Pandigital Novel goes on sale, hopes you'll take a look

It may not be the color e-reader that turns Amazon's Kindle and the B&N Nook into relics, but Pandigital's Novel is actually one of the more interesting me-toos to surface. Boasting a 7-inch LCD, 1GB of storage space (not to mention an SD / MMC card slot), integrated WiFi and access to the Barnes & Noble eBookstore, the Novel is now on sale in at least a couple of places. If we were you, though, we'd probably opt for that Kohl's link -- you know, unless you just enjoy paying $50 over the $199.99 MSRP.

Update: Whoops! Looks like the Kohl's "sale" is off as well, with the price shooting up to $259.99. No deal.

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BeBook Neo e-reader deemed solid, well designed, expensive

Hey kids: Sick of e-readers yet? If not, the kids at trusted reviews just got their hands on what they consider one of the nicest thus far. This 6-inch display-sportin' bad boy has some heft to it -- the reviewers felt that at .66 pounds it might be too much e-reader for some people. Still, it seems well-built and designed for holding for long periods of time. All in all, it's not earth-shattering, as much as "a well thought out refinement" of devices the reviewer has seen before. On the other hand, there is no finger input, MP3 playback is still not supported (an issue to be dealt with on a future firmware release, apparently), the much-ballyhooed Wacom pen notations, while nice, are only available on certain docs, and the UI (which relies on a jogwheel) is counter-intuitive, at first. So, it's pretty damn nice... but is it £238.29 (about $350) nice? Hit the source link to decide for yourself.

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Sony drops Pocket Reader price to $169... are e-readers about to get super cheap?

The Wall Street Journal noted this morning that Sony's rather quietly dropped the price of its Pocket Reader about $30 to $169. Now, it's actually what amounts to a sale -- the price cut lasts only through April 4th -- but that date, just two days after the iPad is made available, could give us a little insight into the timing of the drop. The Wall Street Journal also posits that this could be the first in a series of price war moves in the single purpose e-reader market which are now facing competition from multi-purpose devices such as the aforementioned iPad and the recently announced Kindle app for tablets.

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Kobo eReader is Kobo's $149 E Ink play for Borders, we thumb through its virtual pages

We've seen so many e-book readers of late that it's difficult to get excited about another, but Kobo's angle here might just make the Kobo eReader worth a look. Kobo's game is ecosystem, and in fact it doesn't plan on making a big splash in the actual e-reader market, since it's primarily about building branded software and delivering branded e-book stores for others, including manufacturers (like Plastic Logic), and booksellers (like Borders). Still, the 6-inch E Ink reader is fine hardware in its own right, with quality plastics throughout, a nice patterned rubber back, and a big friendly d-pad for paging through books. The device is actually laid out to mitigate accidental button presses -- even the menu buttons labelled on the front are actually located on the side of the device. As far as software and capabilities, the device is utterly barebones, but at least it keeps its aesthetics throughout, and everything seems responsive and intuitive. There's no 3G onboard (you sync your e-pub titles with a desktop app over USB), no specific word on storage (our guess is in the 1GB to 4GB range), and there don't seem to be any other activities available to reading books. Hopefully you're into that sort of thing, and Kobo at least pre-loaded 100 public domain titles to get you started. The unit will be sold at Borders this summer for $149, preceded by Indigo Books & Music in Canada in May.

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How would you change Barnes & Noble's Nook?

We know that some of you chaps are still waiting for your Barnes & Noble Nook to arrive, but by now, we're hoping that the vast majority (read: all) of you that were jonesing for one can finally say that yours is in-hand. For those that got one during the madness that is the holiday rush (or yesterday... that works too), we're interested to know how you'd do things differently. Are you kosher with the dual-screen approach? Is the user interface smooth enough? Would you tweak the e-book buying process? Do you wish you would've held off for some magical Mirasol-based device to hit "later this year?" Be sure to toss out your opinions in comments below, but make sure you think before you type -- the Nook sees and hears all, don'tcha know?

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Samsung E60 e-reader coming with Barnes and Noble content this spring for $299

Samsung still hasn't committed to a formal launch date for the e-reader line it launched at CES, but the company narrowed down the launch date from "early 2010" to "this spring" this morning -- which makes sense, seeing as spring has nearly, uh, sprung. We're only hearing about the six-inch E6 at the moment, along with a new Barnes and Noble partnership -- we're not sure anyone will pick the Samsung over the popular Nook, especially at the $399 price point we heard at CES, but at least there's a built-in content ecosystem. Interestingly, we're not hearing anything about the 10-inch E10 or QWERTY-equipped E61, both of which would fill large gaps in the B&N-enabled lineup, but we're looking out for more info -- we'll let you know. In the meantime, you can watch a video of all three devices right here.

Update: Samsung says the E6 will be $299 at launch, which is a nice little drop. As for the E10 and E61, all we're hearing is that they "may be coming soon," so who knows what's going on.

Update 2: The model name's been changed since CES -- it's now the E60, not the E6.

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