Just recieved this from Irex


From: Loeki van der Lee [mailto:loeki.van.der.lee@philips.com]
Sent: 22 May 2006 11:39
To: Stuart Young
Subject: Fw: The iLiad ER0100 Reader




Dear Mr. Young,

I herewith would like to inform you that we are planning to make the iLiad available for individual purchase via our Web shop before the end of May 2006.
The price of the iLiad will be EURO 549,00, exclusive VAT and exclusive transport costs.
Your e-mail address has been listed on our retail list and you will receive a notification as soon as our Web shop is open and how to place an order.

Best regards,

The iRex Technologies Team


Loeki van der Lee
Office Manager

iRex Technologies BV
High Tech Campus 46
5656 AE Eindhoven
The Netherlands
Phone +31 40 2746490

Loeki van der Lee


how cool a name is that, huh?

pretty much what we all expected. but good to hear it from someone 'official'.

That means around 650 Euro to pay for me which is not too bad. From the hardware specs this is probably barely above manufacturing costs.
The gaming consoles show that prices substantially below that are usually sponsored.

That's a good update since it seems they are sticking to May for the release date. I was told the same price by Mr Lee, EURO 549,00, back in March.

Btw, when he wrote me, Mr Lee mentioned the upcoming release of the "first generation" of the iLiad, meaning that some of us (those who cannot wait to buy it) will probably get very upset if a "second" generation may come out not much later.

Loeki van der Lee is the person I "spoke" to by mail as well...he seems to be their PR guy.

What I don't understand is this "before the end of May" thing...it could mean anything from today to 30th of May... :scholar:

Why don't they just set a date? I hope this won't be like "second half of April", but since there have been so many sightings of the Iliad in the past week, I suppose it could acutally make it. I hope it's this week.

Anyone care to speculate why it's still a bit "open"? I'd go for the "waiting for additional devices" theory or as alternative I'd say they're updating the devices they have...but I don't think that's right.

I'm just hoping it's not Monday the 29th.. As I'll be link dead all day and will be cheesed off if you guys force them to be 'out of stock' :)

@onceways

the out of stock thing could happen...^^
I'm seriously hoping they have more than 10 devices ready for launch day...

... on monday 29th we can read "the shop is open now and you can preorder the device ... :-)

*lol*

good one...^^

Or they ship direct from the factory in Azerbaijan. Meaning another monthes delay :-/ Off topic does any one know if LIT is supported?

lit is not supported out of the box. (as far as i know)

you can however use html (use convertlit to rip the lit files) or wait for some software developer to make a lit viewer (if irex really holds to their promise of giving the DEV-Kit away to anybody)

So when do people expect the big launch to start then?

I would be surprised if it was mid-week (I'm more than happy to be wrong though) So either Friday or Monday.

I would guess Wednesday the 31st :)

yeah, next week (if nothing goes wrong).
my guess -> they will be shipping their bulk (commercial) orders first. what's left will go on sale in the webstore.

any news on new readers for the device?

I would doubt we will see any new readers before launch.

And within a week several dozen homebrew readers. :-)

In last week, I saw the iLiad in Beijing of China, then and there a meetting was be hold about eBooks&ePublish. iRex CEO(Hans) with Mr.Zhou attend the meetting and show iLiad in that meetting.
But the iLiad is to me disappointment:
1. Too Slowly
when open a PDF file ,It spend 14 seconds at least.
Turn page ,i must be wait 3 seconds (dully)
2.Too much BUGS
In the showing period,device died several times.


So,I think iLiad will be delay some months.

It seems like Irex reserved a special site for Iliad: http://www.iliad.nl/
Still empty.

In last week, I saw the iLiad in Beijing of China, then and there a meetting was be hold about eBooks&ePublish. iRex CEO(Hans) with Mr.Zhou attend the meetting and show iLiad in that meetting.
But the iLiad is to me disappointment:
1. Too Slowly
when open a PDF file ,It spend 14 seconds at least.
Turn page ,i must be wait 3 seconds (dully)
2.Too much BUGS
In the showing period,device died several times.


So,I think iLiad will be delay some months.

1 - Slow - it's being worked on, and it must have been a big PDF, to open my PDF's it takes 10-20 secs. Looks like a lot, but personally i don't care has long has it loads them :p
So far no problems with pdfs i make :)

Comic PDFs around 50-100 megas (manga volumes, not chapters, say 200 pages)
Text PDFs 1-2 megas (baen books, say 500-800 pages)

2 - Hope they get the caching of pages working soon so it will only take the time to update, not to "open" each page. Suppose it's a matter of habit, i really dont think about it when reading...

3 - Bugs - now this interest me. What kind of bugs? In my Iliad it has never stoped working short of empty battery :)
Was the device using english OS and content, or the chinese versions?

I've seen the channel 4 video, and there the page update looked pretty fast actually...mut that device alos had sudoku on it, so maybe it was the "newes test Os" they were running.
I really hope they manage to make a stable OS with all features enabled fast...otherwise this could mean a heavy blow for the image of the company and the image of eink readers in gerenal.

I would still like to know how they tested the battery life (10000+ pageturns, 21 hours with some wifi usage...they said that themselves...) almost half a year ago if they still don't have an Os that is even close to complete by this time...

2 - Hope they get the caching of pages working soon so it will only take the time to update, not to "open" each page.

Yap. It shouldnt be that hard, to prerender the following page, and on page flip do the screenupdate and afterwards render the next page. That should be sufficient for normal usage. And it shouldnt consume too much caching space. But i guess thats in the hands of the viewer, isnt it?