Sony PRS-700 Digital Reader Pairs e-Ink with Touchscreen for Gesture Control [Built-in LED Reading Light Included]

Following on from the news of Astak's new Mentor EZ Reader, Sony have
taken the wraps off their latest Reader, the 'next-generation' Sony
PRS-700, which is one of the first (e-Book) Readers to bring together
e-Ink technology with a touchscreen display interface allowing for
fingertip based gesture control - facilitating the turning of pages with
the mere swipe of a fingertip across the screen - which, Sony
understandably claim, brings a more natural feel to the PRS-700 than is
offered by other readers.

Featuring a 6' touchscreen display that comes with a virtual keyboard
('for quick annotation or search'), Sony's PRS-700 Digital Reader offers
high contrast 8-Level Gray Scale, 180 degree viewing and - apart from
claiming to be the first digital reader with an integrated LED reading
light - boasts BBeB Book (Marlin - DRM Text), JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and
MP3 and AAC file format compatibility as well as support for BBeB, ePub,
TXT, RTF, Adobe PDF and MS Word formats whilst battery life is purported
to last fo the equivalent of 7500 continuous pages or, as Sony also puts
it, 'up to two weeks of reading' (though I'd be particularly impressed
if that level of endurance extended to my wife's voracious reading habits).

Due to begin shipping as of November, the Sony PRS-700 Digital Reader,
which comes complete with an integrated Memory Stick Due and SD memory
card reader, will retail for around the $400 price point (which,
incidentally, includes a bundled outer cover).

Sony