Another day, another e-reader. Toady’s is the Plastic Logic Que, which is pronounced like the letter that falls between P and R. I, however, will henceforth pronounce it like the Portuguese word for “what,” and the European Portuguese pronunciation at that. (Sorta sounds like “quh.” It’s a movement!) Plastic Logic seems to be aiming it at the business market, which I don’t think we’ve really seen before.
What does it do? Well, Timmy, it e-reads all sorts of stuff, including Microsoft Office documents and books from Barnes & Noble. Note that you don’t need to use a stylus like that IREX reader.
The weird thing is that, yeah, Plastic Logic doesn’t seem to want to compete, so to speak, with the Amazon Kindle. The Que is for businesspeople, by businesspeople.
Other goodies:
• 8.5×11-inch touchscreen display
• 3G (provided by AT&T), Wi-Fi
• Ability to edit said Office documents on the device itself
There’s no price and there’s no release date yet. Plastic Logic will have more to say at CES in January, which means it won’t be out in time for the holidays.
Basically, Plastic Logic is just saying today, “Hey, we have an e-reader, too, Mr and Ms. Businessperson. Check back with us at CES and we’ll have more info!”
And no, there are no photos of the front of the Que, just that side angle nonsense. Plastic Logic is toying with us.
Here’s the full press release, if you’re interested in reading such things.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Plastic Logic revealed today its plans to unveil QUE™ (pronounced “Q”), the first proReader designed for business professionals. Premiering January 7, 2010 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (Central Hall of Las Vegas Convention Center at Booth 11840 anchoring the e-Book Techzone), QUE is an essential tool for busy professionals, providing access to a dynamic ecosystem of content.
With QUE, Plastic Logic is expanding the eReader category, which to date has focused on leisure reading devices and casual users. QUE is designed to simplify the multi-faceted lifestyle of the modern businessperson, and to quite literally lighten their workload. In addition to connecting its users with their business and professional newspapers, books and periodicals, QUE supports the document formats business users need (including PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents) and features powerful tools for interacting with and managing the content.
“The QUE brand stands for a premium reading experience,” said Richard Archuleta, CEO of Plastic Logic. “The QUE proReader enhances business performance and gives you a competitive edge. More than an eReader, QUE means business.”
Extra thin, lightweight and wireless-enabled, QUE is the size of an 8.5 x 11 inch pad of paper, less than a 1/3 inch thick, and weighs less than many periodicals. The innovative QUE proReader features the largest touchscreen in the industry, an intuitive touch screen user interface, and provides access to a file cabinet’s worth of documents, plus your favorite—and most necessary—publications.
QUE stands out in a crowd because it’s a business reader, but it’s also unique for its shatterproof plastic display. This exclusive technology from Plastic Logic, along with E Ink Vizplex® technology produces an outstanding reading experience. Its battery can last days, instead of hours.
QUE users will be able to connect to content and download wirelessly via Wi-Fi and AT&T’s 3G network, the nation’s fastest 3G mobile broadband network. The QUE store will offer the most significant collection of business reading available on any eReader. The store is powered by Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest eBookstore.
Full product specifications, availability and pricing of QUE will be announced on January 7, 2010 at CES.
The QUE for CES starts at http://www.QUEreader.com.
I wonder if the level of mystery here is enough to circumvent the general population’s lack of interest in something so mysterious.
A lot of these more recent e-readers have 3g and are pairing up with mobile comm companies, but Kindle still stands out as having a browser. As slow and trying as it is to navigate with that thing, at least it’s there.
I want some twitter, google maps, wikipedia, and some online comics/cbr/cbz action on a reader before I pick one up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ44Z-g1WUU
the tabbed selections on the left side are very useful mind you this is not final hardware and several times its be noted the launch hardware/firmware would be much faster
The device was demonstrated on stage at D7 back in May:
http://d7.allthingsd.com/20090527/d7-tech-demo-plastic-logic/
This is a demo that’s slightly newer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozjV6LUkB30
quê?
nha que
Cool
Ha. Reminds me of the problems GM is said to have had marketing the Chevy Nova to Latin America.
“¿No va? Well, that’s truth in advertising, anyway.”
Anyhow, with no specs yet, not even something simple like resolution or battery life, it might as well be a wifi etch-a-sketch.
wifi etch-a-sketch? That’s a great idea! Turn the old toy into a social app where you and your friends can collaborate on drawings. One guy makes the stairs that go up while your friend on the other side of the world makes the stairs that go down…
Nicholas, really… above the crease (i.e. before the skip), you should give a little more content, and less garbage about how you plan to pronounce the product.
Please take the criticism as it’s intended – constructively.
Not great marketing when it is necessary to explain the pronunciation. Particularly as there is no clever reason behind the thinking here.
I could definitely see this taking hold in the enterprise. One of the main uses of the printer, at least in my experience, is to make informal printouts of something just so you can take it over to a colleagues desk and show him or her what you’re seeing on your screen. If you could put one of these at each persons desk and “print” to it instead, you would probably save a lot of money, paper, and time. If these also have bluetooth/Wi-Fi Direct, that would make it even easier to share a document with a colleague. I’d say the office angle is definitely a good one for a product like this.
“if you could put one of these at each persons desk and “print” to it instead”
You mean, like a PC?
Well no. Usually people throw away tons of print-outs in an office because they are only used once or twice to show something to someone else and then tossed out. Instead, you could just send that document or screenshot to this device and then take that with you to show the other person. That way you save a print out. A lot of people just naturally prefer printing something out to emailing it. You could use a laptop instead but a lot of people are still using desktops in the office.
Also, had this have been an apple tablet product shot, the apple fan boys would be drooling, not complaining about the lack of spec.
Oversized? Almost no books are 8.5″x11″ and we’re used to read Word in half that space. My 15″ notebook screen is about 8″ tall.
It looks like something I’ll gladly leave on my desktop and not bring around when I’m on the move.
The Que seems to have some pretty neat features. For some reason if I were to be thinking of buying an ebook reader I’d rather not get one from Amazon! So, if I knew a bit more about this one it may interest me. Shame Plastic Logic are messing around and not giving us the details!
This device does not have a 8.5×11-inch touchscreen display, as clearly stated in the PR:
“QUE is the size of an 8.5 x 11 inch pad of paper”.
The screen is much smaller, with generous margins (see product pics).
I was only having a conversation with Microsoft recently about a OneNote dedicated device which would be cheap, internet connected, have a great battery life and was firmly targetted at replacing a paper notebook for both taking notes, scribbles and reading. Maybe this is that kind of device (if it’s small enough, thin enough, light enough and cheap enough).
This seems interesting, I will keep an eye out on this.
Hopefully soon at CES all the rumors will be answered about how it will really function. Color? So far the only thing that seemed questionable was the slow load speed from the All things Digital demo http://video.allthingsd.com/video/plastic-logic-the-full-d7-demo/E9755752-32CD-47FD-B1F7-F7CF6C70BE7F and also the lack of buttons worries me because having been a long time tablet enthusiast, dead areas on the screen can quickly make the device useless.
found extinctions regional article program
View a demo here: http://www.ereaderuniverse.com/video/plastic-logic-reader