Spring Design takes Alex pre-orders, ships mid-April
updated 08:35 am EDT, Tue March 16, 2010
Spring Design Alex takes on Nook at higher price
Spring Design said today that it's now starting to take pre-orders for its Alex e-reader. Originally unveiled late last year, it should now ship "no later than" mid-April. Despite talk of a price drop, however, the company still claims it should ship for $399, or $140 more than the Nook that Spring Design alleges stole its design.
The Alex varies from its rival by using a narrower but taller 3.5-inch color touchscreen and a purer version of Android for its operating system. While simple, the change lets users drag any content, not just e-books, to the 6-inch E Ink display when refresh rates are less important than readability. The software also lets users annotate and highlight text as well as jump to AV or web links in specially formatted books.
As before, the Alex lacks 3G but does have Wi-Fi, 2GB of internal memory and a microSDHC slot to give it a total 34GB of possible space. It can last for up to two weeks of reading on a single charge. Paid books will be available chiefly from Borders' online bookstore, but only in June; free books will be available through Google for direct Alex downloading on launch.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Mar 2008
It's gonna bite the dust.
Looks like another iPad competitor.
It will probably bite the dust - being squeezed at the top end by the $499 iPad, and the low end by the Kindle and Nook and Sony eBook Reader.
It looks very complicated to use.
The iPad's design is so inviting and so easy to use consumers will gravitate to it. The 170,000+ apps on it are highly attractive as well as a drawing point for consumers.