If you pre-ordered a Kindle Touch and have been counting the days before the November 21 release, then here’s a bit of good news coming your way: Amazon has started sending notifications that some users can start expecting their new readers on or before November 17th.

If you didn’t get the memo (or didn’t hear about the new Kindles set to arrive soon), here’s what’s up: the Kindle Touch is basically Amazon’s first touch-based E-ink-screened e-reader. Other than the handy new touchscreen, the $99 device is still a pretty basic device that’s good enough to store up to 3,000 books, and is also capable of handling audiobooks and mp3 files. It also comes with a new X-Ray feature that lets users look up relevant content from Wikipedia or a dictionary.

The Kindle Touch was unveiled alongside the Android-based Kindle Fire, which is set to arrive a little earlier on November 15th.

Before you go charging into the new Kindles’ pre-order page with your credit card, here’s a little more info: If you thought the prices for the $79 Kindle and the $99 Kindle Touch was a little too good to be true, it is. Kind of. See, there’s a catch: they’ll come with ads, similar to their previous Kindles that were sold with special offers. Not too big of a downside since, ultimately, you’re shelling out less cash for a new e-reader. But if case advertising is a deal-breaker for you, and if you’re willing to fork over a significant amount more for the same device without the ads, Amazon will be serving up ad-free versions of the new Kindles as well. The ad-free Kindle will cost $109, while the $99 Kindle Touch sells for $139 without the ads.

The all-new Kindle Fire wasn’t the only new reader on the menu for today. Amazon also brought out two new Kindles for people who just want to read on-the-go. Unlike the Kindle Fire, the new Kindle and Kindle Touch packs the line’s traditional E Ink display that’s both eye-friendly and power efficient. The best “feature” on both models? The price. Both are priced below $100.

Both models are very basic readers; they don’t offer much in terms of high-tech bells and whistles, but they should be enough to do the job (display books for your brain to munch on) well enough. The $79 Kindle takes up the lowest end of Amazon’s Kindle family, featuring a six-inch E Ink screen, a Wi-Fi connection, and only 2GB of on-device storage. The integrated storage might sound a little slim, but 2GB should be good enough for 1,400 books – probably more books than you have time to read, but if that’s still not enough, Amazon also offers unlimited cloud storage for saving Amazon content.

Controls are also kept to a minimum, with a single 5-way controller below the screen that can be used for going through pages, highlighting text or looking up word definitions. The Kindle also packs in a comparatively small battery, but Amazon rates it to still be enough to last up to a month (with Wi-fi disabled). The advantage of all that spec-trimming? This is the lightest, most-compact Kindle ever at 5.98 ounces, 0.34-inches thick and 6.5-inches long. Also, it only costs $79.

The Kindle Touch shares a number of the $79’s basic features, such as the 6-inch screen (600 x 800 resolution), but comes with additional goodies for those who don’t mind forking over $20 more. Like the name says, the Kindle Touch is highlighted by a simple touchscreen that can be used to turn pages, search, shop and jot down notes with. It’s still pretty basic touch technology, but again, it’s good enough for what it does.

Called EasyReach, the new touch interface will let you tap on the majority of the screen to turn to the next page and the left edge to go back a page, while tapping on the top part of the screen pulls down a toolbar for settings and options. The Kindle Touch also sports a new “X-Ray” feature that lets you pull up all the instances of relevant content in a book, such as names and places, as well as details and definitions from Wikipedia or a dictionary.

The standard Kindle Touch costs $99, but adds on to the Kindle’s basic spec with 4GB of memory (also with unlimited cloud storage for Amazon content) and a two-month battery for $99. An upgraded Kindle Touch 3G will also be offered, adding 3G connectivity (via AT&T) for $149.

The $79 Kindle is available now, while the Kindle Touch (Wi-fi and 3G versions) is currently available for pre-order with a November 21 ship date.

So what’s up with the “HD” in its name? We have no idea. While the 6-inch e-ink screen doesn’t come with high-def numbers, its 768 x 1024 resolution is a nice step up from the Kindle 3’s similarly-sized 600 x 800 screen. At the very least, it’s certainly “closer to HD” than the Kindle is. Couple that with a spec that includes Wi-fi connectivity, an 800MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, 2GB of internal storage and an SDHC slot for adding more, and you get a pretty competitive device for the same $140 price.

Quick update on Asus’ 8-inch Eee Note EA800: it’s due out in Taiwan this week for the equivalent of around US$230. Sounds like a really affordable tablet compared to the iPad and Androids-based tabs in the market right now, but this thing is a bit limited. The EA800 features a grayscale touchscreen and Linux-based OS, and is designed mainly to work as an ebook reader and digital notepad/sketchpad. If you’re looking for a multimedia tablet, you’re going to have to pass on this one (again, it’s because of the non-color screen), although it does have an mp3 player. It’s due out in Hong Kong, Germany, Italy and Russia before the year ends, while China and the US should get it in early 2011.

The spec looks like it should do pretty well as a sketchpad and note-taker. Despite the lack of color, that’s no low-quality 8-inch screen. The EA800 features a 768×1024 resolution with 64 shades of gray, and a touch pen that supports 256 levels of pressure to give you more detail. If you’re the type who prefers writing down text over tapping on a virtual keyboard, it also supports stylus-based handwriting.

As an e-reader, the EA800 supports PDF, ePub, TXT, and MS Office file formats, as well as JPEG, BMP, GIF and PNG photo files. It packs 4GBs of internal memory for storing about 10,000 books (plus a microSD card slot for expansion), a 3700mAh battery that’s listed to last up to 13.5 hours, and Wi-fi connectivity for syncing with a PC or looking things up on Wikipedia.

Pricing and release dates aren’t available yet.

The holidays are a little more than a month away, and if you’re like everyone else, you probably still have no idea what to get for each and everyone on your list. Amazon just announced a good idea that could spare you from wading aimlessly through the mall: you can give them Kindle books.

Amazon’s new deal will let you send any eBook from their Kindle book selection to anyone with an email address. And if they don’t own a Kindle, they can download Amazon’s other free reader apps for just about any other device (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, Android, Mac and PC included). Or, you know, you can just get them a Kindle if they don’t already own a tablet or digital reader. But if you want to keep it affordable and stick to the books, just pick a book from Amazon’s Kindle Store and hit the “Give as a Gift” button. Quick way to scratch off the names on your list.

Check out the new ad for the Amazon Kindle, where guy-with-something-that-looks-like-an-iPad can’t read anything on the glossy screen under the sunlight. Beside him? Hot-bikini-girl with the third-gen Amazon Kindle, who can easily read the screen thanks to the reader’s E-ink display. That much wasn’t explained in the short ad, although hot-bikini-girl did mention that it only costs $139. The point? We get it, and we agree to a certain extent. The Kindle’s a better all-around reader than the iPad. Way cheaper too. But if we were sitting in the lounger beside hot bikini girl, we probably wouldn’t be able to read either. Even if we had, like, a dozen Kindles. Oh, and her sunglasses didn’t really look that expensive, but they apparently were.

But the comparison is a bit weird: if we wanted a simple reader, the Kindle’s a really smart buy for the easy-on-the-eyes screen, price, and battery life. But if you wanted something that can do so much more, like watch movies and play Plants vs Zombies? The iPad starts at $499. Really, who buys an iPad solely for book reading?

Velocity Micro, the brand behind the 7-inch Cruz Reader and Cruz Tablet, just started taking preorders for the two Android-based slates they previewed last month. Scheduled to ship next month, they’re a couple of the first few mainstream Android tablets to be released, so you might want to check ‘em out  if you’re looking for cheaper, more compact touchscreen slates that don’t come with an Apple logo at the back.

The Cruz Reader packs a 7-inch screen with a regular 800 x 600 resolution that comes with Borders’ bookstore app for getting content to read, a Wi-fi connection and both USB and SD card slots for storage. Not bad for a $200 ebook reader with a colored screen.

The Cruz Tablet is a little more feature-packed for entertainment that comes with a 7-inch wide (800 x 480) screen that can play HD videos, 512MBs of RAM and 4GBs of storage (plus an SD card slot for adding more) and an accelerometer for gaming for $300.

The Cruz Storypad, “the world’s first ereader for kids,” packs a similar 7-inch, 800 x 600 screen in a lightweight (one pound), spill-resistant shell, is listed as coming soon for $150.