Asda touts £52 e-reader

Kindle update

Meanwhile, having dominated the e-reader market, Amazon has previewed a software update that will come to its Kindle e-reader.

According to a web post, Amazon will roll out a ‘public notes' feature for the latest generation Kindle and Kindle 3G, which will allow users to choose to make their book notes and highlights available for others to see.

The idea seems to be to create a kind of book club community so professors, authors and fans can share their thoughts on specific passages and ideas in what Amazon has said is "a new way for readers to share their excitement and knowledge about books and get more from the books they read."

The update will also add ‘real page numbers' so Kindle pages match the page numbers in print books so they can read alongside paperback fans in book clubs and school classes. Apparently tens of thousands of Kindle books have already been changed to ‘real page numbers', including the top 100 bestselling titles in the Kindle Store.

This feature will also be added to the various Kindle apps in ‘the coming months', according to Amazon.

In a bid to encourage more interaction with the Kindle Store, the ‘before you go' function, which kicks in before readers reach the very end of a book, will let readers immediately rate it, share a message with their social network and get personalised recommendations of what to read next as well as see more books from the author.

And finally, there will be a new newspaper and magazine layout designed to give a snapshot of the news so readers can decide more easily what they want to read first.

Kindle owners can try and early preview of the features by manually downloading the software update, but all new gen Kindle and Kindle 3G owners will get it as an automatic update via Wi-Fi when it becomes available, said Amazon.

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Now this ASDA reader is more like it! No flashing black when turning pages, no need to buy a booklight to read it at night, full colour, video, music and only £52!! Bargain. I can live with reduced battery life in exchange for the cheap price, no flashing black and the other extras. I expect battery life will also depend on what you use it for. If just books it will last longer, if movies then less so.

Well done ASDA!! :rockon: :clapping:

UPDATE
Here is a link to some specs. & details: http://hubpages.com/hub/ViewQuest-MediaBox-5-Media-Tablet

SPECIFICATION:

Chip solution: RK2728

Display: 5“ TFT, 800x480

Battery: Built-in Polymer 1800mAh

eBooks: ePub, PDF, FB2, TXT, DOC, PDB, HTML, WTXT

Music: MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC, WAV, OGG, APE

Video: WMV, RM, AVI, RMVB, 3GP, FLV, MP4, DAT, VOB, MPG

Images: JPEG, BMP, GIF

Memory: 2Gb internal

Transfer: USB 2.0

Audio: Built-in speaker, headphone jack

Accessories: USB cable, AC adapter, headphones, user manual

Dims: 149 x 104 x 10.6mm

Features

* The perfect travel companion
* Play videos on the 5” widescreen
* Read eBooks in portrait or landscape modes
* Backlit for night time reading
* Built-in speaker for music, video or audiobook playback
* Store and view your photo collection
* Built-in voice recorder
* Power saving mode to reduce eye strain and improve battery life
* Does not support DRM Files

The Table at the bottom of this article (http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/article.html?in_article_id=522542&in_page_id=5&position=moretopstories) quotes a battery life of 6 - 20 hours.

Looks good to me!

If it doesn't have an electronic ink screen of some sort it's not a proper e-reader. You may as well read a book on your mobile or laptop. Talk about eye strain. If I'm getting something that's an e-reader then the primary purpose is to read text. TFT/LCD is definitely not conducive to that. It's a neat media tablet, and you can read ebook formats on it, I don' think that makes it an e-reader any more than it does than calling it a TV. :)

I don't like the e-Ink readers as the flash to black that comes with every page turn sets of my migraines, but a normal monitor does not. Also, the difference is this is a multi-function device:

* E-Reader
* Video Player
* Music Player

The more functions that can be combined the better… or do you want to lug around a TV, Desktop PC, Laptop, Tablet, E-Reader, Movie Player, MP3 Player, etc. every where you go? The point is it IS an E-Reader and as such is in direct competition with the likes of Kindle and nook but a lot cheaper, which can only be good for us consumers as it will encourage development and price reductions.

The ultimate would be to have a small lightweight touchscreen tablet that can do everything and do it as well as a full blown enthusiast level PC! At worse 2 of them, one pocket/novel sized, and one larger (say A4) sized. One day maybe it would even be possible to store the little one in the bigger one aid transport…

superscaper
If it doesn't have an electronic ink screen of some sort it's not a proper e-reader. You may as well read a book on your mobile or laptop. Talk about eye strain. If I'm getting something that's an e-reader then the primary purpose is to read text. TFT/LCD is definitely not conducive to that. It's a neat media tablet, and you can read ebook formats on it, I don' think that makes it an e-reader any more than it does than calling it a TV. :)

That about says it all really.
The whole point of an ebook reader (I've had one for two years now) is that you can read books on it for hours on end with no more eye strain than with a normal book.
That's where e-ink without the back light comes into its own.
The ASDA device is just a 5 inch LED screen.

The page transition on e-ink readers does seem to bother some people, though there's an alternative “dissolve” mode without the flashing on mine, that may be better.

And about having one device that does loads of things, it normally does them all badly. If you read books a lot, there's currently nothing better than a proper ebook reader.
It's just ASDA chasing the sales.

Except that setting a sensible backlight level allows many people to read without eyestrain, and the screenwipe/reset process of e-ink does cause eyestrain for some people, so neither system is perfect. I read ebooks on my Android phone and can do so comfortably without eyestrain for as long as I could read a normal book. Given that many people in this country spend 8 hours a day reading text on a backlit screen, I find the whole “backlight == eye-strain” argument disingenuous. Excessive backlighting causes eye-strain, yes, but an appropriate backlight doesn't.

If you can read electronic books on it, it's an e-reader. It may be an e-reader amongst other things, but it's still an e-reader. Will a £52 e-reader be as good for reading ebooks as a £152 ereader? Well, probably not, but ultimately you get what you pay for and Asda's offering looks like a decent device for the price, to me.

Asda touts £52 e-reader

Kindle update

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