Having announced its Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition e-book readers earlier this month, Sony has today unveiled the third member of its Reader family in the form of the Reader Daily Edition (pictured below, right).
The latest device will become available this December and sports a number of key new features including a seven-inch wide touchscreen display that allows for portrait or landscape reading, and an AT&T 3G modem providing on-the-go access to Sony's eBook store throughout the US.
The Ready Daily Edition's E Ink Vizplex electronic display will allow for 30-35 lines of text to be viewed in portrait mode, making the experience similar to that of a printed paperback book, says Sony. Expansion slots are available to increase storage capacity, but Sony adds that the unit's internal memory should be sufficient for more than one thousand standard eBooks.
Also new is version 3.0 of Sony's eBook Library for both Mac and PC, allowing users to transfer and read multiple file formats including Adobe PDF, EPUB, Microsoft Word and BBeB. What's most impressive, however, is Sony's new Library Finder application. Created with the help of OverDrive.com, Library Finder will allow users to access their local library's collection of eBooks - they can then be downloaded to a PC and transferred to the reader where they'll remain during the lending period. Once the lending period is over, the eBook simply expires.
There's no mention of when, or if, the Reader Touch Edition will be made available to UK consumers, but it has the makings of an impressive e-book reader. The Library Finder functionality in particular could be enough to worry Amazon's Kindle.
