Acer's 6-inch LumiRead to offer Barnes and Noble ebooks, ISBN scanner
In another reversal of plans, Acer has just announced its first e-reader device. The LumiRead will participate in the clear.fi initiative for keeping you constantly in the Acer loop, while also offering WiFi and 3G connectivity options. It looks very much like the tablet we saw teased earlier this morning, coming with a similar integrated keyboard and a smaller 6-inch E Ink display. Announcing a distribution agreement with Barnes and Noble and its one million-book library, China's Founder, and Germany's Libri.de, which carries four millions titles, Acer will try to ensure it has a strong selection upon release. It's also throwing in an ISBN scanner, which will be turning paperbacks into instruments of their own destruction by allowing you to scan a book in for later purchase online. Supported formats are described only as "various," and there's 2GB of storage onboard (expandable via MicroSD) to keep things stashed. Expect this new e-reader to show up in Q3 of 2010. Full PR after the break.
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Acer LumiRead
2010-05-27 - Enhance your Experience with Localized Content
We are experiencing a content revolution. Internet has made readily accessible to everyone a growing amount of content. Now users are looking for devices through which they can take advantage of this sea of contents.
eBooks are one of the ways Internet has made content available to users and, with hundreds of new titles coming out every day, they are having a growing success.
Acer has picked up this user trend and developed the LumiRead, a device that while offering users an excellent reading experience it seamlessly integrates in the Acer clear.fi solution to let people live through a 360° Acer experience. In fact the Acer LumiRead is DLNA compliant, therefore capable to access Acer clear.fi and share contents like eBooks and audio-books.
Light, compact and easy to use, the Acer LumiRead is the ultimate travel companion. No need to choose which books you want to carry with you, you will always have your entire library at your disposal, on the beach or on top of a mountain. Intuitive navigation and comfortable layout of content offer an excellent reading experience no matter where you are. And, should you run out of books to read, you can connect wirelessly or via 3G module to download the latest bestseller!
Acer has already signed agreements with Barnes&Nobles, a leading US company offering over 1 million titles in its eBooks store, Libri.de, a Germany's leading Internet book retailer offering over 4 Million titles, which also distributes to book retailers through the wholesaler Libri GmbH, Founder, one of China's most innovative and influential high-tech companies, to provide localized contents in English, Chinese and German. But also French and Italian readers will be able shortly to read books in their languages, thanks to other agreements that are almost ready to be formalized.
Acer LumiRead comes with 6-inch display, it's only few millimeters thick and permits to carry an entire library of up to 1,500 books in just a handful of grams. With non-glare, no backlit e-Ink display, it delivers a paper-like reading experience, even under bright sunlight.
Equipped with 2GB flash memory, it can hold more than a thousand of books and its capacity can be easily expanded just by adding a MicroSD card. An innovative ISBN scanner allows to scan ISBN codes so you can create your own wish-list and search on supported online libraries and book stores.
Acer LumiRead is rich of cool features designed to offer a better experience. The QWERTY keyboard makes it easy to browse the web and find and share information on books. The auto-layout automatically adjusts the content to offer the best reading experience according to the format. It supports various formats, multiplying users choices, and most popular DRM (Adobe and OMA2.0).
You can easily browse through you entire collection of books thanks to the simple and intuitive user interface, that let you also visualize book categories for better management of your library.
Acer LumiRead features a built-in Internet Browser, and the unique "Smart Download" saves website content for reading anytime, everywhere!
