Is this the next generation e-book reader for business professionals? At last week’s Demo confab, a relatively obscure company with the completely forgettable name Plastic Logic walked away with the “People’s Choice” award. Plastic Logic has been toiling away for ten years on creating the perfect e-book reader for business professionals, which should be available in 2009. What’s unique about this second (or perhaps third?) generation reader is the full-size 8 1/2″ x 11″ display that is about as thick and light as a pad of paper. It has the ability to store a wide variety of business documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs) magazines, newspapers, etc. You’ll be able to load up documents from your computer via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or a wired connection.Although it’s speculative, I’m not even sure Plastic Logic will position their device as a book reader at all. It may be more focused on professional documents and periodicals that are lugged around by CFOs, lawyers, engineers and bankers. I hope they tackle the technical trade press and academic text book market. There are lots of 40 pound backpacks and briefcases that I’m sure people would be happy to abandon given half the chance. It’s still too early to determine exactly what Plastic Logic will be offering to customers and whether or not they will be successful. But I think even if they target the business market exclusively, I think it could have a positive impact on consumer devices like the Amazon Kindle and the iRex e-book readers. Still, the technology looks impressive and has been getting positive write ups from Fortune and EE Times. Open Source