Giant Korean firm Samsung said its E6 e-reader will become available in the USA for the not inconsiderable price of $299. But the machine has a little more to it than a glorified way for book publishers and gizmo makers to earn a fortune out of those at the bleeding edge.

Samsung formed a deal with Barnes & Noble to use the Ecommerce storefront, letting users get at B&N's digital library.

E6The E6 uses an electromagnetic resonant stylus pen that lets you scribble in the margins and add your insights into what you're reading. The machine has a voice recorder and supports handwriting too, as well as a calendar and an electronic dictionary.

The machine uses a six inch E-ink display at 600X800 pixels and has an eight grey scale. It supports a number of formats including e-pub, PDF, txt, bmp and jpg file formats and also includes text to speech technology through either the front speakers or headphones.

It also has an MP3 player.

The machine supports wi-fi and Bluetooth and software lets you sync your calendar with Outlook, if you use that. The unit comes with 2GB of internal memory and a Micro SD card slot lets you add another 16GB of memory.

So all in all it's a better bundle for your money than a Kindle or a Nook. But at $299 it's still only for those with money to burn.