Black & White E-Books? That's So Last Year

I've been pining for the perfect electronic book for about 15 years now, and the iRex iLiad and Sony Reader have come pretty darned close. The only potential headache is that they're both restricted to grayscale -- no problem if you're reading Harlequin romances or manga, but a bit of a pain if you're trying to read, say, the digital edition of USA Today.

Color electronic paper exists, but you won't find it in an e-book until October, when Fujitsu unveils their FLEPia readers. The two units will be available in A4 and A5 (8.27" x 11.69" and 5.83" x 8.27", respectively) sizes, with a resolution of 768 x 1024 and a maximum of 4,096 colors displayed at once. The units include SD card slots and Wi-Fi (b and g) connectivity.

There are two gotchas, though: for one, the FLEPia readers are only being released in Japan (they run the Japanese Windows CE 5.0), and they're a touch pricier -- the A5 units sell for ¥157,500 (about $1,319) each if you buy a lot of ten. Bump that to ¥262,500 ($2,195) for the A4 models. You know, grayscale isn't looking too bad right now.