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Close your eyes and imagine that somebody took the second-generation Kindle, colored the plastic to make it look like it had been made in the 1980s and left in the sun ever since. Then imagine that they painted the already horrible keys a brassy gold color.
Now open your eyes and look at this:
Hey iriver: 1989 called. It wants its e-reader back
Hideous, isn’t it? It’s called the iriver Story HD e-reader, and it’s the first e-reeder that integrates with Google books. Clearly, if Google had any input on the design, it came from the pre Google+ era.
But you can’t judge a book by its cover, right? It’s what’s inside that counts. The Story HD allows direct access to Google’s three million titles through its built-in client, and can read Google’s DRMed books thanks to Adobe Digital Editions support. Other supported formats are EPUB, plain text and PDF, plus Powerpoint, Word and Excel files and finally zipped image files (for reading comic books).
The hardware itself is impressive. The HD in the name comes from the hi-res screen. The Story HD has a 768 x 1024 display, compared to the 600 x 800 of the Kindle 3. Given that the Kindle display already looks great, this should be a beauty.
The Story HD is also lighter than the Kindle 3 (Wi-Fi), at 7.3 vs. 8.5 ounces. Oddly, though, it doesn’t have a touch-screen like the latest e-readers, which puts it firmly in the “last-year’s tech” category.
But it’ll come down to the software, and the range of available titles. Currently, the leaders here are Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Available from Target on June 17th for $140.
Story HD product page [iriver via Google]
See Also:
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Now open your eyes and look at this:
Hey iriver: 1989 called. It wants its e-reader backHideous, isn’t it? It’s called the iriver Story HD e-reader, and it’s the first e-reeder that integrates with Google books. Clearly, if Google had any input on the design, it came from the pre Google+ era.
But you can’t judge a book by its cover, right? It’s what’s inside that counts. The Story HD allows direct access to Google’s three million titles through its built-in client, and can read Google’s DRMed books thanks to Adobe Digital Editions support. Other supported formats are EPUB, plain text and PDF, plus Powerpoint, Word and Excel files and finally zipped image files (for reading comic books).
The hardware itself is impressive. The HD in the name comes from the hi-res screen. The Story HD has a 768 x 1024 display, compared to the 600 x 800 of the Kindle 3. Given that the Kindle display already looks great, this should be a beauty.
The Story HD is also lighter than the Kindle 3 (Wi-Fi), at 7.3 vs. 8.5 ounces. Oddly, though, it doesn’t have a touch-screen like the latest e-readers, which puts it firmly in the “last-year’s tech” category.
But it’ll come down to the software, and the range of available titles. Currently, the leaders here are Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Available from Target on June 17th for $140.
Story HD product page [iriver via Google]
See Also:
- IRiver Overprices New Wi-Fi Story E-Reader
- iRiver Updates Chic Portable Media Player Line
- Kobo Update Adds New Fonts, Text Layout Controls
- Kobo Launches Touch-Screen E-Ink Tablet
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