[Riocaz]

What utter rubbish.

E-book acceptance has been a long time coming. Viable hardware, interchangeable formats and a universal standard would go a long way towards bringing e-books into the mainstream. iRex has an opportunity to push the reading public towards a real e-reading solution. The iLiad in its present form is a long odyssey away from epic success.

Up to here I agree.

Before buying my iLiad, I read everything I could find about the device, talked to the iRex people and actually held one in my hands last May. One of the main attractions was the promise of reading PDF eBooks on a large screen. I am, after all, an e-book publisher and have lots of PDF files to read.

Here she states that she read everything she could, and talked to iRex. Remember it because this is important later.

After a seemingly endless wait, my iLiad arrived. The packaging is beautiful and the form factor is exactly right—slim and light. The reader as currently shipped, however, has three significant limitations:

Why is everyone obsessed with the packging? It's nice I grant, but "beautiful"?

I agree that the physical size of the unit, is excellent though.

The documentation

The documentation did not come with the device. The only paper was a 5×7 sheet that welcomes you to the world of electronic reading and then warns you that if the iLiad runs out of power your unit will be irrevocably damaged. Interestingly enough, there is no indication that you should charge the machine before turning it on, or indeed, how to do that.

For someone "respected" and "tech-savvy" diddn't realise that the documentation was on the iLiad.

Because it makes sense, that you send a "book reader" with a load of dead tree.

Not to mention that this is actually incorrect. What the slip of paper actually states is that the unit wil be damaged should the unit run out of power WHILE UPDATING THE FIRMWARE

So a "tech-savvy" "Hardware & software developer", who doesn't RTFM (well at least doesn't read it properly).

Screen readability

The PDF reading software shows a full page in approximately a five-point typeface. The software does not allow the user to adjust the font size. The E-Ink technology shows a clean crisp image that is virtually impossible to read because the font is so small.

She's apparently got a different one from me. My iLiad is very easy on the eyes, and I have spent several long evening/days reading books and manuals on it.

What is most likely is that this "tech-savvy" person has tried to read an A4 document on a screen less than half that size.

Someone tech-savvy would realise that and ensure that her documents are properly sized for reading on the unit.

What she also doesn't mention is that iRex have stated that a zoom function will be added later.

The PDF reader

It might be possible to persist in reading the very small type face, but the real killer is that the device will not read protected PDF files. All of the literature, packaging and documentation clearly state that the device reads PDFs. There is no mention that it won’t read protected files. Incidentally, there are no search functions available; an unexpected weakness.

iRex have never said, to my knowledge, that the iLiad would read protected PDF. So her claims to have read everything she could before hand is shown to be at best a mistruth. As it's one huge point thats been discussed repeatedly since the first details came out about the unit in various forums.

The overall implementation has other noteworthy flaws: the unit freezes on a regular basis, there is no power management and an exceedingly slow screen-refresh rate occasionally leads to ghosting.

I would love to know what version of the firmware she was using. As I have yet to experience regular freezing on my iLiad. It does happen occaionally, but anyone who has participated in early adoption of bleeding edge gadgets would know that. Particularly one who will claim, further on, that she is a long-time software and hardware developer.

The screen refresh time, has nothing to do with the ghosting effect. You would expect someone "tech-savvy" to know this. Particularly had they actually "read everything" they could about the device.

As a long time software and hardware developer, my view is that this device is barely at beta quality and yet it is being sold as a finished consumer product. The documentation and the Web site both state that new software will be regularly released. Obviously iRex realizes that it has work to do, but the company never uses the word beta in describing the product.

When buying the iLiad it was clearly stated that the software is not in a production state. Yet there is no mention of this. Interstingly iRex have now removed this warning from the shop site. However 2.6.1 is the first time that the firmware has been anywhere near a truely usable state IMO.

Thus-far iRex have produced 4 software updates (2.5, 2.5.1, 2.5, 2.6 & 2.6.1) since the iLiad was first shipped. Many flaws have been fixed in that time, and we agreed to it when we brought the units.

No mention of the speed these updates are being released is mentioned.

All of the problems I encountered are eminently fixable. None of them are serious enough to damage the long term prospects for the device. Unfortunately, they have done the consumers and themselves a disservice in the short term.

It is hard to figure out the iRex management strategy. iRrex is on a short timeline with Sony and Jinke at its heels. On one level it makes sense to rush to market. On the other hand, all the advantages of being first to market stand to be obliterated by the poor implementation.

Again she fails to mention that iRex shipped the iLiad early because the customer begged them to. She also hasn't grasped the fact that having so many free beta testers has allowed iRex to fix holes that much faster.

While this incarnation is certainly a disappointment, it is too early to write it off. The E-Ink screen is a true breakthrough technology. It is important to remember that e-books are about the reading experience and not about technology.

Since receiving my new iLiad, I have read 8 books it is quite clear that this person used it for less than 5 minutes.

The only disservice I can see is that a respected ebooks news source like Teleread published such unadulterated and misleading tripe.