Since I wrote the review for ePaper.org.uk that has been mentioned in other posts on this forum I have had the loan of an updated version which is now sitting in front of me, if any readers have specific queries please let me know and I will see if I can answer them.

Nick, welcome to this forum!

I have two questions to start with (if you don't mind).

1. How well does the E Ink display of the iLiad work under low-level ambient light, for instance when you're reading with bed lighting?

2. I've heard speculations that the picture of the iRex depicting the New York Times frontpage (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5756) is a photo montage, since, so the argument goes, the resolution of 1024x768 would be too small to hold all this information. How well does the iLiad display newspaper (multi-column) content?

Thanks!

Have tried the iLiad under both very bright sunlight and low light levels - such as your bed lighting and it is perfectly readable in both. I would say that if the lighting is good enough to read a paper document then you will be able to read the iLiad display.

The New York Times display is in fact part of a drill down information access technique. One cannot read the body copy of the page only the headlines, click on the drill down button and these headlines are displayed as hot spots click on one of these with the stylus and you bring up a page, or sequence of pages, with the article text. Note that this too can have hot spots linking to further pages of text, ther can be up to 16 levels of drill down.

Adverts can also be hot spots, if you click on one of these then the request for further information about the advert will be sent to the IDS server next time you enter a WiFi hot spot which will allow the reader to connect to the Internet. This is a secure link that relies on the fact that each reader device has an inbuilt unique ID code. so it can also be used for e-commerce payments.

Welcome Nick. I just received your *excellent* preview!

I noticed that you had experience with the Sony Librie before. Did you also have a chance to look at its successor, the Sony Reader, and compare it to the iLiad?

Yes had a brief look at it, but not yet been able to play with it. The bigger display on the iLiad is definitely better since it essentially allows the same size page, layout and typography as a conventional A5 book. The iLiad also seems to largely have solved the problem of 'ghosting' that was such a feature of the LIBRIe, and seemed also to be present in the Sony Reader.

The iLiad is expensive, but I am assured it will quickly come down to under Euro500, however, the addition of a touch screen, and the ability to add hand written annotations to a document make it, in my opinion, well worth the extra money.

Welcome to the Forum Nick!

Good work on the Preview...some questions...I just can't remember them all just now...but one springs to mind:

Does the Iliad come with a "Cover", and if yes, how well is it constructed, how well does it "latch" on to the front of the device when closed and how can it be fastened when open. The Cover on the Hanlin v8 (as far as I can tell form the video) is pretty thin but seems to work well.

Can you add books in .txt, .html and other formats to the book section or do they all go under notes or something.

Is the writing/drawing on screen implemented now and how well does it work?
Could you use it to "scribble" a shopping list or something? Can you transfer your scribbles, drawings and stuff from the Iliad to the Desktop and what kind of format do you get?

Does the Iliad contain anything like a calender or contacts, at least in rudimentary form...I think the Hanlin V2 has a calender at least...I'll have to ask their nice customer representative about it...but I believe I read about that somewhere...that would make it the ideal device for me...^^

That's all for now... :vulcan:

Thanks for your time and effort.

The iLiad I have in front of me has not got a cover and there is no sign on the casing of any provision to fit one, I suspect that it will simply be provided with a slip in pocket type case.
Yes .txt and .html content can be added, content stored on the iLIad is divided into four categories - News, Books, Docs, and Notes, and from what I can understand of the system (no documentation yet) it seems that these are simply the equivalent of folders in the iLiad's file management system. They can be accessed by pressing the appropriate key at the bottom of the display. Although I have yet to see the PC based download software I would assume from what I have been told that it will simply be a matter of placing the pocument into the appropraite file folder.

The writing function is not yet implemented on this machine, but I am informed that the you will be able to easily input hand written annotations, drawings, even shopping lists. These can then be transferred to a connevted PC. I asked about the image format for the handwritten input and answer I was given was simply that it would not by either JPEG or GIF.

The iLiad does not yet have any contents like calenders or address books, but I am sure that these will be added in the very near future since they are essentially just publications.

It sounds very cool and promising. (i'll read the review in a minute)
I'll probably get one in the future when the price has dropped to a significant level.

edit: GREAT review, Nick. I'm impressed, but as you've stated the price is damn high. another problem is that i'm located in south east asia.

Hello Nick, thank you for your offer to answer our questions! I only have one question so far, and it's related to the online capabilities of the iLiad. It was states elsewhere here in these forums that the iLiad could go online and "download" Web content (its screen updates too slow for real-time browsing). Have you tried this, and if yes, how does the software exactly work?

One of the "annoying" things in the Librie is that it doesn't properly paginate text, making the text box very irregular, apparently Sony reader also does it...

Does the Librie repaginate text in a uniform way? or does the text box also end up irregular?

How does the Iliad handle picture files? Automatically convert them to 16 levels of gray? converts them on the fly so the original picture isn't changed.

Can it display images with more resolution than the 1024x768?

I have not been able to test the Web capability of the iLiad because all communications to the Internet are made via the IDS server which is currently being set up by iRex. It is definately not designed as a Web pad, all content is downloaded either wirelessly via the IDS server or via a linked PC.
When the WiFi button on the front of the device is pressed the iLiad will automatically try to make a wireless Internet connection to the IDS server, it will use its own hardwired ID code as an identifier. In theory it could be used as a portable e-mail or fax terminal but not as a Web browser.
When the iLiad makes a wireless connection any communications going from the iLIad to the IDS server, such as a request for further information, or an e-commerce order form are sent. Any content waiting on the IDS server to be delivered to the reader, identified by its ID number, is then sent to the reader and placed in the appropriate file folders.
The iLIad is a push content delivery device, not a pull content device like a Web browser. This is an important difference and one that will facilitate new applications for this device, in particular the delivery of subscription content.
Actually the screen updates are quite quick compared to the LIBRIe, taking just 0.9 seconds to do a full screen rewrite and only 0.2 seconds to do a partial screen rewrite.

I think that part of the LIBRIe problem with pasginating text is that both it and the Jinke are designed for Chinese or Japanese script which go in lines from top to bottom and left to right, as opposed to most other calligraphies which mostly go from left to right and top to bottom. With the example text I have the repagination caused by increasing point size seems to be OK.
All picture files on the Iliad have to be first converted to an iLiad compastible format and size, either on a PC or via the IDS server, conversion can not be done on the iLiad itself. It was after all designed as a document display device and not as a general purpose computing device.

Perhaps I misunderstood Nick's last post, but it appears that the IDS server acts as a remote proxy used whenever the iRex goes online. In addition, given that a hardwired ID is transmitted each time, I'd be very hesitant to access any kind of private content, including e-mails, which I figure could be easily "pushed" onto the device (if software is available). And of course, being a Dutch company, iRex could potentially face problems with (corporate) customers from the States who don't want their data being transmitted to a European server (or the server of a European company in general).

Have you tried reading a pdf?

device says that it supports html files. can it read chm files ?

Interesting comments from TadW about US vs Europe and push content, will try to find out answer to this, maybe they will have one server in Eirope, one in Us and one in Asia, to cover all three markets they are aiming at.
I would doubt that the whole of the hardwired ID is transmitted, it is instead used as a means of verifying identity, It is I believe more in the form of a hardwired decryption key that allows documents to be unlocked and viewed. Push delivered subscription publications sent to the iLiad from the IDS server will be encoded so that they can only be read on the device belonging to the subscriber.
The transmission of data from the iLiad to the IDS server is probably encoded and uses the reader ID as the decryption key. I was informed that it uses full 128bit encryption.

Yes it does suport viewing PDF and from what I have seen it would seem to support PDFs created at least up until Acrobat 5.0, since it fully supports hyperlinks within a PDF. This is significantly better than the Sony which only uses the mobile version of PDF which does not support hyperlinks.

I am uncertain about whether it can read chm files, it can certainly handle HTML and XML.

well..for me the Iliad is still an interesting device, but it has lost a lot of attractivity for me...

Reasons:
1.) Price

2.) no cover (don't laugh, it's very important for me...I don't want to have to pack the book away in a case or pouch/sleeve as soon as I put it out of hand...and I don't like to carry around a seperate case all the time. Also consider weight...the Iliad is heavy...with case even heavier...?)

3.) Too much focus on IDS in my opinion...I don't mind something like Sony's connect store in principle, but a device with Wlan can be used for so much more than synching to some kind of Content-Delivery-System. Instead of using it that way, iRex cripples the Wlan capabilities and makes them "IDS-Exclusive".

4.) The device is set to launch in April and apparently still not done...it should be in production stage by now...in my opinion...

5.) The device is expensive and has a lot of capabilities...but the only thing that seems to be full-fledged is IDS...and they don't have the server or the content for that yet...the Hanlin V2 offers no content delivery but has a calender and other PDA functions onboard straight from the box...and they also offer the SDK so there can be more software very soon...Sony offers no SDK and probably will not support many formats, but they promise to have 10k+ books ready for purchase right on launch-day.

6.) Battery Life...I know the Iliad has more features and everything...but judging from the fact that they give their usage in time in hors instead of page-turns, something is fundamentally different between teir power-management and the Sony/Jinke version. 21 hours in comparison to 7000-8000 page-turns seems pretty puny. Seen from a "reader" perspective it means reading a couple of chapters instead of reading 10 or more books on one battery charge. Longer battery-life means more book-like to me. And always keep in mind that all stated values are ideal values...real-life battery-life is probably a lot less, especially if you use anything but the basics...

That's it...my impression so far. I still think it could be a cool gadget, but it's no longer my Nr.1
I hope Jinke and Sony get a move on so we can get a preview/review of the Hanlin V2 and the Sony Rader soon...

Hello, I just received a copy of your review, and joined this forum.
Thank you for the great review (and also thanks to this forum for the information which led me there).

If you don't mind, I've got two questions.

I couldn't find anywhere mentioning about the type of battery it uses.
Recently when I read the spec at eWind (http://www.qdewind.com/html/200602/1421.html), I found a description that they are able to use 4 AAA batteries, as well as an attached Lithium battery.
Could this be true, or is this just a feature for the Chinese products?
(I thought this could be important, since it may be hard to purchase iLiad's Lithium batteries oversea.)
Is the iLiad capable of displaying foreign multibyte characters such as CJKV (Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese) in TXT, PDF, XHTML format?

Thank you in advance.

The main thing I want to know is if there will be a noticeable screen delay when writing or drawing on it. Any idea when we'll be able to find this out?

Also, you say the wireless is only for connecting to IDS. Does that mean I have to use a cable to transfer files to/from a PC? If so I would assume that means no support for Linux or Macs.

Tying up the wifi to IDS effectively means no wifi. It just means that one can pay for restricted content in a wireless manner. Big deal.

Just imagine a notebook with wifi built-in and the only site one can access is www.hp.com to get the latest patch update. Or say Palm T|W with its wifi but you can only go to PalmReader.com (or whatever name it is right now) and buy ebooks there. *bum*

Having followed this thread for a couple of days now, I was becoming ever more disappointed with some of the features (or lack of them) of the Iliad. Mainly the locked down nature of the wireless connection and the still unknown format of handwritten notes seem to be the biggest problems for me personally, however after re reading the FAQ on the irex site the outlook is a little brighter.

The following entry suggests that the wifi connection might not be as locked down as first thought.

Is the E-reader restricted to feeding by iDS only?

No, The E-reader is an open system that also works with your laptop/PC (wireless/wired). The E-reader is also fit for reading from a USB stick, SD cards and CF2.

I just read through the review, and I was wondering if you could maybe do some battery life tests? Does it drain the battery to leave the iliad powered on but unused? Or does it have a low power mode? Waiting a minute for it to boot every time I want to use it sounds like a major problem to me.

The big drain on battery power is the WiFi link and turning pages and I think it is the added WiFi that makes it difficult for the iLiad to so easily quote battery life in page turns.

The iLiad uses rechargeable batteries and I charged the device on Monday, have used it so far for about 20 hours, on top of which I deliberately left the display on for 24 hours and it still seems to have plenty of power left. iRex inform me that with normal use of three hours per day and at an average page turn rate for reading the iLiad should only need recharging once every couple of weeks.

Recharging took less than an hour.

The delay on power up is a bit annoying but nothing compared with the the time one has to wait for a laptop to boot up and load Windows, I said one minute in the review it is probably closer to thirty seconds.

The reader is an open system, you can create your own content, or obtain it from other sources and load it into your iLiad via a laptop/PC, USB stick or memory card. The only lock down at the moment is the WiFi link to download bought content, in particular subscription publications, has to be via the IDS server. However, there is no reason why anyone should not sell or distribute publications for the iLiad in any one of the formats it supports, the only thing is that if a publisher wants the additional feature of wireless push delivery then it has to be done via the IDS server.

I personally do not think that this is a major constraint, it will not prevent me downloading Project Gutenberg or other public domain e-books and reading them on the iLiad, and I like the idea of using it as a paper replacement device, printing documents that I need to carry around directly into the iLiad instead of to a printer, it will make my briefcase a lot lighter.

I am not sure about multibyte characters, but it would seem to support full XML and full PDF and these both support multibyte characters so I guess the answer is yes, However, I will try to find out.

I suspect that CommanderROR is correct that the April launch date for Europe and US is a bit optimistic. If they deliver the units for the field test they are doing with De Tijd newspaper in Belgium before the end of March as planned then they might well be on schedule. I know that they are currently in production in the Phillipines.

I suspect that the early market that iRex are aiming for is not the average e-book reader but the corporate user, the design of the device is certainly auimed at corporates, and the content they are signing up also fits that view. In particular newspapers and trade periodicals, watch out for newspaers like the Times and Telegraph in the UK being distributed via IDS, I believe that they are also talking to textbook publishers, once again a specilist niche and not the main consumer market.

hmm...interesting...so the irex does use the on/off mode, or else it should have been dead after those 24 hours...but probably it does not switch off immediately after pageturn becaseu of the touchscreen and of course the long boot time.

I'm really starting to feel nervous...the iRex has some really cool features I'd like to have...and some serious downsides too...

The Hanlin V2 is really cool, but there are some features that I don't quite trust yet...

and the Sony Reader is the "weakest" device in my opinion, but it does have the backing if the connect store...which should provide a nice amount of books that can only be read on a sony reader...damn... :uhoh2:

So it appears that its wifi is not locked totally. Hey Nick, any idea if the wifi can be switched off? I'm sure that will save some power.

How abt the touch screen? Some TabletPC's touchscreen can be turned off via a hardware button.

30secs to boot up is erm kinda slow. My notebook resumes from hibernation (which is effectively powered off) in about that time and its only because I have 1.25gb (yes gb) of ram, so it takes longer to hibernate and resume (writing 1.25gb of ram to hdd takes awhile, esp on a notebook with 4200rpm hdd). On other machines with 384mb ram or 256mb ram, hibernation and resume can be as fast as 10+ secs.

Granted, its not a big thing if usage pattern is reading the ebook for a few hours at a time, and if batt life is good enough, one would prob not need to switch it off ever. :)

Thank you again for your detailed answer.The iLiad uses rechargeable batteries and I charged the device on Monday, have used it so far for about 20 hours, on top of which I deliberately left the display on for 24 hours and it still seems to have plenty of power left. iRex inform me that with normal use of three hours per day and at an average page turn rate for reading the iLiad should only need recharging once every couple of weeks.Nice battery life, so I guess AAA batteries are not in their option?I am not sure about multibyte characters, but it would seem to support full XML and full PDF and these both support multibyte characters so I guess the answer is yes, However, I will try to find out.Sometimes what I find in mobile gadgets is, that although the software itself supports multibyte characters, the system lacks the required fonts (or the framework) to display it.
This is quite understandable, since multibyte fonts tend to be large, and most of it have high prices (due to the vast amount of characters to be made).
I hope that the iLiad has built-in multibyte fonts, or a mechanism that somehow allows users to install fonts.

I'm interested in using the Iliad to store reference texts. Given my priciple areas of interest (math/physics) it would need to be able to handle mathematical notation without difficulty. Do you think you could test the reader with some random pages from http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/ and/or http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ and see how well they reproduce the website?

There is one thing I do not understand:

iRex gives the run-time at approx. 21 hours reading, but apparently the device is capable of more...at least if you can trust the results Nick got.

They apparently also told him, that you would only need to recharge it every couple of weeks, something that would match the Specs given on the chinese site...but then why do they give different specs? Is the Touchscreen a major battery drain? The Chinese iRex appears not to have a touchscreen...

And one other thing: If the devices are in production as Nick was told, then why did they give him a sample that still has not got all features. A production model usually goes through some internal testing before going to the factories...I'm not trying to "talk down" the Iliad, but somehow there are a few oddities that I just can't understand.

And unfortunately I still have received no reply from iRex by email even though I emailed them about 2 weeks ago...if they talk only to business people they should say so on their website...which they don't actually... :angry:

....i thought that one major advantage of eInk display is that it wont use power when page is not changed...so in theory i could just leave the device at a particular page (without turning off the device) and resume say 2 days later with no or very little battery power used?

from the information we have, it can be concluded, that the Iliad goes offline (although still displaying the last page of course...Eink at work... ;) ) after a longer period of idling...no idea how long...so if you leave it on, it'll continue to drain the battery for a couple of minutes and then switch off leaving the last active page on the display (see Nick's post...). If you want to use it again, you have to boot it up again which apparently takes some time.

The other devices such as v2 and Sony Librié and Reader power down after each pageturn immediately, thus achieving much longer battery life (measured in PageTurns instead of hours).
The reason for this could be the touchscreen...and of course the long boot-time.
I wonder why the Iliad takes so long to boot in comparison to the other devices that can apparently go from sleep-mode to operation in no time at all (otherwise the page-turning would become very slow)
It can't be the OS, the other devices also use some kind of Linux OS as far as I know (the V2 uses Wolf-Linux) so it probably is some kind of driver-implementation thing for the Wacom Interface? or the W-Lan module...but W-Lan is not needed and not active (I hope) when no connection to the IDS is required...so what's going on?

Nick...can you shed some light on the power-saving features of the Iliad? How long it stays on before it goes into sleep-mode?

Is it possible to turn off the WiFi completely, until such time as you want to use it ? or does it have to be on all the time ?

Is it possible to turn off the WiFi completely, until such time as you want to use it ? or does it have to be on all the time ?
I already spend my life bathed in a stew of wireless noise, no need to add yet another device to it -- and why would I require WiFi for reading an offline novel?! Let's hope it's possible to turn it off.

I think we should not confuse the initial power switch on sequence that will involve not only OS initialisation but screen initialisation and flash disk initialisation with the power down that happens after a screen is displayed. The relative slowness of the 256MB Flash memory may be partly to blame for the power switch on delay, the fact that Flash disk drives do a complete check for, and isolation of, faulty memory locations on power up. Also on the iLiad the whole OS is apparently on Flash because it can have its software upgraded by downloading a new version of the OS into the device.

When you switch the device on it almost immediately shows a screen that says iRex iLiad please wait... then there is a delay of about 30 seconds before the first, default, screen is displayed, only then is the file system, touch screen and WiFi active. Exactly the same procedure was followed on the Sony LIBRIe I tested last year.

However, after a screen is displayed the power light switches off almost immediately and only switches on again if you press one of the switches, or use the stylus. This must mean that it then simply runs a little software loop that just checks for key presses and touch screen input, whilst powering down everything else. The power light then stays on for little more than a second as the new screen is displayed.

When you switch the iLiad off using the on/off switch it goes through a screen clear procedure that tends to leave a ghost negative image of the last page viewed on the screen.

The touch screen can not be turned off.

Unfortunately have now had to return the device so can not test the maths notation capability, but iRex have promised me a full working version when the next batch is delivered to Eindhoven, this should allow me to test some of the features that I have so far been unable to examine.

The WiFi is only active when you press the WiFi button in the iLiad, and disconnects as soon as all data transfer is completed.

There seems to be a lot of stuff on the iRex Iliad on Teleread.org
Somebody there is apparently going to get a chance to review the device...you can post question that he will then try to answer when he gets a chance to play with the device.

Teleread points (http://www.teleread.org/blog/) to a video of the iLiad on a Dutch site: http://www.volkskrant.com/videoreportages/142#

Some other folks at engadget are now getting into the iliad thingie ... http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/19/irex-reveals-deets-on-its-iliad-ebook-reader/#comments

Some other folks at engadget are now getting into the iliad thingie ... http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/19/irex-reveals-deets-on-its-iliad-ebook-reader/#comments
That's cool. Nothing new that hasn't (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5664) been (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5969) said (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5916) before, but it's nice to see e-book devices finally picking up in major gadget blogs.

am watching the vid. Is it just the language or is the guy initially shoutING? :o

but the devices looks really cool in video! ... and refresh is pretty neat huh? :D

EDIT:

ok, I think he is shouting because of the machine in the background. ;)

I like the part where the camera zooms out from the iliad and initially I really thought it was a news paper until it zooms out and its seen as the eink screen on the iliad.

And oops, the lady with a boy ... did she drop the iliad? ;O

Does it have a decent search function with decent speed? (Minimally I need to search for multiple words all in one paragraph. I'd like to search at least about 15mb of uncompressed HTML per minute--I can do with Pluckerized versions of the HTML docs on my NX.)

The screen looks really good...but did you notice...the grey-tones take a lot longer to appear than the black and white parts of the display.

Watch closedly and you can see that the image is "built" in two steps...or am I imagining things?

I'd like to know whether the Iliad survived the fall...I think the woman actually dropped it... :huh:

call me paranoid...but..can it be that the toochscreen on the device the guy in the vid has does not work?

When he shows the newspaper main page and then shows how you zoom in on an individual article...he taps the screen and then moves the "page-bar" with his thumb...looks like cheating to me... :huh:

I really hope they'll manage to make their device "real" soon...because I WANT ONE!!! (if it has a usable screen-protection that is...i hate scratched screens, and I'm planning on taking the device with me just like a book...so it'll have to be able to take some close-quarters backpack action...I hope this "lack of feature" does not force me to make do with on of the "less geeky" reader devices like the Hanlin...although....maybe that wouldn't be so bad... :huh:
:wink:

yeah...I know I'm crazy...

In case Nick is still around...

There was mention of a dictionary (english) in the review...I was wondering how that can be used.
The Hanlin V2 apparently has a chinese-english dictionary, but you can't access it directly from inside a book. (it works like a normal book as far as I understood)

The Iliad has a touchscreen, so it should be no problem to use "lookup" function like you have in mobipocket or MS-Reader on PocketPC.
This is a very nice feature, my girlfriend is using it at the moment to freshen up her english...she's reading a Terry Pratchett Novel and can simply tap on any word she doen't know to get a translation instead of asking me every 2 minutes...very good for both of us... :scholar:

the question is: Does the Iliad's dictionary work that way?

some more information:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/19/irex-reveals-deets-on-its-iliad-ebook-reader/#comments

Comment #28...somebody says he was told the Iliad was going to retail for 540Euro...still very steep, but a lot better than those 650...

Oh...i just asked my calculator...540Euro is almost exactly 650Dollar...so there could be some mix-up somewhere...
I wish iRex would finally give us a clear answer on the pricing...

Nick, my interested in this device is to have a nice ebook reader for technical datasheet such as those published for semiconductor parts (i.e. computer chips). Do you think the display is too small for reading schematics and diagrams without zooming? Also, I am VERY INTERESTED in the possiblity of using this as a digital sketch pad since I'm always thinking up new inventions and need to draw some quick diagrams/schematics/calculations. Do you think this device has the potential to be an "engineering notebook?" Also, can you give a description of all the menus that were available at the bottom of the screen. There looked to be a summation sign as one of the icons, what is this feature? Any additional information you can provide for engineering/inventor applications is apprehiated. BTW, this is my first post in mobileread!

There is some more hands-on information on the Iliad on teleread.org
iRex seem to be letting quite a few people touch their device at the moment...quite a good idea I believe....but the touchscreen still does not work apparently..damn...:-)

http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=4538

Branko Collins has psoted the first part of his "Review"
so far there is nothing really new...but more will follow "after the weekend"

Actually Branko has some interesting observations on the refresh rate and the direction of the page-advance/reverse controls. Those are highly relevant usability issues. Perhaps I'm just forgetting earlier reviews, but this info seems new to me. What's more, he's given us some interesting impressions of iRex the company. Plus, he has original photos. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and stay tuned for more from Branko. - David Rothman, for TeleRead.org.

How abt the touch screen? Some TabletPC's touchscreen can be turned off via a hardware button.

I read in another review that the touchscreen is only turned on when you take the stylus out of the holder. And that it goes into a low power mode when you are not using it for a while.

-jsl

I read in another review that the touchscreen is only turned on when you take the stylus out of the holder. And that it goes into a low power mode when you are not using it for a while.

-jsl

ah, that's good. That should save some power there. :)

I'm new, but I've read through most of the threads on the iLiad and Sony Reader and Hanlin, it's been very interesting.

I have a question that's very important for me to know before I shell out my hard-earned ducats for any of these very pricey readers (pricey because $500 will get you a laptop through Dell, so effectively what is being paid for is the miniaturization for a reader that can't come close to the capabilities of a laptop computer).

Can any of these handle .lit (MS Reader), .djvu (DejaVu), or .chm (Windows help file) formats? The .chm support is particularly important, a great many tech books come in that format.

Any update on this would be greatly appreciated. :happy2:

-Lion

I don't know about those formats and readers for them. What I do know is that it shouldn't be hard to convert .chm files to something else. A quick google search reveals free programs to convert them to html and there are possibly free ways to convert it directly to pdf.

Lion, I am pretty sure from the information we have that at least the iLiad and the Sony Reader do not support .lit, .djvu or .chm.

Until someone writes reader software for it, naturally.

Have read about this device since last year and I'm hoping ive got the 0.5 K to bye one when it launches.

Just to point out something none of you guys have said anything about. The E-Ink screen does not use power when you are not changing pages. It only uses power when you'r changing pages, uses WiFi (this I'm familiar with becouse my mobile-phone qtek 8310 uses a shitload of battery when Wi-Fi is turned on) and if theres is a audio out you get the DA converter and power for the headphones. So if the Wi-Fi, audio is turned of and no page turning is going on, it is only supposed to use power when you have to refresh the gas dots in the screen, after about every 15 hours.

So if the iLiad is using power anyway, iRex has employed someone totally stupid to write their core. The killer app of iLiad, as I see it, is a lot of pageturns before recharge and that it can read pdf/txt/chm/html/doc etc. files you've downloaded legally or from some other source.

If you go to any DC++ server or any other cool P2P service you can dload quite more books than you can ever read. While this is illegal that can't be tanken into consideration since if iLiad dosent solve this some other small firm will. Producing E-Paper will get cheeper. And if those that now have the money to start this buisness does'nt make a good enough alternative they will be overrun in the near future.

After what I've read about the Sony Libre and Reader I'm awestruck by the poor buisnessthinking behind the products. Sony must employ someone that has a stick up their asses as I can see it. Would CD's have become a hit if you could only buy them from Philips? Open standards are way better, and I think the big chahunas will either learn this or fail miserably.

Building devices that can only read a small and expensive amount of book might be a good idea if E-Ink was dead hell expansive or E-Ink was rocket science. But it's not, and it's not so they have to compromise their products so that they will sell and prosper.

Can you tell us anything about the notes application and what it's like to take notes on a blank "sheet"? Screenshots would be wonderful!