Plastic Logic took the veil off their newest business-oriented e-reader, the QUE proReader at the 7th CES held in January. As per the latest e-reader news coming in, the Que is slated to hit market sometime in April, though pre-orders are currently being accepted on the company site. Buyers who had pre-ordered the QUE have been informed by the company that the e-reader wont be available until summer in an attempt to fine tune its features and improve the overall product experience.
Developed by scientists at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, Plastic Logic uses flexible plastic technology that has been in development for 10 years now. The company plans to introduce two different models: one with a price tag of $649 and featuring Bluetooth, Wi-Fi capability and 4 GB memory and another priced at $799 having Wi-Fi, 3G wireless and 8GB memory. Both models don’t have memory card slots. QUE is slated to be sold through Barnes and Noble’s retail stores.
Positioned as a paperless briefcase, Que is one of the largest e-readers in the market. Less than 1/3″ thick, Que has a width of 8.5″ and a length of 11″ with a weight of 17.2 ounces. Screen measures 10.7″ diagonally, with a display resolution of 960 x 1280 at 150 ppi. Strangely, it supports only 8 levels of grayscale in comparison to many of the newer e-book readers that support 16.
Apart from Plastic Logic affirming that the screen is shatterproof, a gesture-based captive touchscreen is used for navigation with a virtual keyboard for taking notes. Plastic Logic has positioned the product for business professionals due to large screen and its support for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDF functions.
It is quite similar to Kindle DX in that it allows you to read newspapers, periodicals, business documents, textbooks, and PDF files along with e-books and text files as well. AT&T will provide both 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities depending on the model you choose. And since AT&T also has a presence in other countries, there sure exists an opportunity for expansion, though for now, the device is going to be limited to within US shores only.
Email and Calendar Service
Recently in a press release, Plastic logic disclosed plans to provide email and calendar service for the Que in Fall 2010 by partnering with Good Technology. This will enable mobile professionals to have email and calendar updates from a broad range of popular email and calendaring services, including Yahoo, Google, Windows Live, and Microsoft Exchange, automatically pushed directly to their QUE devices over WiFi and 3G networks. Further, the company plans to utilize their partnership with Good build a strong foundation for expansion into the enterprise, government and other verticals.
Content Associates
Apart from gaining access to Barnes and Noble’s e-books library via the Que store, Plastic Logic has also developed association with many leading business, news, and sports publishers to offer more content for the Que, which includes:
USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, the Oakland Tribune, the Huffington Post, The Sporting News Today, along with magazines from Barron’s, Fast Company, Forbes, MIT’s Technology Review, Popular Science, and IDG publication titles, including Macworld, PC World, CIO, Network World, and Computerworld.
Plastic Logic has also struck a partnership with Olive Software, which is among the better known digital publishing organizations with around 400 organizations utilizing their software to publish on the internet. These include newspaper and magazine publishers, major libraries and universities, and government institutions as is mentioned below.
Newspapers: Denver Post, Dallas Morning News, Daily Mail (UK), London Daily-Telegraph (UK), Sydney Morning Herald (AUS).
Magazines: Time, Colorado Springs Independent, Haymarket Publishing, LNG Publishing.
Libraries: Brooklyn Public Library, Colorado State Library, Israel National Library.
Universities: Ithaca College, Oxford University, Penn State University, Princeton University.
Enterprises: Microsoft, Canon, Kidney Cancer Association, Merrill Lynch, T. Rowe Price.
Government: United States Government-Department of Defense, Israel Air Force.
Que is compatible with the following Formats:
Text: EPUB, PDF, HTML, Visio, RTF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX
Images: JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF
You will have more on this at our upcoming Good E-Reader Magazine. You can have it delivered to your E-Reader or you can read it online! Its costs only $3.99 and the first issue is going to be FREE!
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
