The announcement of the new Amazon Kindles caused all manner of excitement in the PC Pro office this week, until we realised Amazon actually had no plans to release the most exciting products in the UK. What a let-down. Still, that does at least give other manufacturers a chance to steal a march, and that appears to be exactly what Sony has done with its new Reader Wi-Fi, of which we have an early sample.

The first thing to notice when you pick up the Reader Wi-Fi is how light it is. It tipped our scales at just 162g, which makes the current Kindle look positively portly. With no keyboard it’s small enough to slip into an inside jacket pocket, and although it does feel a touch plasticky, it’s well made and the soft-touch plastic rear gives you a nice grippy surface to hold onto.

The screen is 6in across with a resolution of 600 x 800, and you get 1.4GB of usable memory expandable via a microSD slot, plus an infrared touchscreen just like the US-only Kindle Touch. This means you can sweep your finger right to left to turn a page, make handwritten notes and annotations with the supplied plastic stylus, and highlight text effortlessly (more on this later). For Sony, though, that’s nothing new. Where this device differs from its predecessors is in the inclusion of an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter.

Once logged into your network using the onscreen keyboard, it offers direct access to the Sony ebook store, and through that a free subsection of Google Books, plus selected local libraries via the Overdrive eLibrary system. The latter provides time-limited DRM-based loans and, while the selection isn’t anywhere near as broad as the Kindle Store, the books are free.

Alas, the service isn’t yet up and running (and won’t be until the end of October), so we can’t pass judgement on its implementation in the device itself. We can only hope it rivals the gloriously simply system in the Kindle. But the good news is that you no longer need to rely on Sony’s Reader software to get content, which can only be a good thing.

The device’s onboard WebKit browser is fully functional and, in conjunction with the sensitive touchscreen, works surprisingly well. It’ll never rival a tablet for ease of use, but for accessing free ebook sites such as the Gutenberg Project, and even checking the odd email, it’s perfectly functional – and miles better than the Kindle’s browser. Even inertial scrolling and pinch-to-zoom operations function, although you may find the constant screen refresh sends you cross-eyed after a while.

Elsewhere, the Reader Wi-Fi exhibits similar strengths and weaknesses to previous Sony readers. It’s a superlative PDF-reading device. The multitouch capabilities of the screen mean even complex pages can be manipulated quickly and simply, and there are all manner of other ways of reading pages. You can set a custom crop to make pages with large borders more readable. In Navigate Page mode, the reader can be set to zoom right into the first column on a page, then follow the flow of text down then up and across when you hit the next button, instead of simply navigating to the following page.

Text can also be “reflowed” or stripped out so it fits the screen exactly. You can make handwritten annotations and highlight text for downloading via the Sony Reader software. A long press of the finger on a word, meanwhile, displays not only a dictionary definition at the bottom of the screen, but also pops up five buttons. These allow you to make a highlight the word, make a quick note and search the text, or carry out a keyword search in Google or Wikipedia.

And, although we can’t speak for the forthcoming Kindles, against the current model the Sony Reader Wi-Fi holds its own in terms of screen refresh speed and readability. Epub pages flip by in a single second, and as the screen uses the same E-Ink Pearl panel, contrast is largely the same as well. If anything the Kindle’s screen demonstrates a touch more contrast and crispness, but there’s very little in it. We took a macro photograph of each screen using identical lighting, shutter, aperture, ISO and white balance settings, then measured the black and “white” levels of each using Photoshop’s eyedropper tool. The result was a contrast ratio of 2.48:1 for the Kindle and 2.36:1 for the Sony.

The Sony Reader Wi-Fi is clearly a capable device; we can see that even without the benefit of being able to use the store on the device. It’s quick, readable and can handle PDF files in a much more intuitive and satisfactory way than the current Kindle – plus it’s incredibly light. The problem is with the price: at £130 we can’t see it competing with either current or future Kindles. We’ll have a full review when the services go live.

Binatone is a name usually associated with landline phones but, with that market dwindling, the firm has decided Android is the way forward.

Of three new Android products shown off at a launch event, the most intriguing is its iHomePhone 2 – an Android device that, as the name suggests, replaces your landline handset. It’s an unusual idea, but one Binatone is confident can work, with the £99 inc VAT gadget ambitiously aimed at both techies and novices.

The glossy handset sits in a circular cradle and certainly looks the part but we soon found problems. The 2.8in resistive screen is grainy, pallid and comes with its own stylus, and the inclusion of Android 2.1 means it’s already behind the curve.

It’s clear the hardware isn’t up to task. Even an empty notification bar took too long to judder towards the bottom of the screen and when we pressed the “Home” button, the desktop took several seconds to load – a lifetime on a phone.

Still, Binatone is excited about the product, enthusing that it’s more of a “living room ” device than a mere phone. To that end, the firm’s PR demonstrated Android’s stock eBook-reader app and FM Radio software, although both of these came with two obvious caveats: we don’t know anyone who’ll want to squint at a 2.8in screen and, with no Wi-Fi syncing, the handset will have to be docked to play audio through the speakers.

There’s no access to Android’s Market either – instead, the iHomePhone uses Giga Store. Binatone claims thousands of apps are available but, the ubiquitous Angry Birds aside, we couldn’t see much we recognised.

HomeSurf 705

Binatone also announced a tablet device. The HomeSurf 705 is a 7in Android tablet and, like the iHomePhone, it comes with an eye-catching price of just £99 inc VAT.

It also shares many of the same faults: no access to the Android Market, with the Giga Store making another appearance, and a reliance on Android 2.1, with no plans for the device to be upgraded in its lifetime.

Binatone wasn’t able to confirm the HomeSurf’s internals but our hands-on time didn’t exactly fill us with enthusiasm. While basic navigation, simpler apps and web surfing were all reasonably responsive, anything requiring more processing power seemed beyond its modest abilities. Whether it’s any better than the Storage Options Scroll is a question that must wait for our full review.

Still, at least the basics are present and correct: an 800 x 480 native resolution across the screen, 2GB of internal memory, and a microSD card slot. We’re not hopeful but, at £99 inc VAT, it could at least prove to be a tempting bargain.

ReadMe Mobile

Binatone’s third new product is the ReadMe Mobile eBook reader. Again, it’s running Android 2.1 and again it comes with several quirks: its 7in, 800 x 480 TFT panel is not touch-enabled and it’s horizontally orientated by default – although it’s possible to switch to portrait mode once its weak processor has stirred into life.

However, doing so renders its Qwerty keyboard somewhat obsolete – a feature Binatone claims many of its customers have wanted for a long time. Beside the keyboard sits a touchpoint, similar to the BlackBerry Bold, and four cursor keys. They’re used for navigating the interface, but working our way through proved tortuous and the buttons themselves felt weak.

With a TFT rather than E Ink screen, there’s the issue of battery life, too: Binatone’s spokesperson answered the question “will it let you read Lord of the Rings” with an enthusiastic “absolutely not!”, and confirmed an estimated lifespan of two and a half hours.

Combine this with the £129 inc VAT price and, well, we’re not sure why you’d buy this over the tablet, which includes the same Android eBook app. Still, we’ll reserve final judgement until our review.

In the mean time, do you want an Android home phone, a £99 tablet, or an eBook reader running Google’s OS? Let us know in the comments.

The enTourage eDGe (and its irritatingly random capitalisation) was one of the surprise hits of last year’s CES: a dual-screen eBook reader with a 9.7in e-paper display on one side and a 10.1in LCD screen on the other.

This year the company is back with the Pocket eDGe – a smaller and much more practical alternative to its ground-breaking forebear.

The right-hand side acts as a touchscreen tablet running Google’s Android. Its 7in colour touchscreen boasts a resolution of 800 x 480, and it’s an impressively vibrant, responsive display at that.

The left-hand side is devoted to eBook duties, sporting a smaller 6in e-Ink display. It’s touch-sensitive too, although it only responds to prods from the accompanying stylus, not fingers.

Its 800 x 600 resolution is exactly the same as the latest Amazon Kindle, but eBook text doesn’t look as precisely defined as it does on our A-List topper. However, the ability to jot handwritten annotations on eBooks is handy, even if the e-Ink screen is characteristically sluggish to respond to swishes of the stylus.

The inclusion of Android makes this far more than eBook reader, of course. There’s a full web browser, that was impressively nippy and responsive in our brief tests on the enTourage stand. There’s no 3G, however, so you’re reliant on 802.11bg Wi-Fi.

The 3GB of internal storage can also be used to store music, a smattering of video and your eBook purchases, and there’s a microSD slot on the side if you need to bolster that rather paltry storage, plus a USB port that supports external drives.

There’s decent integration between the two sides of the device, too. Click on a link in an eBook and it immediately opens in the tablet’s browser. Likewise, purchase a book from the store on the tablet and it pops open on the e-Ink screen on the left.

The device itself looks and feels a little plasticky, and an 11-hour battery life in eBook mode is no match for the Kindle, which lasts for weeks at a time. If you use the colour screen, battery life drops to six hours.

But if you’re looking for an eBook reader with something extra, our first impressions suggest that the Pocket eDGe deserves a place on your shortlist at the very least.  The Pocket eDGe costs 399 Euros from eBookreaderdiscounter.com.

One of the major downsides of eBook readers is the price of books — they feel like they should be cheaper than they are. The Kindle’s portability means I take it everywhere, and am therefore tearing through twice as many words as I used to, but the costs are adding up as eBooks aren’t actually cheaper than the average paperback.

With standard paper books, that’s easy enough to get around: just borrow your friend’s copy. However, as with any DRM content, digital books can’t be easily shared — unless you’re happy handing over your Kindle to your friends, possibly not a smart move given the tendency for loaned books to never find their way back home.

With all this in mind, Amazon has offered up the ability to lend copies of eBooks to other Kindle owners. While it’s a step in the right direction, the system is still extremely limited: it’s only open to US users (although books can be loaned to the UK), and only on selected books, which can only be borrowed once for 14 days.

Still, it’s worth a look. Here’s how to do it for UK Kindle owners.

The first step is to flip your device to the US store. So far, I’ve done this several times with little trouble, but Amazon is bound to catch on and ban such abuse of the practice eventually.

To do this, go to Manage Your Kindle on the Amazon website and enter a new address with a US post code. Then, head over to the same management page on the Amazon.com website to start lending.

On that account page, scroll down to your list of books. Click the “+” next to titles you’ve bought, and it will let you know if your books are available to lend.

Some publishers aren’t allowing the feature, while UK versions of books also don’t seem to be available — so you might not have a wide selection to offer your friends anyway. Just one of the US books I’ve bought is available for loan, and it’s not one many people will want to borrow…

Click ‘Loan this Book’, drop in your friend’s email address, and a link will be sent to them. They’ll have seven days to start the loan, and 14 days to finish up reading. Meanwhile, you won’t be able to read the book, and it will show up as “on loan” on your device.

Is this enough to make up for high eBook prices? And does anyone have anything good they want to lend me?

As it turns out, eBook readers aren’t big fans of wringers, bags, pockets or buses.

Before I delve into my tale, I’d like to preface it with a couple of caveats. The first is that the eBook reader I chose was a production sample of a Cool-er. This means that my experiences were fairly specific to the device I was using. The second caveat has to do with the testing grounds. I took it backpacking with me around Cuba, which is hardly common usage. Given that I barely survived the trip – think caves, climbs, storms, humidity and blood – I’m not particularly surprised the Cool-er didn’t. Erm… I’ve rather given away the ending there.

To be fair, it all started fine. I’d begun using the eBook reader in earnest about a week before I flew out and it had become a standard part of my daily commute from work. It was slipped in the coat pocket that normally held my paperback, and was causing me absolutely no distress whatsoever – except when children on the bus started laughing at me because it was neon pink.

Reading was fine, the battery was fine, and not having to cart a paperback version of War and Peace around with me was a daily blessing. As the day of my holiday approached I was brimming with so much confidence that even used-car salesmen thought I was a bit smug. I’d loaded a dozen books onto the Cool-er in anticipation of a miserable long-haul flight and left it charging for a day – given that these things promise 8,000 page turns I wasn’t too worried about having to do it again.

It took about five hours for things to go wrong. Twenty minutes into my connecting flight from London to Paris I turned on my eBook reader and it crashed. I hit the reset button and … nothing.  This was not good news, especially given my three-hour layover in the airport. After prying the back off, I disconnected and reconnected the battery – cue nervous glances from flight attendants – and managed to spur it back into life.

It survived the rigours of my daypack for another few days, picking up scuffs and stains, but not falling into the ten million pieces I’d expected. Then one day, it just stopped. There wasn’t any direct cause that I could see – I wasn’t caught in a thunderstorm or hit by a lorry driven by Castro. I tried my battery trick, I took it to a church and had it exorcised but the poor thing was dead and all my tears couldn’t bring it back.

Thankfully, I had a paperbackup. It wasn’t War and Peace, which I’m about halfway through and not enjoying, but it did tide me over. My feelings on this experiment are mixed. I enjoyed my experience with my eBook reader, but have never been so infuriated with a gadget in my entire life.

I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt, though. I’m still convinced eBook readers are the future, we’ll just have to wait a little longer for it.

This morning I saw a video that made me re-think all that. The new AM 300 developer’s kit from E Ink can handle animation pretty smoothly, and instant page turns, too. It uses the same technology as previous versions – little balls, black on one side and white on the other, which physically rotate to create areas of colour – but handles it all a lot faster.

This is down to the chips and firmware that control it. The importance of this is often underestimated; rival television manufacturers may use the same panel from the same factory, but the image quality of a TV is largely down to software. Even the performance of Formula One cars is largely down to their engine management and braking control software.

I’m waiting eagerly for the first reader to use the new kit. I just hope that the next generation of models won’t mess up all of this hard work by putting the buttons where I can’t reach them.

The WHSmith website sensibly allows you to enter a delivery and billing address for your goods, and so I opted to have the reader sent here to PC Pro Towers.  The website took my order, the confirmation email duly arrived, and all was well and good.

Until a day after I placed the order, I received an email saying:

“Unfortunately we have been unable to obtain name and address verification from the card issuer for this transaction. As such I would appreciate your assistance by faxing to us a copy of your bank statement. (Please note that we do not need to see your current balance).”

Excuse me? You want me to fax a copy of my bank statement – with account numbers, sort codes and all manner of other personal details – so that it can lie about on a printout at WHSmith HQ? And this is your idea of security? 

Natrually, I picked up the phone to protest.  ”If you’re worried about the fax, sir, you can always attach it to an email,” the nice lady reassured me, as my jaw walloped into the desk. “And what about all those personal details being sent in an insecure email attachment?” I enquired.

“Oh, you can blank out the personal details. We just need to see your name and address.” 

“So, just so that I’ve got this straight – you want me to send you a  copy of a piece of paper with just my name and address on it to verify I am who I say I am?” 

“Yes, sir.”

Order. Cancelled. 

Unlike a traditional book, where I can turn a page with a quick, well-practiced swish of the thumb and forefinger, I instead need to press a plasticky little button and wait two seconds while the screen panics for a second or two, before finally delivering the next few hundred words. It’s not a pleasant experience, and I’ve already learned to hit the next-page button at the start of the final sentence, so as to minimise plot-destroying gaps in flow.

Every eBook reader we’ve had in has suffered from the same problem, as each shares the same E-Ink display – because there’s only one company in the world that makes them.

This is worrying, at least for anyone who makes eBook readers. If the screen is the problem, then throwing any amount of processing power or memory at it will do no good. What is needed before eBook readers take off in a big way, then, is nothing to do with public perception, nothing to do with ergonomic design and nothing to do with sensibly priced media: an entirely new screen technology is what’s called for.

There are plenty of contenders. Firstly it may be that E-ink develops faster transition times. The way it works, strangley, is that a layer of tiny balls is trapped between two layers of plastic. One side of the ball is negatively charged, and darkly coloured, while the other is positively charged and white. Passing a current through the layers can rotate the ball to show light or dark. It’s very clever, but it takes time.

Electro-wetting is another hopeful technology, which uses a layer of water and coloured oil between two plates. When a current is passed over a pixel, the water forces the dark oil out of the area, giving a white pixel. The advantage of this is that it is almost instantaneous compared to E-ink, so can even be used for video. The technology is also more easily adaptable for multiple colours – who wants to go back in time to monochrome screens, anyway?
Or maybe the answer lies with Organic Field-Effect Transistors (OFET) or Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) or something that we haven’t even heard of yet. Perhaps, as I suspect is the case for the next decade or so, the answer lies in paper and ink; it’s cheaper, greener, more tactile and it even smells nice.

 Well I’ve finally managed to wrench it from his cold dead hands after some surprisingly challenging gladitorial comabt and will be writing up a review in the next couple of days. But almost to the second I laid the killing blow on Jon, my wandering eye caught sight of a potential rival, the Plastic Logic reading device, and I’ll be honest I’m already worried for my lovely little Sony.

 It’s worth checking out the video here, as Plastic Logic’s effort really is worth seeing, and if it lives up to its early promise we could already be looking at a Kindle Killer, too. The Plastic Logic reader is 7mm thin and the same size as an 8.5 x 11in piece of paper, almost all of which is dedicated to the display. A touchscreen swipe moves pages and allows you to mark up documents, underline paragraphs, ring important words or just add thick fingered comment. There’s also a touchscreen keyboard reminiscent of that on the iPhone, allowing you to type in docs and add notes.

In the demo the Plastic Logic chief exec spins us through an eBook page, a magazine cover, a peice of sheet music and a couple of Power Point slides, all beautifully rendered and far more impressive for the additional screen real estate available.

The range of support really is startling, with Office docs, Powerpoint slides, PDFs, text files and other eBook formats all accomodated and transferable over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Micro-USB, seance, prayer and general wafting near the device. All of this lovliness comes courtesy of its flexible plastic technology, which allows the sheets to bend and flex, hopefully making them far more robust than current readers. A durability the company rather bizarrely demonstrates by beating a laptop to death with a shoe, and then repeating the experiment on its reader, which turns out to be surprisingly shoe resistant – though there’s always the possibility that the shoe was tired after its initial epic battle with the laptop and so wasn’t giving it’s all against the reader. We wouldn’t want to rule that out.

The fact that he used a laptop in the demo also shouldn’t be overlooked. Throughout the exec seems to be positioning the device not against other readers but laptops. He compares its battery life, screen and weight against the MacBook Air, which could suggest a potential price point – or that he simply envisions a greater world of applications for his device than are traditionally associated with eBook readers.

There’s no price or release date yet, but I’ll be hassling Zombie Jon (resurrected through the magic of Voodoo) to get one in my sweaty palms at the earliest possible convenience, but in the meantime I will sate my longing by writing adoring poetry and reading it on the lovely Sony.

I’ve not used an eBook reader before – I’ve never felt the need – but I was pleasantly surprised by the readability of the screen. It uses an incredibly clear monochrome E Ink display that’s about as close to ink-on-paper as I imagine it’s possible to get.

E Ink is a passive, reflective technology so once there’s text on the screen, there’s no refresh or backlight to annoy the eyes. It consumes so little power, in fact, that battery life is measured in page turns (6,500 in this instance) rather than minutes, hours or days.

It’s robust too – rather than the liquid crystal screens that adorn our laptops and mobile phones, E Ink displays are constructed of ink capsules printed onto a plastic sheet that is then laminated to a layer of circuitry, so it should withstand the sort of abuse you’d normally subject a book to.

Now, eBook readers are nothing new – the Amazon Kindle reader has already sold by the squillion in the States, and there are various devices available on these shores, such as the Bookeen Cybook and the Rex iLiad too.

But this Sony product could genuinely kickstart the eBook market in the UK, which until now has occupied a small niche. Why? Well first because it’s a beautifully designed thing – it’s slim and light and luxurious in its silver finish and leatherette sleeve. And second because it’s being sold by a traditional book shop, Waterstones, alongside those old-fashioned papery things, stuck together with glue.

I still prefer the simplicity of a paperback. Books can be borrowed and lent, abused, read in the bath and on the beach without fear of breakdown. There’s something about opening a book for the first time that makes the heart leap with excitement – the smell, the feel of the paper under the fingers, the expectation of many an hour lost to entertainment and intrigue. I don’t think I’m going to give up on paper, ink and card just yet.

But the Waterstones deal means more people than ever are going to be exposed to the potential benefits of reading electronically. They’ll find out that reading text on screen is easier than they expected. They’ll work out that being able to fit the whole of War and Peace into a device just as easy to read, but smaller and easier to carry around than a Robert Harris thriller, is a big bonus. Anyone who’s ever struggled to get hold large print literature will also find it an absolute godsend – with just a simple press of a button needed to zoom right in.

At £200 inc VAT, it won’t be for everyone, but I expect that Waterstones will sell a good number of these in the run up to Christmas this year.