Coming with a pink "Cross Your Heart" Reader skin and a coupon for 14 Harlequin Special Releases...let's just say that we'd never date anyone who accepted this gift in earnest. For those interested in what a real lady (my wife) thinks about the Sony Reader, hit up her impressions here. For the record, she's still reading with it nonstop.

Dimensions: 255.8mm (L) x 173.5mm (W) x 14.3mm (H)
Display: ePaper (E-ink technology) 10 inches, 825 x 1200 pixel
Storage: 64MB Nand Flash ,SD/MMC card (Support for 2GB)
Weight: 320g (includes battery)
Battery: Li-ION 950mAH
I/O: USB1.1
Format Support: PDF, DOC, WOLF, HTML,JPG, TXT, CHM, RAR, ZIP, Images ETC.
Operating System: WOLF LINUX OS
Hardware CPU: Samsung ARM9 200Mhz CPU

By comparison, the Amazon Kindle has a 6-inch diagonal E-Ink® electronic paper display with 600 x 800 pixel resolution and 4-level grayscale, while the Sony Reader has the same size but with 8 levels of gray and 754 x 584 pixels. [MobileRead]

It's not just the smell, the texture, the page turning or the better contrast ratios of a real hardcover that you'd expect. She feels disoriented without the constant, tactile feedback of the book's thickness—that unconscious reminder of just how much of the story is left to go (are there really enough pages remaining for Mr. Darcy and Lizzie to work things out??). Sure, there are page numbers on the screen, but it's not the same.

I found her reaction simple and somewhat profound. While this small detail is far from a deal breaker for the Reader (or any other similar device), it's not the sort of issue E Ink will ever be able to address. Of course, if/when our generations make way for children who never know paper, the industry will have solved its problem of a homesick readership.

New York Times bestsellers and hardback new releases will go for $9.99, with classics going as low as $1.99. Through the service, which is an extension of the Amazon store, you also can subscribe to newspapers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post) and magazines, which are automatically sent to Kindle when they drop on the wire.

Talking about the hardware itself, it'll hold 200 books on board, though you can supplement with unspecified memory cards. It'll get up to 30 hours of reading per charge and weighs 10.3 ounces. So, why does such a potentially disruptive device look so very plain? They wanted it to look like "an austere vessel of culture." The moniker Kindle is from the same line of thinking, "the crackling ignition of knowledge." But, thankfully, it doesn't get warm itself.

Some obvious questions are left though, mostly about the "always-on" connection—is the EV-DO-based Whispernet service included in the $399? If not, what's the pricing on that? And what are its limits, since you can go out onto the real web? Odds are, Bezos himself will reveal the answers tomorrow.

The goals here are pretty lofty: "Amazon believes it has created the iPod of reading." We really, really dig Jeff's vision, "that you should be able to get any book—not just any book in print, but any book that's ever been in print—on this device in less than a minute," so we hope about as much as he does that this little beige slab lives up to all the wonderful that they're promising. [Newsweek]

Oh, and there are speakers, too. With all this functionality and a waistline of just 12mm, we think we're in love. [gizmag via gizwatch]

However, the Kindle is actually a step up in terms of functionality from Sony's reader.

It has a screen display that's just as good, and will be using Mobipocket to supply titles. The release date is spring, which is pretty darn soon.

What's more, the Kindle will have online functionality from its EV-DO connection to buy eBooks directly from Amazon. Despite the device not looking that great from the shots we've seen before, the features do seem to place this as quite a nice alternative to Sony's offering. – Jason Chen

Amazon Kindle this spring for above $400 [Mobileread]

Using this, you can make word docs, presentations, and professional layout applicaiton docs into something that look good on Sony's Reader. The guide, however, comes in PDF format—presumably optimized for the Reader already so you can read the guide there while optimizing PDFs on your PC. – Jason Chen

Guide [MAKE]

PDF Guide (PDF) [MAKE]

The Words Gear has a six-hour battery life, an e-Sensor to control the device with a finger, and a price of around $340. It should be released sometime later this year, but most likely won't be available outside of Japan. – Jason Chen

Panasonic "Words Gear" book reading device [Tech Japan via Slashgear]