Well it looks like Asus has decided to up the ante in the ongoing game of eBook reader development.  Trying to compete with Amazon’s market leading Kindle and Sony’s highly anticipated Reader series, Asus is planning on a dual screen eBook reader to better simulate the two sidedness of reading an actual paper based book.

The Eee Reader, which will join its Eee netbook and Eee Keyboard brothers in the Eee product family, in addition to displaying two pages at a time, will be able to display a virtual keyboard or web browser.  Despite one of the screens actually being in color, Asus is planning on releasing both budget and premium versions of the Eee Reader starting at a market leading $163.

But is a second screen on an eBook reader really anything more than a novelty that may actually become annoying?  One of the benefits of an eBook reader is that the act of turning pages is transformed into pushing a button or tapping the screen to advance the page.  Instead of flipping past too many pages or trying to hold the pages back, eBook readers instantaneously and effortlessly present the next page on the screen.  Adding a second screen, in essence, is simply reconstituting unnecessary bulk in a product that should be getting smaller and simpler.  Asus needs to understand that making something simpler and better than a book doesn’t mean it has to look like a book.

[Via: Cnet]