Hasta La Gadget!

If you didn’t feel you got the whole Story yesterday, here’s a pleasing helping of seconds, this time in the form of a full-on review. The PC Pro team rates iriver’s Kindle emulator as a “serious contender,” and places its readability on par with Sony’s touch-less Readers. While congratulations are also meted out for a decent integrated MP3 player, 3.5mm headphone jack, and the wide variety of supported formats, two issues stood out for the reviewers. One was that the support for Word, Excel and Powerpoint files was somewhat hit-and-miss, with zooming sometimes not working and rendering some files unreadable. But the major gripe related to the asking price of £230 including taxes (around $380), which the Story was not considered capable of justifying. Hit the link below for more — even if your interest is purely academic.

iriver Story reviewed, incites rebellion over price originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re pro-ebook readers but anti-Amazon censorship, here’s a decent alternative for your cashola. The Story reader from iriver has been undressed for our entertainment and rightfully praised for its trendy eco-friendly packaging. It’s not an altogether unique device, but with an 800 x 600 E Ink display, support for ePUB, PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and even Ogg / WMA file formats, it’s at least versatile enough. Hit the read link to try and spot the other differences between this and Amazon’s record-breaking piece of authoritarian hardware. Go on — it’s a real rush, we promise.

iriver Story unsheathed, still looks remarkably like a Kindle originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you missed getting in your Nook pre-order there’s still hope to nab the dual-display Barnes & Noble reader in time for the holidays. A Wall Street Journal piece says that Nook will be “available for sale or for demonstration purposes” in select, high-volume B&N stores starting December 7th — a week later than expected as B&N tries to fulfill unexpectedly high consumer demand following the ereader’s October 20th announcement. Of course, it’s impossible to say if the sell-out translates to high sales or just poor planning on B&N’s part as it dips a tentative toe into the fickle waters of consumer electronics. Nevertheless, anyone who ordered before November 20th will still receive theirs for Christmas while everyone else will receive theirs on January 4th as we already heard. Now if only Barnes & Noble would clarify what it means by “high-volume stores” we could plan our road-trips accordingly.

[Thanks, Arthur]

Nook begins shipping, in select Barnes & Noble stores on December 7th originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Publicly, at least, The New York Times has seemed perfectly kosher with the way things are moving in the newspaper industry. Rather than freaking out and wondering why they didn’t make the move to digital earlier, it’s apparently looking to push the digital distribution of its content via discounts and partnerships with hardware providers. In a rather unique and unprecedented move, the paper has today announced that prospective readers can receive $100 off of a Samsung Go netbook if they subscribe to Times Reader 2.0 for a year. The machine will come pre-loaded with the Adobe AIR-based application — which pushes published content to one’s machine on the double — and will be sold exclusively through J&R Music and Computer World. Of course, NYT wants $179.40 for a one-year sub, so the deal’s not exactly awesome or anything, but the offer stands for first-time subscribers until March 2010 if you’re interested.

Samsung Go netbook gets $100 cheaper with one-year Times Reader 2.0 subscription originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few nasty rumors were circulating that Barnes & Noble wouldn’t accept its own gift cards for ebook purchases, but thankfully, the outfit has come clean today to refute those claims. ‘Course, it’s possible that this change in policy was a direct result of all the bickering, but either way, the company will be accepting physical gift cards and online gift certificates as payment for ebooks really, really soon. The cards will work on purchases made at B&N’s website and through the Nook itself (not to mention “other devices using the B&N eReader software), and we’re told that the new policy will be in full effect come “mid-December.” In other words, all those gift cards you just purchased as stocking stuffers for to-be Nook owners are good to go. Phew.

[Thanks, David]

Barnes & Noble accepting gift cards for ebook purchases starting mid-December originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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