PanDigital Novel 2 - Promising, for $200

For $200, I'm interested in this PanDigital Novel 2, if it's not slow and unresponsive as the first one was, though not as an E-reader as I need something like E-Ink and the effective study tools of the Kindle.

It's more than 30% lighter than the first version of the Novel (which had a white bezel), has more memory and, as Conceivably Tech points out, still costs $200.

  Would love it as a secondary reader that would read ePub and especially DRM'd ePub, since I can already convert the non-DRM'd epubs.  It'll have direct access to Barnes & Noble's store and of course have web-browsing over WiFi.
  I really like the idea of a MATTE screen, as it's the glare and reflections from the iPad that bother me when trying to read on it.

  This could be a great subtitute -- a more portable view-all -- for the iPad (for which I have no need that would support paying $500, to *start*, for the iPad, which is missing so many things I depend on with my 10"  Samsung Netbook), but we have no idea what the functioning of the PanDigital is like at this point. The first version was not promising, per early reviews.  This one is apparently faster and more responsive.

  I'd sure watch this one.  There are many coming up and I'll eventually get back to keeping up this page a bit.  I have notes on many other ones, but this one proves more enticing than anything I've seen so far (except the *idea* of the Notion Ink Adam).

Read the full story behind the picture, at Conceivably Tech.

  - Andrys

Fujitsu dramatically enhances color-e-paper functionality - Update

Fujitsu enhances color e-paper functionality
  The image at the left is of the older model.

"Tokyo, May 7, 2010 - (ACN Newswire) - Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of a newly-enhanced color electronic paper (e-paper) that features the world's highest-level color image quality. By extensively redesigning the panel structure and image re-write methods of Fujitsu's previous-version color e-paper, in addition to offering bright color, Fujitsu has improved contrast ratio to 7:1 (a threefold improvement compared to Fujitsu's previous version), and has made the image re-write speed twice as fast at 0.7 seconds compared to Fujitsu's previous color e-paper, thus enabling smooth image transitions and color display quality that is at the highest levels available for color e-paper. "

Details at the Earthtimes link above.

UPDATE - May 7, afternoon. (Original posting was same date, morning).
Electronista displays what it says are current color capability vs older version.
  They also say that "The device is intended for the Japanese market and may be a sequel to the pioneering Flepia.  American companies haven't adopted color e-paper so far, although Amazon has already said it eventually plans to switch to color for the Kindle. [via Akihabara]"

See larger picture (and accompanying story) at  the Akihabara story or by clicking on the comparison photo.

SPEED AND VIDEO
I still think there is not that much contrast for a device that is currently selling for $1,000 in its less contrast-capable version.  Also note, that Electronista  mentioned  "A 1024x768 color image redraws in 0.7 seconds, which is still too slow for video but is closer to the speed of regular grayscale e-paper " (which is important only because the Qualcomm Mirasol will have that.  You can search previous articles here  on Mirasol at top right search-bar).