[kgg]

First of all, thanks to all those that created the iRexTools (Mac
application (wrapper) for the Mac scribbles application).

I've just had the RS1000S for two days, evaluating whether to buy it or not.
Unfortunately, I've decided to return it to the shop.
Here's my reasoning, hoping that it'll be useful to others (including
iRex).

- In common with a number of other users, I review many scientific
papers, and want to remove their weight (and volume) from my bag.
An ereader should be sufficiently small and light, but have a large
screen. No problem here. The RS1000S is very comfortable to read
from.
- I didn't use it enough to comment on the battery life.
- The speed of the device is just about acceptable, but only just.
Going to next/previous page is quick (even for 9 MB text-only
documents), anything else is too slow (including graphics-heavy
smaller documents). Using the shortcuts at the bottom of the screen
to zoom in/out & pan helped significantly in cutting down on the use
of (slow) menus. Embedded feature request: being able to map
functions (other than the standard ones) to the buttons. There are
9 buttons, with fewer functions mapped to them, hence there's slack.
e.g. two arrow buttons can be used for scrolling, and the central
button to returning to the previous full-page view (remembering
whether it was with or without margins).
- Accuracy of stylus. Not great, it seems to be offset (even after
calibration), and hence adding to existing annotations, or changing
them, does not work well. Regarding the speed of the writing,
i.e. the delay in writing and it appearing on the screen, this was
not great but acceptable.
- Quality of scribbles/annotations is variable. Let me explain: if
not zoomed in, it's hard to write much on scientific articles (the
margins are too small to contain any proofs :-) because the pen's
line is actually quite wide (even when set to the thinnest pen).
Hence you have to you zoom in before writing. But zooming in/out
and scrolling etc. is too slow.
- Operating system. I want to use the RS1000S on both Mac OS X and
Windows (real and virtualised on Mac).
- Windows. I only tried it with Parallels on Mac OS. Mounting was
hit and miss. The most reliable procedure seems to be: start
parallels, connect device to computer, select device in
parallels's USB menu, click YES on the iRex dialogue. The
(documented) bug that you need to turn on the filename extension
to be able to export scribbles etc. is just pathetic. On the
whole I found the Windows software confusing and not very usable.
Major factor against buying the device.
- Mac: many thanks to those who developed the iRexTools. Works very
well, and is a much simpler and cleaner interface than the Windows
software that is supplied with the reader. Major factor for
buying the device.
- Using extra SD cards. Worked ok, except that the Windows software
was not automatically included on a new card. Didn't bother to fix
this (see above).
- Upgrading. I upgraded the device to 1.7. Worked fine.
- Documentation. I'm not impressed with the iRex website &
documentation. The former is very unstructured, and it is
impossible to know what is current or outdated information, whether
it is official or user information. I spent half a day surfing the
web to find reliable information on the Mac (and ended up here). In
the end a single link to the iRexTool application saved the day, but
finding it was pot luck. This is a real shame, because the app is
great. iRex should probably have a non-supported software forum /
download on their website.
- Userfriendliness. I'm a reasonably savvy computer user (computer
scientist even), and it took me way too much time to figure all this
stuff out. (Installing ocaml using fink to be able to convert
scribbles to pdf? And I even know what ocaml is.. Give me a
break.) The only reason I spent this much time trying out the
reader is because I like the technology. Otherwise I would have
given up after 20 minutes. My computer is a Mac, my phone an
iPhone, for a good reason. Hence major factor against iRex.
- Weirdness.
- Switching off the buttons, and then going into full screen display
mode seems to end up in a locked device: cannot use the buttons,
and there is no stylus input either. Reset seems the only way
out.
- Reviewing a 6 page article with few figures resulted (repeatably)
in a message saying that there was no memory to display the page.
No other documents open, reset didn't solve it. No solution. A
very major factor for not buying it.
- Market. The ereader market is just taking off.
- Hence there are multiple standards for DRM, ebooks, etc. This is
a pain, but will sort itself out. I actually don't care about
this, because all I is to review articles on the reader.
- More importantly, the use cases, i.e. how to use the devices, what
GUI / interaction modes, wired/wireless (USB, WIFI, GSM), browsing
yes/no, etc. to use are obviously still evolving. I'm worried
about being stuck with an early adopter model, where waiting for
one year will give me something more mature (usable).
- Given that iRex is a relatively small company, and that
competition is heating up, I'm worried about being stuck with a
potentially unsupported device soon (cf. Apple's Newton).
- Price: high. Not a killer for me, but it's too high to just buy the
RS1000S for fun, and then not use it. It's only 200 euro less than
a full-blown decent laptop (e.g. iBook, which, I know, doesn't read
so well, cannot be written on etc.).
- Recommendations. I would not recommend the RS1000S to any
non-technical person. For techies, like all you reading this
message, it's fifty-fifty.

Conclusions: I'll return the reader to the shop and will wait for a
year to see how the market has evolved. If iRex is still around (I
hope so, I'm working for a Philips spin-off myself), I'll definately
reconsider them. But in the meantime the rest of the market will have
evolved too, including possibly something like the rumoured Apple
iTablet. Until then, I'll review articles the old-fashioned way,
using a red pen, and very small handwriting.

Kees