Sony has signed bookstore Borders to sell its electronic book, the Reader, throughout the chain's 200 US shops. The consumer electronics giant said it would also offer the gadget in its 30-odd Sony Style outlets. Sony didn't say when the product will ship - it's already missed the March deadline it set when it announced the Reader last January.

The Reader - aka the PRS-500 - sports a 6in, 170dpi, 600 x 800 four-level greyscale display based on technology developed by eInk. It has 64MB of internal storage and an SD/MemoryStick slot to add more. The unit will display e-books, PDFs, JPEGs - not that they look much good in 2-bit black and white - and even play MP3 files. It weighs 250g and measures 17.6 x 12.4 x 1.4cm.

The battery's good for around "7,500 page turns" - enough, Sony reckons, to read War and Peace on a single charge. But then who ever does read all of War and Peace, we wonder?

Whatever takes your literary fancy, Sony will offer a range of "thousands" of downloadable tomes via its Connect online content store, with prices typically in the $15-25 range. Borders will sell pre-pay cards that can be redeemed against Connect downloads. ®