[firekat]

I see that you latched onto my "perceived" perceptions. I specifically included those caveats, as we are yet to see what this device can really do.

The thing is that when you have a Swiss Army Knife it does a number of things and, usually not one of them particularly well. The overhead of the iLiad loaded with all the bells and whistles may be what really hobbles this device.

The reason I pursued this device and I am sure is the motivation of many others is that it represented a "perceived" openness, and is not limited by DRM constraints. That was one of the biggest factors bantered about prior to it's availability. Other things were that it appeared that the specs were more impressive, screen size for me was a big motivator, the possibility of downloading context through the web, the touch screen with the ability to annotate and take notes was a nice benefit as well. All in all it appeared that this would be the "Super E-Reader", the specs blew away the Sony Reader.

We were disappointed that iRex did not seem to realize how great a consumer device this could be - after all we could tell them what more marketing opportunities and applications they could pursue since we represented a wide and diverse group of people that could share their insight. After much pestering iRex acquiesced, and released the iLiad under the proviso that it was not finished. We snapped them up like candy, paying the premium price with a mininum of complaint.

This has been a lesson to us all. For those that are in the industry and used to working with beta devices this is all pretty typical. For the rest of us this is a wakeup call that we should probably steer away from these devices till they are truly ready for prime time.

Overall I have to say the basic idea is good, the implementation so far - not so. Hopefully they will have this thing "good to go" some time in the near future. Hopefully some design concepts can be gleaned from the Sony Reader, like the wake up from a suspended state. (I have real issues with how long this thing takes to start up.) I cannot say that I am really satisfied with my purchase - so far. It currently is in no way even close to my expectations. I am an optomist and I believe (to a certain extent) that iRex will stand and deliver for the most part. I am sure that in the end I will be fully satisfied. Will I ever buy a beta device again? Unless it is in my bailiwick of experience, absolutely no! As envious as I might be with the Sony Reader at this point in time since everything on it works, I probably would not be happy with that either. The whole e-reader concept is just not all that mature.

So far life with the iLiad is using it minimally. I have started utilizing it as I intended, though it is not really up to my expectations.

All we really can do right now is wait, hopefully iRex can make this work really well and up to it's full potential.