It may have stood out as one of the few stars of CES 2010 and sold out in preorder, but Plastic Logic’s incredibly slim Que ProReader won’t be hitting backpacks, purses and briefcases in April as expected. Thursday night, the company sent an e-mail to preorder customers advising them that the Que would be arriving “sometime this summer” instead.
Why the holdup? According to the same e-mail, Plastic Logic will use the extra time to “fine-tune features and enhance the overall product.” While we can’t say for sure what nuts and bolts the engineers at Plastic Logic are still turning, the Que prototype we played with at CES felt a bit slow on the draw and unusually difficult to make touch selections with.
The business-targeted e-reader will still retail for $650 for the basic 4GB version with Wi-Fi and $800 for an 8GB with Wi-Fi and 3G. Besides receiving e-mails and opening a wide array of Office formats from PowerPoint presentations to Word and Excel documents, the Que will also boast a unique virtual library of magazines and newspapers that have been specially formatted to preserve print-like look and feel.
Plastic Logic’s delay puts the Que in danger of butting heads with a number of competing products. Aside from the launch of the hotly anticipated iPad on April 3, the very similar Skiff with backing from Sprint will arrive later this year, and Amazon has been rumored to be working on a next-generation Kindle, as well. That’s not to even mention smaller e-readers, like Samsung’s E60 or the Android-powered Alex from Spring Design.
