Intel is a company best known for its parts, not end-user products, which is one of the many elements that make the new Intel Reader so unusual.

The new device is not unlike Amazon's Kindle or many other e-readers. But at $1,499 it won't be competing with consumer devices on price. Instead, the Intel Reader has a high resolution camera that reads text and then recites it through a computerized voice for the user.

It's the brain child of Intel's (NASDAQ: INTC) Digital Health Group, a unit dedicated to creating new technologies (with Intel parts, of course) to improve quality of life. Already it has remote monitoring equipment, so a patient does not have to be in a hospital or doctor's office.

The Intel Reader can read digital files of books aloud, it can capture images from any printed material and use its text-to-speech technology to read aloud the publication as well as display images. It can read the books that have been formatted online for visually-impaired readers, or save the text as a sound file so you can listen to it on your iPod.

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