AU: According to Barnes & Noble’s website, Nook is not available outside of the US “at this time”. _-EH

This development could be problematic for people who are waiting to test out the device in person at their local Barnes & Noble. Word is that display units should start trickling in at the end of November, but it is unlikely that there will be any units to sell. So you might have to get it sight unseen if you want to ensure delivery before the holidays (although our hands-on was promising).

For those of you that got on the bandwagon early, not to worry. Your devices are still scheduled to ship on November 30th. [Brighthand]

Overnight, Giz ran an item on iRex’s $US400 DR800SG. It has an 8.1-inch touchscreen, 3G Gobi chip with unlimited Verizon data access and wireless downloads from Barnes & Noble’s e-book store. Not long before this, we heard about the Courier – which, I know, is not an e-book, but could fill that function if needed. As can an iPhone (though I don’t recommend it) or a Blackberry (nada on that one, too, too small) and a host of other devices, not least of which is the Kindle.

But the e-book war seems largely contained to the US, as Giz reported back in May, when Bebook launched its first product in Oz.

Then, this morning Giz got the word on a new e-reader from BeBook, the Mini.

The blurb, for your pleasure

With its 5-inch E-Ink screen, the readable area is just 1-inch smaller across. This ensures optimal portability and readability at the same time. The new 8-level greyscale screen approximates the experience of reading printed text… The BeBook Mini has a fast 400mhz Arm processor for fast page turning and a convenient thumb wheel for even more reading convenience.

I dunno about the size of that screen. Portability is one thing but long-form reads and small screen real estate are not the best of partners.

But I do like the format support. Here goes: ePub, PDF, doc, html, bmp, jpg, png, gif, tif, djvu, fb2, wol, txt, ppt, pdb, lit*, chm, rar, zip, mp3, mobi*, prc*, htm and mbp are all supported. (*=non DRM). That should cover the bases. It also has a built-in SD card slot and USB 2.0 connection to expand the memory up to 16GB using SD.

The asking price is $389. Further info over at Bebook.

Look for a Giz hands-on with the Bebook Mini in the near future.

As far as hardware goes, iRex has gone for as simple a design as they could — a smart move, considering the inconsistent, early-90s look of iRex’s last effort, the massive 1000s. The DR800SG is in all ways sleek: it’s thin considering its 8.1-inch screen size, and consistently so — the edges are slightly tapered, but this thing is basically a box, with almost nothing in the way of curves or tapers.

The back of the device is near-featureless black plastic, while the front is matte grey. Controls come by way of a single rocker button on the left of the screen, which gets you around the iRex’s unusually complex OS without much trouble, or through a stylus (to avoid glare issues, this touchscreen is based on Wacom tablet tech behind the screen, so fingers aren’t an option) which gives you finer control over the device’s buttons and menus, which can sometimes be very small. The screen is beautifully contrasty and glare-free, and the hallmark screen flashes you get during page turns on e-ink have been shortened beyond anything I’ve ever seen before, though not by much. They’re still jarring.

As Wilson noticed with the 1000s, the DR800SG’s software is more complex than your average eBook reader’s, relying on Windows-like menus for most functions. As far as device usability, it’s nothing revolutionary, but there’s one feature that just might be:

The eBook Mall, which we couldn’t access right now on account of the device’s European configuration, is what makes this $US400 slab of e-ink more interesting than every other $US400 slab of e-ink on the market: At launch, it’ll connect with the Barnes and Noble eBook store as well as eBook libraries for awesome free borrowing, a la Sony, and a few other sources, but it’s open to anyone who cares to support iRex’s generously wide format choices. That’s what eBook readers were always meant to be, right? Devices that read books, wherever you want to get them. [iRex]

Someone sent CrunchGear a shot of their brand new Amazon Kindle and some pretty serious problems they’re having with its screen. This could be an isolated issue, or not. Is anyone else having similar issues with their Kindle? Let us know in the comments. [Crunchgear]

I gave my wife a Sony Reader for Christmas after she’d talked about them for some time (she deemed the Kindle “ugly” btw, which is important as anything else for a gadgets that’s designed to look at for hours on end, I guess). Her verdict on the experience? Good, but there’s one thing she misses from real books:

It’s not the smell, the texture, the page turning or the better contrast ratios of a real hardcover. She feels disoriented without the constant, tactile feedback of the book’s thickness—that unconscious reminder of just how much of the story is left to go (are there really enough pages remaining for Mr. Darcy and Lizzie to work things out??). Sure, there are page numbers on the screen, but it’s not the same.

I found her reaction simple and somewhat profound. While this small detail is far from a deal breaker for the Reader (or any other similar device), it’s not the sort of issue E Ink will ever be able to address. Of course, if/when our generations make way for children who never know paper, the industry will have solved its problem of a homesick readership.