Brian Fichter of coolhunting.com held a prototype of Plastic Logic’s e-reader in his hands at New York’s Tools of Change for Publishing Conference and declared he was “more than impressed.” This is the device we wrote about in September.

Fichter’s reservations are all about shape and color and feel (too beige, corners not rounded to his satisfaction, etc.), but these are cavils compared to the catalogue of advantages he lists, features that are going to give Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s eReader some stiff competition when the, um, Whatsit is released. That’s not the name for it, but either PL is guarding it like the crown jewels or doesn’t have a clue what to call it. We’ll have to wait about year to know and to hold the device in our own hands. But for a preview check out the video of a demo at the Consumer Electronics Show, along with Fichter’s take on the device. Here’s an excerpt

With a form factor equivalent to that of a legal-size pad of paper, though coming in at half the thickness and weighing under 16 ounces, it’s easy to see the reader’s instant appeal. Compatibility with document formats like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs, in addition to newspapers, periodicals and books, means that users will no longer need to stuff carry-ons or briefcases full of papers when traveling. The reader has the capacity to store thousands of documents, all of which can be synced wirelessly or with wired access. Publishing partners already include fictionwise, the Financial Times, Ingram Digital and USA Today.

Fichter refers to the Plastic Logic device as a possible “Kindle Killer” but there’s an evil twin lurking in E-Book World, the iRex Reader 1000 about which we wrote last fall; it too was dubbed a potential Kindle Killer. Sounds like there’s a hit-team of assassins looking to whack Kindle, but for now the device is planted smugly on its throne guarded by a fierce contingent of amazons captained by Jeff Bezos.

RC