Hermance,
I definitely empathize with both your obsolescence and priceyness points.
As far as obsolescence goes, that's almost always going to be around. Waiting for 'radical innovation' (whether product- or manufacturing-oriented) is always a bit of a gamble, insofar that there are often bugs that have to be resolved in the first iteration of each new incarnation.
The iRex is supposedly on firmware 1.7 in the next few weeks, and its users seem to be quite passionate about the firmware updates. So I guess I'm hopping on board, until I discover that the gizmo can't possibly be adequate for my needs (i.e. too slow; software not flexible enough).
(Furthermore -- and this is just me thinking aloud -- hardware usually becomes obsolete because it can't keep up with the computational requirements of advancing software. Journal articles are predominantly published electronically as 2-column PDF's, and I'm willing to bet it's gonna stay that way for quite some time. Insofar that memory capacity is likely to continue advancing faster than data coding and compression technology, data formats like PDF aren't going anywhere. (Right?))
As for priceyness, well, I'm purchasing this one right now to use. At the new job this January, I'll have a cushy 'research development fund' to tap, so my hope is to sell my current iRex, and then repurchase with my research funds. I really hope that works out... But I agree, the iRex price makes most anybody pause.
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Originally Posted by hermance
cmhsieh, thanks also for talking about your experiences with K2. I'm definitely intrigued by the iRex, but it seems just too expensive for my first e-reader investment. I can't help shake the feeling that this technology is going to improve rapidly and that in a couple of years there will be much better solutions out there, particularly involving this PDF conundrum. Though I think an e-reader would be helpful for me, it would basically be a luxury item at this point, not something I am planning on using seriously long-term. for example, I do not intend to put my entire PDF library onto a device, but I would like the ability to store, say, the PDFs for the projects that I am currently working on.
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