Sony Reader PRS-500 gets launch date, price

We told you it wasn't too far off from release this morning when we showed you our hands-on shots of the device, and now Sony has made good on our promise by finally giving us a price and launch date for their Sony Reader PRS-500. Sony is bringing this one in "on or before" October 31st for $350, and is currently accepting pre-orders at their online store. It sure took them long enough, but we're glad they didn't slip on that $350 pricepoint. As for specs -- in case you haven't managed to pick them up by now -- the E Ink unit sports a 6-inch display with 170 pixels per inch of 4-level grayscale action. There's also 7,500 page turns of battery life, and while we're not quite sure we're ready to get locked into Sony's latest proprietary DRM in the form of BBeB, we're sure we can find plenty of use for unit between the other document formats supported and the repeated self-congratulating viewings of our own RSS feeds.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 2nd 2007 2:10AM]

I finally saw the sony reader at a local store. Yes the text is fantastic. HOWEVER...
it is not open source and cannot download all my mobipocket books, free and purchased, nor my microsoft reader books, free and purchased, and only is capable of downloading PDF in a form that is cumbersome (text is not as readable). I saw an advertisement for an LED attachment. Does this mean it has NO backlight or illumination at all???? I've also heard that it is extremely fragile, as in do not drop from any hight or it breaks. I subscribe to the New York Times online and read it on my PC. That is another capability that would be great to have included in the Sony reader. So, with this one-trick pony, albeit a great really killer trick, (readability, long battery life), its shortcomings and questionable price are just too much. I too have read many books on my PDA, some longer than War and Peace, which I have read on it. I also save text to word from a book on my PDA when an author's thought is memorable. This is the first generation of something truely wonderful, but a long, long way away from even being considered unless one has money to burn.