History of iRex Technologies reflects company's unique position

[Alexander Turcic]

Matthijs provided us with a link to the history of iRex Technologies, the company he works for. I assume most of you already knew that iRex is a Royal Philips Electronics spin-off. What's new, at least to me, is what makes the iRex iLiad special in technical terms:

Apart from major steps in the development of waveforms, iRex Technologies also developed the next generation display controller. The “Delta” chip encompasses many of the unique skills and knowledge’s, built up over the years by the iRex Team and is now readily available in the iRex iLiad which explains its uniqueness among other Electronic Paper Devices. With this product the boundaries of the electronic paper experience has been pushed even further, from E-Book to an actual Electronic Paper Device. The latter carries an EPD that can display black, white, 16 levels of grey and that is enabled with writing and sets a distinct course for electronic paper devices to come.

It doesn't seem that any other vendors use the "Delta" chipset in their current reader devices. Now you know why the iLiad is the currently only commercial e-book reader device with a larger display, a better resolution and 16 instead of 4 levels of grey.

[clabot451]

Just a few thoughts about the Iliad. Considering the limits of the technology Iliad is probably the best device on the market today. The hardware will improve soon that's for sure, but what about the content? Ok there are a lot of ebooks available (mostly overpriced) but where are the real killer apps for this gadget? I think that beside ebooks a hard display mixed with wacom tech should get a service provider for : textbooks(you can even exercise,take notes etc..) dictionaries and encyclopedias with some kind of hypertext and interactivity. Magazines newspapers and mapping contents are more suitable for a flexible display. what do you think about it?

[chrisv5]

These could be the first text books where you can scribble as much as you want and with a wave of the magic wand it's brand new again. Intriguing, right?

Let's bet that'll never happen. The "perfectly recyclable text book" is a nightmare for business people.

When I went to school, books were handed down many times, from student to student. Nowadays they FORCE the students to write in their books, just to sell new ones every year. It is a GREEDY world.