Earlier this year Asus unveiled the DR-900, a 9-inch ebook reader that features a SiPix touchscreen display.
Since then the DR-900 has fallen off into obscurity as Asus has been rather vague on the details and release date. But now a variation of the DR-900 has been released in Taiwan under the name TZ-900.
According to this article over at DigiTimes, the TZ-900 costs about NT$10,000 ($323 USD) and was released through cooperation with a religious organization in Taiwan, Tzu Chi. 5000 units have shipped via pre-order and Asustek expects to sell another 100,000 units to the Tzu Chi group’s 1 million members.
The article also mentions the Asus DR-900:
In addition, Asustek will launch a second Eee Reader series, the 9-inch DR-900 with 3G functions, in the Taiwan market on November 29 at about NT$12,000, the company indicated.
There still isn’t any word about Asustek extending the DR-900 outside of Taiwan. It’s definitely an interesting-looking device with some unique features. The video below shows the TZ-900 in action, but is not in English, unfortunately.
Although the touch function seems to work fine, the device processing looks a little slow. But good to know that finally they are launching the DR-900 in november. Maybe next year would reach US or Europe. Just notice that has a lower resolution than the Kindle DX, is there do to the Sipix epaper?
Yeah, the word is SiPix epaper doesn’t have as good contrast as E Ink epaper, that the background is grayer. I haven’t had one to compare just yet, but the new Pandigital Novel should be coming out in a couple of weeks so it will serve as a good example for SiPix.
Still looks to be the best alternative for large pdf text books…