11-24-2008, 10:04 AM | #1 |
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Should I buy one?
Hi,
I bought a BeBook last week and I like it a lot, but for PDFs it's pretty darn useless, which is a shame, because I'm loving its form factor for books. I've realised I really would like the ability to use it to write on and make notes too. So I'll probably be selling this in the near future. I was tempted by the iLiad, but despite the enthusiasm of the developers within the userbase, I fear it's a dead-end product. I also don't think it will be able to reproduce my A4 PDFs sufficiently well. So alas that leaves me with the most expensive option. The Digital Reader. Should I fear the poor software that it comes with, that seems to have resulted in a number of hardware related issues? Or should I be hopeful that being a relatively new product, its in house developers have a vested interest in actually improving its software to the point that it is indeed a useable and useful device? There is a very nice looking device coming out from Plastic Logic, but that's not out yet, nor does it appear to have the ability to take notes. Should I buy a Digital Reader 1000s at it's absurdly inflated price and take a risk or enjoy my BeBook and stick to reading my PDFs on my laptop? |
11-24-2008, 10:11 AM | #2 | |
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11-24-2008, 10:50 AM | #3 |
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11-24-2008, 11:00 AM | #4 |
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The battery life mainly and the buggy software reported by the USA Today review.
Plus a general fear that software development for these devices isn't a high priority for this company, considering how they've left the iLiad with rather underpar software onboard. |
11-24-2008, 12:49 PM | #5 |
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I'm not familiar with what bugs the USA Today review talks about, but the battery life is their top priority right now. They're planning on a 1.5 release near the end of the year that implements standby and sleep modes, which should theoretically make a big improvement.
I don't think the issue is that software development isn't a priority, it's more that they're a very small company with a small development team. They do seem to be addressing many of the bugs people are reporting on their forums, and have a lot of them scheduled to be fixed in the 1.5 release. I get the impression that their developers do care about the users and are working to make the software better, but they're limited in how much they can get done by the small size of the company. I think that's really the biggest issue. If the battery life is a big concern, then I'd recommend waiting until 1.5 comes out and people start reporting on how much of an improvement it makes. |
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11-24-2008, 03:38 PM | #6 |
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USA Today Review
If they are such a small company and they have limits on the development work that they can do... open source it! |
11-24-2008, 03:59 PM | #7 |
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This is a difficult call, because within 6 months there should be other devices with a ~10" EInk screen. However, it isn't at all clear that these will be more capable. In particular, iRex may still be the only EInk reader vendor that allows any and all 3rd party applications on their devices. Adam B has reported that porting apps to the DR1000S is much easier than doing the same to the iLiad.
Software development for the DR1000 is the only priority for iRex, and this will continue until they come close to releasing a new device - at which point, based on the iLiad experience, the development will stop. However, currently the DR1000 is near the start of its development cycle. So I would expect software upgrades for at least a year. |
11-24-2008, 04:08 PM | #8 |
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The DR1000S is on a newer Linux Kernel, so perhaps that makes it easier?
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11-24-2008, 05:10 PM | #9 | |
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They probably won't open source all of the internal code until they're ready to move on to another device, like they recently did for the iLiad code after announcing the DR. |
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11-24-2008, 05:10 PM | #10 |
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11-24-2008, 05:14 PM | #11 |
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Are there similar threads for newbies and 3rd party stuff like there are for the iLiad?
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11-24-2008, 05:17 PM | #12 | |
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11-24-2008, 05:19 PM | #13 |
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I don't know if there are a lot of people familiar enough with the SDK yet to be writing apps for the DR. I know Adam has ported some stuff over, but I don't think there is a big developer community around it yet. At least, not that people seem to be talking about. I think most of them are still getting comfortable with the new device. I could be wrong though, but if there is a developers section on here for the DR like there is for the iLiad, I've missed it.
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11-24-2008, 05:52 PM | #14 | |
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FBReader Release for the DR1000S GTKSudoku Application Release 3rd party software request thread The first "commercial" 3rd party application will probably be: 800 Newspapers From NewspaperDirect Now Available on iRex Digital Reader |
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11-24-2008, 05:55 PM | #15 |
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Is FB Reader better than the bundled PDF viewer?
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