Confession time

[Nate the great]

At a local Gadgetophiliacs Anonymous meeting...

Hello, my name's Nathaniel; I am going to buy an Iliad.

I have fought with my addiction for a couple months now. I have tried all the usual methods to distract myself; none work anymore. I tried deep breathing into a shopping bag from Fry's. I watched clips from CES on Youtube. I recited the mantra "it doesn't have enough features" for hours on end. I almost convinced myself that anything that has a manual less than 500 pages is too simple to be bothered with. I have succumbed to the Iliad's seductive charms.

I could resist the 8" screen. I used to use a PDA; six inches was more than enough. I was able to resist the Wifi; I convinced myself that it was an unnecessary extravagance. I even resisted the USB host, as wonderful as it is. But I finally succumbed to the touchscreen. Oh, the beautiful, wonderful touchscreen! It calls to me. I cannot live without it. I must have it.

[RWood]

Why not? Harry already fell for its charms. Go over to the dark side. iRex is your Father.

[Bob Russell]

I can relate. I think that your best hope is to breath into a WalMart bag instead! Enjoy the iLiad!

[HarryT]

Go on - do it! Your life won't be complete without one! Seriously, you won't regret it - it's a great machine. Where are you going to get one from? Direct from iRex, or do you have a local distributer? I was fortunate in that the UK distributer for the iLiad lives only 45 minutes drive away from me, so I was able to go and see one before buying.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

At a local Gadgetophiliacs Anonymous meeting...

Hello, my name's Nathaniel; I am going to buy an Iliad.

I have fought with my addiction for a couple months now. I have tried all the usual methods to distract myself; none work anymore. I tried deep breathing into a shopping bag from Fry's. I watched clips from CES on Youtube. I recited the mantra "it doesn't have enough features" for hours on end. I almost convinced myself that anything that has a manual less than 500 pages is too simple to be bothered with. I have succumbed to the Iliad's seductive charms.

I could resist the 8" screen. I used to use a PDA; six inches was more than enough. I was able to resist the Wifi; I convinced myself that it was an unnecessary extravagance. I even resisted the USB host, as wonderful as it is. But I finally succumbed to the touchscreen. Oh, the beautiful, wonderful touchscreen! It calls to me. I cannot live without it. I must have it.

I have serious doubts about the efficiency of your weaning methods. I'd compare them to an AA doing wine tasting or a sexcrazed person reading porn or a junkie reading how to grow poppy.

If you don't want an Iliad you'd have to leave MR.

Enjoy that Iliad.

[Nate the great]

This is an interesting question, so I thought I would answer it here.

Originally Posted by alophind

Why do you buy Iliad if you have the SONY ? Isn't it enough ?

The Sony Reader is only good for reading books. It does this very well, but that's all it does. It's just not enough. I want to be able to annotate text. I want a device I can copy paragraphs out of an article for research.

It's really the touchscreen that makes this possible, that I want the most. If there was a 6" touchscreen Eink device I would get it instead of the Iliad. I don't care about the screen size.

My other gripe the the PRS500 is that I don't like the way that Sony decided to develop it. Everyone here should be familiar with my position on the format conversion software; but I also have other concerns. Why are there no games on the Reader(there are several that are possible on the hardware)? Where is the SDK? Where are the viewers for other formats? I feel that Sony is blindly dedicated to the sole control of this device to the point that they are smothering a really nice piece of hardware.

I won't have the money to get the Iliad until mid September. I plan to keep an eye on tech news, and if a new Eink device with a touchscreen is announced I may get it instead of the Iliad. After I get the new device, I plan to keep my Sony Reader in my car for when I am stuck in traffic. I expect to get at least a half hour use out of it everyday.

If I get the Iliad, I plan on porting games to it in Linux and Java, and hopefully writing a few.

[yvanleterrible]

For my part, the inputs of annotating and drawing possibilities would do it.

[Adam B.]

Excellent news! Another convert.

I'm sure you'll love it. What games are you planning on porting?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

Excellent news! Another convert.

I'm sure you'll love it. What games are you planning on porting?

I don't know what games there are for Linux, but I think turn based strategy games would be playable on the Iliad.

This question of which games to port should go in a new thread.

[HarryT]

Purely by a coincidence, Nate, I started such a thread on the iLiad developer's forum!

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

I have serious doubts about the efficiency of your weaning methods. I'd compare them to an AA doing wine tasting or a sexcrazed person reading porn or a junkie reading how to grow poppy.

It's not about the gadget; it's about the $700 to get the gadget.

[UncleDuke]

i saw one of these recently, a guy at a coffeeshop had one and was impressing a group of young lovelies about how <in> he was and all when i asked what it could do, he hemmed and hawed for a while and kept talking about its great resolution and the wifi and the touch screen and the 16/64 shades of grey and how this was the way of the future

i whipped out the trusty sony reader and turned it on, he claimed i had it on the whole time as it couldn't start that fast, i turned it off and on a few times and he looked dazed so i asked him to do the same, he did, about 10 minutes later as his came back to life half of the young ladies were on my side and half were still with him

i showed a them a few books from patricia <only the naughty ones> changed the font size around and the shifted the screen, about then his battery died and the rest of the ladies came around me

this was the easiest hunting and gathering i have ever done, score one for the sony

[Patricia]

I am embarrassed. Perhaps I had better not do Balzac's Marriage Guidance manual, La Physiologie du Mariage.

Originally Posted by UncleDuke

ii showed a them a few books from patricia <only the naughty ones> changed the font size around and the shifted the screen, about then his battery died and the rest of the ladies came around me

this was the easiest hunting and gathering i have ever done, score one for the sony

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by UncleDuke

i saw one of these recently, a guy at a coffeeshop had one and was impressing a group of young lovelies about how <in> he was and all when i asked what it could do, he hemmed and hawed for a while and kept talking about its great resolution and the wifi and the touch screen and the 16/64 shades of grey and how this was the way of the future

i whipped out the trusty sony reader and turned it on, he claimed i had it on the whole time as it couldn't start that fast, i turned it off and on a few times and he looked dazed so i asked him to do the same, he did, about 10 minutes later as his came back to life half of the young ladies were on my side and half were still with him

i showed a them a few books from patricia <only the naughty ones> changed the font size around and the shifted the screen, about then his battery died and the rest of the ladies came around me

this was the easiest hunting and gathering i have ever done, score one for the sony

I have to say, that is just awesome!

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have to say, that is just awesome!

I'm fairly certain it's just a story.