iRex next-gen e-book reader based on e Ink

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by pitcher23

According to this site, they seem to think this spring in Europe.

http://www.blackmask.com/cgi-bin/new...&ID=1134454590

Ha! Since I'm Dutch I can paraphrase the original article for you.

The 160dpi screen is apparently very bright and usable in sunlight.

The battery life is supposed to be three hours a day for a full week.

The device is primarily meant for reading and annotation.

It has a simple MP3 player.

It is not meant for web browsing, although the article doesn't say it absolutely can't do this. The WiFi capability does let you download content (magazine subscriptions) through hotspots. You can also store your own documents.

It is targeted at mobile travellers, law firms, medical community and libraries.

It's going to appear this Spring in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. The article heading says "start of 2006", so that would be early Spring.

No price indication, unfortunately.

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Laurens

It's going to appear this Spring in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. The article heading says "start of 2006", so that would be early Spring.

Let's hope they don't make the same mistakes Sony did by focusing on a local market. And of course, no word yet on DRM... as long we don't have more information, I remain suspicious.

[Henrycat]

Update:

My friend answered the question about the support for web content but not browsing.

"The reason why browsing isn't supported is that the screen of eink on the device would't do fast updates (read: Video). Wifi is intended for content download."

Although it seems that it could have a browser it just would't be usuable with all the internet

Probably ok for text pages but anything else would result in a somewhat less than optimal experience

Since it uses linux maybe someone will find an answer

[Henrycat]

Update:

Forgot to say that the site is up and running :P

http://www.irextechnologies.com/home.htm

There you can find a lot of information, including a pdf with the product specifications (link).

Formats: Pdf, xhtml, txt, mp3

And theres a stylus in the images.

From faq
"Which formats do you support?

In order to stimulate the momentum in electronic reading, iRex Technologies will support as many formats as possible in as open an environment as possible, respecting the rights of owners of content and IP."

Shop
"Although the business focus of iRex Technologies is Business-to-Business solutions, we will also make our product available for individuals, who can order via our iRex Technologies web retail. (April 2006)"

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by Henrycat

"The reason why browsing isn't supported is that the screen of eink on the device would't do fast updates (read: Video). Wifi is intended for content download."

Speaking about content download, I wonder how, exactly, that will occur.

Will there be a SaMBa or ssh server running on the device so that it looks like a file server from our main systems? Or will there be a client on the device so that our main systems are the servers? (My Zaurus SLC-760 does both.)

How will the content be managed on the device? If the content is downloaded via HTTP, do they have a way to pull all pages of a web-book in one shot?

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by Henrycat

Formats: Pdf, xhtml, txt, mp3

Good, good. I can deal with that. xhtml implies that it will handle css, so you can make an html-based eBook and just include a style sheet that works well with greyscale devices.

mp3? So we can include sound effects in our eBooks?

Originally Posted by Henrycat

In order to stimulate the momentum in electronic reading, iRex Technologies will support as many formats as possible in as open an environment as possible, respecting the rights of owners of content and IP.

This seems fair. Open content can be viewed in HTML while "protected" content can be locked up in PDF (I won't touch such content, but still...)