Sony Reader vs. iRex Iliad e-book reader

[arivero]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I can't help wondering just how fast a processor an electronic reader really needs to have. Could they not do the job with, say, a nice, cheap 286 chip? Do they really have to be heavier hitters than my desktop PC? Maybe they'll have an "econo" line in a year or two, once we early-adoptors have defrayed some of their dev costs.

You need fast decompression of pages, and you need font building on the fly. But this kind of gadgets run roughly as fast as a cheap pentium 100 or so, it is not a heavy hitter anymore.

[NatCh]

Okay, I can see that, I was thinking in terms of pre-loading the "next" page into RAM, so that it can just be flipped to the screen. There would be a longer delay if I wanted to jump to somewhere totallay different in the book, but for the next or previous page, the loading would take place in the background.

But I guess you'd just be trading more sophisticated software to reduce the hardware requirements. I don't know that that would necessarily be an improvement.

[Lorphos]

Personally I think when reading on a device that glows in the dark there will always be issues with eyestrain.

[Charles Gray]

Originally Posted by Lorphos

Personally I think when reading on a device that glows in the dark there will always be issues with eyestrain.

Well, E-ink doesn't produce any light of it's own, so even if some light source was built into a reader, it would be more like reading a paperback book with one of those book illuminators you can pick up for travel purposes.

That is, IMHO, the biggest advantage of Eink, that it can be read in daylight or indoor light, without causing eyestrain like illuminated displays will.

[Snappy!]

Maybe they can use Frontlight for eink displays instead of backlighting? Reflective LCDs uses Frontlighting, eg Sharp Zaurus SL5500 PDA. einks are "reflective" in nature, so a frontlight should be good, and probably better than the traditional Reflective LCDs in look-and-feel.

[The European]

Why is their beiing mentioned a price of 600$ here? Its 400€.

http://www.pocketinfo.nl/artikel/5224

[NatCh]

I'm afraid I don't read Dutch, so I'm having to rely on AltVista's Babelfish for a translation of the article.

iRex's customer support folks in California told me 650 Euros (776.13 USD) on Jan. 30th -- maybe they've come down already? That'd be nice. 400 Euros (477.62 USD) is much more attractive, but still kinda steep.

It might also be that the lower price is with some sort of discount for a content subscription contract.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by The European

Why is their beiing mentioned a price of 600$ here? Its 400€.

http://www.pocketinfo.nl/artikel/5224

Colin covered that earlier:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5916

Best,
Alex

[Laurens]

They removed the price tag earlier, but the Sony Reader will, indeed, cost $349. (Via Engadget.)

[CommanderROR]

Hi everybody!

I've been looking for a "book-alternative" for quite some time now since i read a lot and am in danger of getting buried under books in my apartment...^^

So far there has been little of actual use for me. Backlighted displays were not really my favourite...readability was fine as long as the room was not too dark (with little surrounding light it became very eye-straining)...but the battery life of most PDAs is not really great.

Now there seems to be a solution...finally..although I have not seen an eink display in action yet it sounds like they are quite good if you belive the various reviewers...although the pictures of the various devices often look a bit "black und grey" instead of black and white...

Now here comes my problem/question:

The Sony Reader is only on for a US release so far (and I'm in Germany...) and "It's a Sony"...which from past experience (MD-Player for instance) is a possibly bad sign. The iRex Iliad looks cool (although it is a bit heavy at almost 400g) and offers a lot of features (some of which I don't really need) but should be available in Germany a lot sooner than the Sony...or maybe not...they state something like "available to business partners in april" on their website...

Now...I'm worried that the Sony won't be available in Germany anytime soon, that it won't read -txt, .doc and similar formats, and that it might have some very crappy "Connect" software like the MD-Player/Recorder I used to use before I bought my Iriver H340...

The Iliad "should" be available in spring, should read the formats I like, but probably won't work with the Sony connect store, so Content could be seriously limited. I really like the iTunes system. (I'm a music student and sometimes need to listen to a piece of music or find out how long a certain movement is or stuff like that, and iTunes REALLY helps there...and the prices are ok as well. I don't like the way it interacts ith iPods...deleting stuff from the Pod and such...but luckily I need not worry about that as i don't use an iPod...^^)

My main concern with the Irex Iliad is the battery-life.
The Sony can "read" several thousand Pages on one battery. That is really what I want, because it makes the Reader "book-worthy" and truly mobile.
The Irex battery-time is given at about 21 hours if you take the "about a week with 3 hours of reading a day" information from the website.
This means that I can't even read one book on the Iliad without recharging....

Please give me some comments on the issues I posted above.
I'm very sorry for making my first post so long...I've been reading a lot in the past and somehow needed a long time to express my ideas...i'll try to do better from now on...we all know how bad reading from an LCD is for the eyes...

[luag]

I am personally interested to purchase a Sony Librie from Japan.
Its been hacked, so we can convert our files easily.
and i think i like librie better than reader, for reasons i've already mentioned here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6031

also, there are words saying sony will open their BBeB format to public.

If you want to know more, please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/librie/

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

Now...I'm worried that the Sony won't be available in Germany anytime soon

The Reader will be released a few months later in Europe.

[NatCh]

Hey, CommanderROR,

I was where you are a couple of weeks ago, trying to decide which I liked better: the shackles of Sony or the expense of features I don't need (and some I don't even want) on the iLiad.

Then I noticed the thread on the HanLin e-Book.

After looking at it, I've decided that since it basically combines the hardware simplicity of the Sony, and the format freedom of the iLiad (at a price closer to the Sony than the iLiad), it's my new favored choice.

Screen size is the same as the Sony, they claim 8k page flips as a MINIMUM for the HanLin. Overall it's slightly bigger than the Sony, but still not much bigger than a paperback. No comments from them on battery re-charge time, perhaps it will be less obnoxious than the 4 hours Sony requires.

The V2 model is (currently) scheduled for release in the US and Europe in May. I'll gladly wait the extra month here, and it sounds like they'll actually beat Sony's release there in Germany.

[doctorow]

Any info on what the HanLin might cost?

[CommanderROR]

The HanLin V2 should be around 250-300$ in retail, official price is 349$

The questions that remain are:
- Can it read Sony Connect Store books?
- How long will it last battery-wise?
- How well did they implement the Display? The iliad looks a lot more black and white on the pictures than the Sony Reader for example...could be the pictures of course...but the Iliad does have 16 greys instead of 4...