did they make E-Ink technology exclusive for Sony until now?

Alex,

Great find! Now all that has to be done is make a pda that looks that good.

That looks really nice! Used sort of like a paperback, it would be pretty awesome.

But I like having my ebooks on my PDA. I don't know if I'd get one unless there was a nice way to keep synchronized on both. For example if I just finished chapter 4 on my PDA, I'd like to be able to pick up the book reader and automatically start at chapter 5. Then when I pick up my PDA it automatically turns to the next page of, say, chapter 7 where I left off on the book reader. I guess that would take either a lot of synching with a PC or something wireless.

Someday PDAs will have displays like that also! (Or smart phones if PDAs don't survive :( )