My iLiad is toast. It's really over.

scotty1024 · 06-28-2008, 05:54 AM

For those that still PM and email me concerning the various things I've done on the iLiad: my iLiad passed away. Cause of death was the poor battery design of the iLiad (in human terms: congenital heart defect). Services were held and its now stuffed and mounted in a place of shame in my private computer museum.

Yes, all content purchased for it from http://www.mobipocket.com is so far a total write off. DRM can really bite at times. But all the content from http://www.fictionwise.com and http://www.baen.com lives on.

I have absolute assurances from iRex that they won't fix it. Frankly they probably popped corks and celebrated that I'm out of the iLiad development business. That despite all the benefit they got from me. If you think I'm exaggerating: ever notice how I'm missing from their credits page on the iLiad?

So its seriously over folks. I turned its 4GB compact flash card containing all the development files into an SSD as an experiment for my Motion Computing LE1700 (which was so successful I got a 32GB card for it).

I'm now a very happy Kindle owner/operator.

HarryT · 06-28-2008, 06:35 AM

Scotty,

If you have a significant investment in MobiPocket books, might it not perhaps have been a good idea to get another device which supported MobiPocket?

orcinus · 06-28-2008, 09:22 AM

Any chance you could elaborate on the battery design defect?

nrapallo · 06-28-2008, 09:49 AM

Hi Scott!

Welcome back to MobileRead after almost a year hiatus

Sorry to hear about your iLiad and the abandonment of all that beneficial development stuff!

I've been meaning to ask you if you still had some REB 1200 development code lying around, namely your JRebPub java utility and such.

Sorry to digress, but I remember reading your earlier posts about the early days with the REB 1200 and couldn't pass this opportunity to ask you!

I've recently started developing for the REB 1200 (ya, I know, "...get with the times..."), but it's really exciting to be able to capitalize on the laurels of past efforts, like the .imp format reverse engineering by Jeffrey Kraus-yao.

Any insights you may have would be welcomed given you were a "pioneer" of sorts on the REB 1200 development front!

One last question, if I may, do you know the format of the SoftBook PICT image format used in the .imp? It's not the Apple PICT format (or MacPaint pct format). I can't figure it out!

BTW, if you have any old (unencrypted) .imp ebooks that you would like to transfer to your Kindle (where you don't have access to the source .html), consider trying deimp.exe to extract just the text portion. I've also written a perl script (imp_dump.pl) to extract the images within the .imp, but I have not yet integrated the (decompressed) text with images to yield a .html version of the ebook. I will soon release the perl script, though!

And here's to a better battery design on the Kindle!

Nate the great · 06-28-2008, 09:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Scotty,

If you have a significant investment in MobiPocket books, might it not perhaps have been a good idea to get another device which supported MobiPocket?

He did. It's called the Kindle.

HarryT · 06-28-2008, 10:05 AM

True, but we were talking specifically about books from the MobiPocket web site. One cannot download books from there encoded with a Kindle device PID.

axel77 · 06-28-2008, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orcinus

Any chance you could elaborate on the battery design defect?

Anything specific thats not because of the lithium-ion batteries all todays device suffer from, like discharging it completly, and then leave it some days on a sunny place? That will lead for example to "total dischargement", ruining the battery.

troutyluc · 06-28-2008, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nate the great

He did. It's called the Kindle.

Why is the kindle better in your opinion? You dont have a history of using it yet, so how can you tell?

Nate the great · 06-28-2008, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troutyluc

Why is the kindle better in your opinion? You dont have a history of using it yet, so how can you tell?

I was joking when I said that before. I did not mean it was better, just that it was a Mobipocket device.

Anyway, I bought my Kindle the day it was announced. I like it and I do think it's better than the Cybook, but it's not my main reader anymore. Back around the beginning of May I bought a HP Jornada 720.

I think the Kindle is better because it implements more features of Mobi Reader than the Cybook.

scotty1024 · 06-28-2008, 11:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nrapallo

I've been meaning to ask you if you still had some REB 1200 development code lying around, namely your JRebPub java utility and such.

I've recently started developing for the REB 1200 (ya, I know, "...get with the times..."), but it's really exciting to be able to capitalize on the laurels of past efforts, like the .imp format reverse engineering by Jeffrey Kraus-yao.

Any insights you may have would be welcomed given you were a "pioneer" of sorts on the REB 1200 development front!

OMG, yes that stuff is still kicking around. I even have a small pile of REB1200's and my original SoftBook that still power up and work. I was able to liberate my content when Fictionwise stepped in.

Does Mobileread even have a REB1200 forum?

scotty1024 · 06-28-2008, 11:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you have a significant investment in MobiPocket books, might it not perhaps have been a good idea to get another device which supported MobiPocket?

I think its illustrative of the DRM world that I do have a device that supports DRM'd Mobipocket books and I should be able to re-download onto it. But I can't from this one web merchant.

I was able to re-download nearly all my content from Fictionwise and all of my content from Baen.

I bought something like 120 books off Mobipocket so I've got an axe to grind with them.

I've already had one kind offer to break the DRM but I'm a straight shooter on IP matters. What I want is for Mobipocket to get out of the way and allow the material to be re-downloaded for the PID I entered.

scotty1024 · 06-28-2008, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orcinus

Any chance you could elaborate on the battery design defect?

I'm soooooo done with giving them free engineering. So that chance is zero.

If you buy a Kindle we could talk about that.

HarryT · 06-29-2008, 04:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I think the Kindle is better because it implements more features of Mobi Reader than the Cybook.

It implements a different subset of MobiPocket features; I don't think it's true to say it implements more than the CyBook. For example, personally I'd find its inability to change the font far more of a loss than the "gain" of being able to have a link to a different book.

What specific Mobi features did you have in mind that are implemented on the Kindle but not the CyBook?

axel77 · 06-29-2008, 04:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scotty1024

I'm soooooo done with giving them free engineering. So that chance is zero.

Sorry, but by all love, I've a problem with people complaining the battery being bad engineered, and when asked why? "I will not say."

I say the kindle is great piece of crap! Don't ask me why, I won't provide them free hints. :-/

WDecraene · 06-29-2008, 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scotty1024

my iLiad passed away.

That's really too bad Scotty. It must hurt, given the price of the Iliad. I would be really pissed off were that to happen to me (even my cybook even though it doesn't cost that much)

'The Iliad is dead, long live the Kindle'

Good luck with your Kindle

06-28-2008, 05:54 AM	#1
scotty1024 Banned Posts: 1,300 Karma: 1479 Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Peoples Republic of Washington Device: Reader / iPhone / Librie / Kindle	My iLiad is toast. It's really over. For those that still PM and email me concerning the various things I've done on the iLiad: my iLiad passed away. Cause of death was the poor battery design of the iLiad (in human terms: congenital heart defect). Services were held and its now stuffed and mounted in a place of shame in my private computer museum. Yes, all content purchased for it from http://www.mobipocket.com is so far a total write off. DRM can really bite at times. But all the content from http://www.fictionwise.com and http://www.baen.com lives on. I have absolute assurances from iRex that they won't fix it. Frankly they probably popped corks and celebrated that I'm out of the iLiad development business. That despite all the benefit they got from me. If you think I'm exaggerating: ever notice how I'm missing from their credits page on the iLiad? So its seriously over folks. I turned its 4GB compact flash card containing all the development files into an SSD as an experiment for my Motion Computing LE1700 (which was so successful I got a 32GB card for it). I'm now a very happy Kindle owner/operator.

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06-28-2008, 06:35 AM	#2
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Scotty, If you have a significant investment in MobiPocket books, might it not perhaps have been a good idea to get another device which supported MobiPocket?

06-28-2008, 09:22 AM	#3
orcinus Gadgeteer Posts: 222 Karma: 540 Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Croatia Device: iRex iLiad, Sony PRS-500, Nokia 770, BB 7200, Samsung i600, iPhone	Any chance you could elaborate on the battery design defect?

06-28-2008, 09:49 AM	#4
nrapallo GuteBook/Mobi2IMP Creator Posts: 2,958 Karma: 2530691 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Toronto, Canada Device: REB1200 EBW1150 Device: T1 NSTG iLiad_v2 NC Device: Asus_TF Next1 WPDN	Hi Scott! Welcome back to MobileRead after almost a year hiatus Sorry to hear about your iLiad and the abandonment of all that beneficial development stuff! I've been meaning to ask you if you still had some REB 1200 development code lying around, namely your JRebPub java utility and such. Sorry to digress, but I remember reading your earlier posts about the early days with the REB 1200 and couldn't pass this opportunity to ask you! I've recently started developing for the REB 1200 (ya, I know, "...get with the times..."), but it's really exciting to be able to capitalize on the laurels of past efforts, like the .imp format reverse engineering by Jeffrey Kraus-yao. Any insights you may have would be welcomed given you were a "pioneer" of sorts on the REB 1200 development front! One last question, if I may, do you know the format of the SoftBook PICT image format used in the .imp? It's not the Apple PICT format (or MacPaint pct format). I can't figure it out! BTW, if you have any old (unencrypted) .imp ebooks that you would like to transfer to your Kindle (where you don't have access to the source .html), consider trying deimp.exe to extract just the text portion. I've also written a perl script (imp_dump.pl) to extract the images within the .imp, but I have not yet integrated the (decompressed) text with images to yield a .html version of the ebook. I will soon release the perl script, though! And here's to a better battery design on the Kindle!

06-28-2008, 10:05 AM	#6
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	True, but we were talking specifically about books from the MobiPocket web site. One cannot download books from there encoded with a Kindle device PID.

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