Still more electronic reading tablets arrive

The Pioneer Press is all e-books, all the time this weekend.

A Sunday package includes my Tech Test Drive treatment on e-book-reading hardware and software; a review of the Amazon Kindle by a co-worker who recently received one as a gift; interviews with local users of the Kindle and iPhone-based e-book apps; a piece by our crack book editor on the e-book market and what local authors think of it; and other e-book-related goodies.

Grab page PDFs here for an alternate view.

Missing from the package are mentions of e-book readers not made available to me for testing (or just not available to anyone yet). I'll briefly mention a couple of them here, though.

One of these, the iRex 1000, is notable for a much-larger screen than that on a Kindle or Sony Reader. I tried like heck to get a review unit since this product is already shipping, but no luck.

(Sony was more forthcoming, lending me its still-unreleased touch-screen Reader for testing, for which I'm grateful. See my column today for a good look at this gizmo.)

A still-unnamed reading tablet from Plastic Logic (pics above and below) has an even bigger screen for reading business documents and the like -- and that isn't the half of it.

It's also superthin, and its display is made of a newfangled form of plastic-based electronics instead of the conventional glass. This is supposed to make it lighter and more durable, yet with the same super-readable E Ink technology in other readers.

That's one e-book device I'm dying to try, but it isn't due until next year.