Video: Plastic Logic Prototype E-Reader

Plastic Logic is showing off a prototype of its thin-film electronic reader at the D7 conference. The main difference between what Plastic Logic is trying to build and the Kindle is that its screen technology is much thinner, lighter and can be incorporated into more flexible form- factors. I shot the video above showing a demo of what it can do.

We certainly need thinner, sleeker e-reader devices. But unless Amazon adopts the technology for future Kindles or opens up the Kindle Store t other e-readers, any Plastic Logic device will have limited appeal. The company is pitching it as ideal for viewing business documents, something you can easily do with the Kindle as well. It converts everything to a PDF and lets you jump around to different pages or even different documents (represented by different tabs). The Plastic Logic prototype uses E-Ink technology, like the Kindle, it i just not on glass. So it suffers from the same slow load times for each new page. It also does not display Web pages (something the Kindle does in rudimentary form).