My fellow bibliophiles! This must be the beginning of a grand new era… and it is something that I’ve been anxiously awaiting since the time I heard a rumor, two years ago, of its development.

Sony has just released its Reader. This device, which is roughly the size of a paperback (7″x5″x0.5″), utilizes a newly developed electronic-ink technology — In essence, instead of glowing cells in CRT or LCD monitors, the electronic ink contains microcapsules that turn black, white or two shades of gray. The result is text that appears at nearly the same resolution as on the printed page, which is a gigantic improvement over previous technologies. Furthermore, it is high-contrast, able to be read in direct sunlight and at any angle, and it requires no power to maintain the image. Text can be enlarged up to 200% for those who forgot their reading glasses. And best of all: You can store hundreds of books in its internal (or removable) memory, and hundreds of titles are available for download online.

It’s not perfect yet. First, it’s monochrome, which is no doubt a temporary limitation. It is capable of displaying principally its proprietary book format, TXT, RTF, HTML, RSS feeds, JPG and PDFs (as well as playing mp3 audio files) — but I’d like to see support of other important formats, such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Now, I’m not saying that it needs to be a full-fledged computer, but it’d be nice to review various documents on-the-go, and these are, for better or for worse, the current industry standard for documents. I would also insist that there be some kind of highlighting feature, a notepad/sketchbook for diagramming thoughts while reading and a search function.

The price? Somewhere around $300. Don’t be scared just yet — this is the first generation of a wonderful new technology. (Remember that the first VHS video recorders cost upwards of $800!)

An electronic reader won’t replace the wonderful feeling of snuggling-up with a good book; but it will broaden the horizon in terms of usability and portability of one’s library when on-the-go. And that’s a great thing.

Thirty reasons to love ebooks are listed here.