I had a chance to play with this new ereader at a press presentation by Marvel Semiconductor who powers the unit. This is an extremely impressive unit. It is fast, fast, fast. According to Marvel, this is because they do a partial, rather than a whole, refresh on the e-ink screen and this results in a refresh time that is 66% faster than units such as the Nook and Kindle. Also contributing to this is the fact that the video controller is integrated with the processor. I must say that this is borne out in practice.
The lower color screen is crisp and sharp and, again, is very fast. Unlike the Nook you can actually use the screen to display pictures or show web pages and do many other functions. With the web browser you can browse on the lower screen and then “throw up” the page onto the e-ink screen to read it.
I can tell you right now that, as much as I love my Kindle, I’m going to buy one of these when it is released. As the presentation was by the OEM, no pricing or other release details were available.
This was supposed to be released yesterday, but Nate reports that it will ship in 10 weeks
http://www.natesebooknews.com/2010/02/23/alex-reader-to-ship-in-10-weeks/
Hardly the first Reader to miss a deadline, and it does look interesting.
Paul, since there’s another delay on the Alex, what was your experience with the annotation features and the dictionary. Search routines also.
Thanks! B&N should have gone with them, eh?
– A
Unfortunately it was demonstrated by the OEM, not by the seller, and he didn’t know how to use a lot of the features. I couldn’t hold on to it long enough to give it a good workout.