E-Book Reader Alex Now Available

Ever since many e-reading devices were flaunted at this year's International Consumer Electronics show, the media has generally looked at these products as an already established, new niche market, even though only a handful of models are actually on sale. Still, there have been, and still are, quite a few of them on the way. One of them, known as Alex, has been plagued by issues of development and untimely delays, much like the Nook (which somewhat resembles it). Still, it seems that all of those problems have finally been surpassed and Spring Design's offspring is finally read for action.

The company has been taking pre-orders for a while now. In fact, the electronic was initially scheduled to make its debut on the market in the first week of March.

Unfortunately, this did not come to pass, which left pre-orderers wondering what had happened and if their purchase was threatened in any way. Now, the long period of waiting is finally over, as Alex has stepped up and joined the e-book-reading party.

Alex promises to address the needs of end-users and, in return, asks for nothing more but to be itself read, browsed and loved. That and, of course, the price of $399. For this much cash, consumers will get a device weighing 312 grams, with a thickness of half an inch and with two distinct screens, a setup that resembles the Nook's approach to book browsing.

The larger, 6-inch e-paper display is, obviously, meant for the act of reading itself (supported file formats include TXT, HTML, EPUB and PDF), whereas the 3.5-inch color touchscreen is employed for navigation and even browsing the web. There is also a 2GB removable memory card and connectivity via USB and WiFi.

The operating system running Alex is Android and the device can be found on the official website, priced at $399. Later this quarter, Spring Design will extend availability to countries speaking Hebrew, Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.