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Originally Posted by Kakyou
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What this shows is that Irex is *REALLY* unprepared to enter the mainstream marketplace. As unfinished as the product is, the company itself seems to be in even worse shape.
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I have been an ebook reader for many, many years. As a mobile professional, an ebook reading device has been part of my kit for almost a decade now. I wrote one of the first user reviews of the Sony Librie to circulate on the internet. I concider myself a power ebook user and I have been waiting VERY long for the medium to catch on.
I joined this test group, not to read books. I got books. I joined to review the device. Since I got no device I review the company. I review the customer service. I review the store. If Irex is gonna mess things up, you can bet I will be posting with criticism and suggestions on how to improve. If Sony had listened to practically anyone who purchased their book, things might have turned out quite differently for the Librie.
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Now assuming I am not the only one who thinks like this, does it really sound so hard for iRex to send someone out to sit down and talk about the food?
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I think they are overhelmed, note that the iRex page shows a recent job add for salespersons.
As for the general policy of the company, it is a natural consequence of its adventurous foundation. See, e-ink is developed at MIT but somehow they fail to gain interest from big companies, so they spin-off E-ink.com. They get philips and sony, and it seems that the license/patent thing inplies some continental distribution: Sony starts shipping for the East, Phillips get Europe. Note that a paralell, non-existant but patented by Xerox spin-off Gyricon, menaces the shipping to USA. Well, even Phillips does not take so deep interest as it should, and it again spin-offs iRexx with its engineering team and little more, no user-oriented but looking for Business partners. And here we are at the users the end of the queue, at the restaurant at the End of the Universe, trying to make the technology really useful.
BTW, my hope is that the flexible display units (Philips and Plastic Logic, as fas as I know) will get soon a marketable product; librie, iRex being intermediate things.