Quote:
Originally Posted by FJames
I never owned an e-reader until I bought the original Kobo last year, and I never used one much until I got the Touch. I'm impressed with the rate of improvement. which made me curious about the historical development of e-readers before I got involved.
Here's a description of the early Sony Librie e-book reader from 2005: http://www.ereaderguide.info/sony_li...der_review.htm
It was available only in Japan, ran on 4 x AAA batteries, had 10 Mbytes of memory, and the proprietary e-books available for it expired permanently in 60 days. Looks a lot like a Kindle, with a small keyboard below the screen.
An early European competitor launched in 2006 was the iRex iLiad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILiad. It had a bigger screen, and WiFi connectivity. But it cost about $900. iRex was a spin-off from consumer electronics giant Phillips. They went bankrupt in 2010.
Sony's updated PRS-500 reached the international market later in 2006 at a price of $350, setting the physical model for later e-readers. But their limited e-bookstore with high prices and a proprietary format left the door open for Amazon to launch the Kindle the following year.
So it looks like we have lots to be grateful for with the Kobo Touch in 2011  .
I'm sure there were lots of other early e-readers around. Did anyone here have one? |
You still didn't quite go back far enough. Try googling Rocket eReader(plus they a comptetitor whose name escapes me ATM), and both were bought by Gemstar, the sold to Fictionwise IIRC when Gemstar got out of the busines. Plus around 2000 Franklin had a line of three readers called the Franklin eBookman 9XX series(one had 8MB no backlight, 16MB no backlight, and a 16MB with a backlight). IIRC the company that makes(sell?) the ectaco reader still sells the backlit model but it's price is pretty steep.
Plus, while not a dedicated reader ALOT of us used our Palms to reader and got book from the Peanut Press bstore which later was bought out by Palm and became Palm Books plus the reader app.