Freescale is a CPU manufacturer. Their chips are in a lot of devices including ebook readers. They had in their booth one of each of the major ebook readers that use a Freescale processor. I'd like to thank whoever thought up that idea; it was fun to see all those devices in one place.
The list of devices include:
- Onyx Boox
- Irex DR1000
- Irex DR800SG
- Sony PRS-300
- Sony PRS-600
- Freescale's own reference design
- Kindle DX
- Kindle 2
- Playaway Audio Book
- txtr
The txtr was really the only reason I stopped by the booth. It didn't show up until Friday morning, and that was because the developers who brought it from Germany didn't arrive until Thursday night. I played with the txtr on Friday afternoon, and then happened to meet the txtr people at a private party that night. I couldn't play with it Saturday because it was stolen Saturday morning. (I didn't do it, and I have security camera footage to prove it.)
It's a really neat device, and after having used it I understand why it's restricted to Germany at the moment. It relies heavily on txtr's servers. It is significantly more connected than any other ereader. I'm not going to give a detailed opinion on it because I couldn't test all of its abilities. But I did get a number of photos; they are attached.
I went back Saturday to play with the txtr some more. It wasn't there, so I had a look at the DR800SG. The first bad impression was when I realized there was no slot for the Wacom stylus, and it went downhill from there.
The txtr folks came by shortly after I started. One wanted to make a video so it could be discussed back home, and I'm glad he did. I know from the time stamp on his video that the DR800 has a boot time of well over a minute.
The firmware is very limited in its abilities. I'm shocked at how much it couldn't do:
- only one font size
- can't draw on the screen
- can't highlight
- no font choices
- dictionary didn't work
The DR800SG is not ready to be released, and there is no way it could have been released in late October. I can only conclude that the original release date was an outright lie on the part of Irex.