My impressions of the 8.1" iLiad 2nd edition

[nrapallo]

Hi!

I'm a long-time user of LCD hardware ebook readers (5+ years) and an avid ebook creator.

Until now, I had resisted the temptation to "upgrade" to e-ink from my 8.2" backlit-LCD touchscreen REB1200 (using 480x640 with 32,768 colors), that is, until I bought a (used) iLiad v2 last month. Now I have the luxury of a form factor that I'm used to, with a considerable weight savings and nice hi-res 768x1024 with 16 grayscale wacom screen!!! These fulfilled my desire to have an e-ink device with higher color/grayscale support and touch screen capabilities. And yes, WiFi is a definte bonus, once I figured out how to get networking to cope with my home LAN/WLAN configuration/monster!

Overall, I'm pleased with it and use it regularly to mainly view .pdf ebooks (something I had to previously jump through hoops to do and the main reason for my involvement with PDFRead). Mobipocket ebooks, for the most part, are well presented, albeit, without much customization possible due to the primitive java Mobipocket built-in reader software.

I've converted and/or tested a lot of my previous ebook creations and have not been disappointed with the quality or presentation of those ebooks. I still use my REB1200 at night when I don't want the lights on, but do find I'm using the iLiad during daytime hours more and more.

It's unfortunate that I've only recently become a member of the iLiad community and seemingly missed the "development fury" that preceded even my join date here (Dec. 2007). Oh well, I've been trying to catch up, but a lot of the older stuff just isn't relevant any longer and that's making it harder to come "up to speed" with tinkering with this device. And I DO love to tinker...

[RANT ON]
Oh, and three very irritating items I've had to deal (after many failed attempts) with workarounds thus far are:

1. CF and WiFi DO NOT MIX and one should never download to the CF card via WiFi. (work-around: download to MMC/SD card or internal memory then cp back!)

2. Hyperlinks within tables in .mobi/.prc files are NOT recognized even though the LED flickers a bit, like it WANTS to do something. (work-around: "linearize" tables containing <a href> links (i.e seen mostly with Table of Contents) so that no <table> construct is used and is replaced with <div> and <p>'s). I'm trying to get my GuteBook program to do this automatically in the next release version to "help" out with this bug!

3. Google .pdf ebooks employ JPEG2000 images and don't load properly on the iLiad. (work-around: "optimize" the .pdf using 1.4 version or earlier using Abode Acrobat Pro or similar software)
[RANT OFF]

Now that I'm on a more solid footing, I'm looking forward to exploiting some "hidden" gems within the OS or eventually hardware, if the OS gets "upgraded" through our community's efforts.

My main interests would be to work on a ebook server program/delivery protocol (written in python ) to be able to interface with calibre or impserve and/or iDS. Then, perhaps, try my hand at hacking the internal java Mobipocket reader to read it's config (paramaters) file settings and actually use them.