Casio Japan has launched its new XD series of electronic dictionaries. Casio's gone all out and introduced 14 different models. It's crazy. You have models for high school students, junior high school students, university students, upper-class people (talk about classism), and people who are traveling. On top of it, there are models for Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, French, and German languages. If you're still awake read on.

Broadly speaking the models can be split into the XD-ST series and the XD-GT series. The XD-ST series has a 5" display (480x320), backlight, USB earphone terminal, 20MB of memory, SD expansion slot, and weighs 250 grams. The XD-GT series has a 5.5" (480x320), backlight, USB earphone terminal, 50MB of memory, SD expansion slot, and weighs 290 grams. The casing is made of aluminium for durability.

Some of the models go on sale from the 18th of this month and others from the 25th of this month in Japan only at the moment. Prices start from 47,250 Yen (US$49) for the junior high school student model. For a complete breakup of price and availability visit Casio Japan (it's in Japanese).

I don't know if these are available in the USA yet, but the other day, I did see a group of Japanese and they were all happily typing away on these things, I think it is latest craze in Japan or something, maybe it will catch on in other countries as well.