The Amazon Kindle is known in tech circles as the ebook reader to beat, according to the Amazon Kindle review. With its closest competition coming out with two new e-readers, the Sony PRS-300 and the Sony PRS-600, will the Kindle be finally given a run for its money? Not all details are known of these two new devices to hit the ebook reading industry, but there's enough data released to keep us intrigued and waiting. First, Sony itself has verified that it is indeed about to release two new e-readers. Then, some actual features were leaked to the public – features that could get Amazon a bit worried.

As a consumer, the price would be your utmost concern. Kindle 2, which is known for being an older model ever since Kindle DX was introduced in the market, is available for about 260 dollars, while the newly released Sony PRS-600 is nearly at the same price. Looking at a marketing perspective, what Sony is trying to do here is to target consumers who are not willing to spend almost 500 dollars to purchase a Kindle DX but are looking for newer options. Sony claims that they would also be identifying themselves with the 9.99 dollars price for both new releases and best sellers, confirming the company's intention to compete with Amazon. With their pricing scheme, Sony certainly has a lot to offer.

One of the features worth looking into with Sony's new electronic book readers is the touch screen feature. The only other e-reader where this feature is found is the 1000-dollar FLEPia. The touch screen allows you to take advantage of additional space where buttons would usually occupy. This indicates that the device would then be lighter and a bit smaller. The screen is about 6 inches in size, and a mere 10 ounces. Its thickness is about 4 inches. It is compact, yet is more advanced compared to other readers that you may come across.

You would probably also be excited to check out if this device indeed has a flexible screen. While Sony hasn't confirmed on this feature yet but the manual itself states that there are flexible features of the device. This has then lead to various speculations that the device consists of an unbreakable and yet a bendable screen, a great breakthough in technology.

Speculation is all well and good, but it is the hard facts that have people intrigued about the Sony PRS-300 and Sony PRS-600. The Sony PRS-600 comes with  freehand writing via a stylus, a built-in dictionary, a library software suite that supports both Mac and PC, 380mb of storage with possibility for expansion  and a battery life up to 7,500 pages. That's all very extraordinary given the modest price. While the details are still not entirely fleshed out by Sony, it is  clear that Amazon is going to have some competition. With the Sony PRS-600 and it's little brother the PRS-300 getting ready to hit the market, potential  buyers might just be holding out a little longer on that Kindle 2 they've been watching.

Olan Butler - Technology Specialist - Computer Services