Love e-books or hate them, there's the faint aura of recovery in that particular DRM-ravaged sector of portable media. This comes thanks to less paranoid publishers and Sony's excellent Reader, which offers sane Itunes-like DRM and the ability to view any old file format. In Jinke/HanLin's new iBook eReader V3, it gets some serious competition.
Unfortunately, with that well-trademarked name, it won't be seen here in the west without a rebranding, but here's to hope: At $325, it's a meal and bottle o'wine cheaper than Sony's Reader, and adds touchscreen functionality to the same e-ink display that the competition uses. It also comes with a keypad (Sony's Reader doesn't have one, but the imported Sony Librie model from Japan does), plays all relevant formats, and keeps it light at 200g. It runs on Linux, too, for potential hackeration galore.
Available in the Ukraine(!) in July. U.S. release comes in the fall.
New E Ink reader hits the streets: lBook eReader V3 [Mobileread]
