1) 2nd came out about a month or two ago, nothing has been mentioned about a third generation
2) Iliad is the name of the device, Irex is the name of the company and no official announcements are made about a larger screen.
3) I've heard everything between 5 and 15
but really, I use it pretty much and charge it as much as my cell phone, about twice a week
5) I read technical books with it but you won't like it. If you plan on reading text from the net then you can format it the way you want on the iliad but reading pdf files from books that are scanned, is somewhat harder ... but doable
6) it takes longer then I like. could take 30s-1min...