Cool-er e-book reader is cool, but no Kindle

0 Comments | USA TODAY, May, 2009 | by Edward C. Baig

Almost everybody loves an underdog. Still, it's a monumental leap of faith to suggest that a small fry has much of a chance at toppling the Goliath of the electronic reader market, Amazon.com.

The upstart is an outfit called Interead, which this week starts shipping a svelte, lightweight and snazzy-looking new e-book reader called the Cool-er.

E-book machines had been around for a decade or so before Amazon's Kindles and Sony's Readers brought buzz and legitimacy. If anything, the market promises to get even bigger. Large companies (Fujitsu, Samsung) and small ones (Plastic Logic, iRex) have or will enter the market.

The chief appeal of e-readers, of course, is that you can schlep hundreds of books in a slab about the size of a paperback. But there's...