E-inking a deal: Ghosts of U.S. TV makers past would find it amusing. Sony produced the world's first e-ink device for reading books, some six years ago. While Sony is still in the e-ink reader game, U.S. giant Amazon now leads the global market. Amazon is set to land a second blow against Sony in the form of its much-anticipated Kindle DX.

Already released in the United States, Amazon is putting out a global version of the DX and its 9.7-inch e-ink screen on Jan. 19. The release follows the arrival last year of an international version of the 6-inch version of Amazon's popular U.S.-based book-reader, the Kindle. Although the DX must be ordered from Amazon in the U.S. and delivered from there it will be usable in Japan, allowing wireless downloading of electronic books over 3G networks, reputedly in 60 seconds. Amazon claims a library of some 400,000 books for its various species of Kindle, but just how small a fraction of those are in Japanese is unclear.

Apart from more expansive screen real estate, the DX also boasts larger storage capacity with its 3.3 gigabytes of memory sufficient for up to 3,500 books. The extra memory is important, as there is no provision for augmenting it with flash memory cards. The all-important screen is 1200 × 824 pixels at a resolution of 150 ppi with a 16-level grey scale. The unit measures 264 × 183 × 9.7 mm and weighs a not-featherweight 540 grams. Despite the extra size compared to the regular Kindle the DX has a smaller keyboard, with the separate number keys ditched in favor of sharing duty with the QWERTY keys. The keyboard is useful for bookmarking and dictionary abilities. The format choice is reasonable but the PDF rendering precludes zooming and the increasingly popular and widespread ePub format is not supported.