Color iRex iLiad in 2007 / MobiPocket support in the works

[TadW]

Color iRex iLiad in 2007 / MobiPocket reader in the works

... that's if you want to believe iRex's Peter van de Graaf who held a "confidential" presentation last year on the "Electronic Paper Display and its Impact on the Scholarly Information Chain". You can download it from here:

http://www.ticer.nl/06carte/publicat/litlist.htm

or directly here:

http://www.ticer.nl/06carte/publicat/03Graaf.ppt

On page 22 he predicts that the color iLiad would be ready in 2007. Of course that was before his company decided to delay the release of the current iLiad multiple times.

Some other interesting stuff is there.

* On page 24 he says:

Previous product:
Actual response: ~ 350 ms (determined by E Ink material)

Current product:
Actual response: ~ 250 ms (determined by E Ink material)

Writing:
Response < 100 ms (addressing skill)

What do we make out of the 0.25s response time claimed here?

* Paradoxically, on page 28 he says that content is the "crucial property".

* On pages 29, 31 and 37 he mentions the MobiPocket format next to PDF and XHTML as e-book formats. So much for the rumors that MobiPocket is working with them on a reader for the iLiad. Specifically he says: "iRex finalising adobe and mobipocket reader deals." But who knows - perhaps the Amazon buyout came in-between and now iRex is back to nowhere.

* On page 30 he shows what iDS could be if it was done properly.

PS: You find more about Graaf here:
Peter van de Graaf will replace Guofu Zhou and Alex Henzen for iRex. Peter van de Graaf He received his M.Sc. in Industrial Design at the University of Delft in 1989. Since then he has been working as a product developer, first for 3M company, and later as director of his own company, Kiva. Since then he has been working for a variety of customers, amongst them Lucent, ABB and again 3M. His work has led to a quantity of products, from medical to automotive and ventilation products, and acquired 7 patents overall. He got involved in libraries by performing market research for RFID applications in libraries in 4 countries. This research led to new self-issue designs and safety gates for libraries. Kiva has been working with iRex, using their new product expertise, as well as their network within libraries, to investigate applications of e-paper in the library environment.

[NatCh]

Was that before or after Amazon bought Mobipocket?

[yokos]

Pinted date on presentation is July 22, 2005, so this is quite "ancient" in this times.
On page page 28 you can find a feature roadmap [display diagonal, colour ...]
I converted powerpoint file to pdf.

[CommanderROR]

I liked the hint about "battery life"

" >than one holiday "...^^

Seriously...all those predictions were made in summer 2005, and in autumn/winter 2006 most of that stuff still hasn't happened..so I guess we should not be expecting a useable colour eink version in 2007...:-)

[VillageReader]

Just for kicks, I tried to load one of the 'free' Mobipocket ebooks onto the Iliad yesterday, thinking maybe there was something undocumented since a 'DRM' announcement is less than a month away (according to Karel in one of the iRex responses recently).

But no luck - at least with that format. Has anyone tried the LIT format to see if any free books (non DRM) work with it?

[yokos]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

I liked the hint about "battery life"

" >than one holiday "...^^

Well, it is a weekend holiday trip possible.

Originally Posted by VillageReader

Has anyone tried the LIT format to see if any free books (non DRM) work with it?

I didn't tried drm-free lit files directly. [lit->htm is no problem with convertlit. ] Microsoft's free .lit pocket dictionaries should be still online.