Unboxing iRex 800 and first impressions

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

It's slightly faster than Sony 900 for turning pages.
Haven't found any note taking feature so far.

They've said that a firmware update is scheduled for April which will add annotation capabilities. Of course, it's not a good idea to rely on such dates!

[Mr. Goodbar]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I briefly switch the off-button (less than 1 second) for standby. I hold it (about 3 seconds) for power-off. Just tried the Sony way...

Thanks, I was wondering if that was the process, but it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the manual.

I'll be curious as to your impressions of battery life over the next few days as you use it, particularly if you just keep it in standby as opposed to shutting it the whole way down. On my Kindle and Sony I never turn it off, just use the standby, which gives great battery life.

[DeReader]

Wow, my unit has not even arrived, thank you for your first impressions! Looks really good so far.

Hope that UPS guy will show up in the next hours

[osama_jamal]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

It's slightly faster than Sony 900 for turning pages.
Haven't found any note taking feature so far.

Can you turn off the LED light on the left?
And can you view large PDFs in two pages like the SONY landscape mode?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by catharsis

What about academic papers? Can you make some pictures of how the reader handles a document like this ? I'm intersted in the first and second page.

It DOES NOT have iLiad's "intelligent" zoom (marking any area with the stylus and exploding it to full screen).
So you only can increase font size, thus "ruining" the layout.
So it's the same as with all units < DIN A4/letter: It's a compromise for complex documents.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by osama_jamal

Can you turn off the LED light on the left?

Don't think so. But it goes off automatically, only shows activity.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by DeReader

Wow, my unit has not even arrived, thank you for your first impressions! Looks really good so far.

Hope that UPS guy will show up in the next hours

I've tracked progress online. Mine did arrive in Nuremberg yesterday evening and left their depository this morning 7am.
Was yours on the road this morning already as well?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by osama_jamal

Can you turn off the LED light on the left?
And can you view large PDFs in two pages like the SONY landscape mode?

No, no 2-page-view.
BTW: I thought it was a good idea as well. But after having seen it in action, I never use it on my Sony 900. Wasting too much space, no real benefit.

[Jumpn Jack Flash]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

It DOES NOT have iLiad's "intelligent" zoom (marking any area with the stylus and exploding it to full screen).
So you only can increase font size, thus "ruining" the layout.
So it's the same as with all units < DIN A4/letter: It's a compromise for complex documents.

Does the 1000s have this capablity, if so then it may be left until the annotation suppport is done, this of course assumes that the 1000s will not lose any features bar mobi support

[catharsis]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

It DOES NOT have iLiad's "intelligent" zoom (marking any area with the stylus and exploding it to full screen).
So you only can increase font size, thus "ruining" the layout.
So it's the same as with all units < DIN A4/letter: It's a compromise for complex documents.

So the only zoom method is to increase the font size? Your pictures look pretty decent, font quite small, but would you say it's readable without zooming (I mean increasing the font size)?

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

It DOES NOT have iLiad's "intelligent" zoom (marking any area with the stylus and exploding it to full screen).
So you only can increase font size, thus "ruining" the layout.
So it's the same as with all units < DIN A4/letter: It's a compromise for complex documents.

If you set the margin to none for the academic pdf, then hopefully the text will be bigger? Or is the margin option an 'addition' to the internal margins of the document?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by badbob001

If you set the margin to none for the academic pdf, then hopefully the text will be bigger? Or is the margin option an 'addition' to the internal margins of the document?

Unfortunately, "no margin" doesn't help here.
You can stick to the original layout, with its pre-defined margin. Or you can change the font size and then cut the margin. But this means, you can't eliminate the margins from your original layout. This has been perfect with iLiad's "intelligent" zoom. So I'd still consider iLiad the #1 unit for (complex) PDFs.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by catharsis

So the only zoom method is to increase the font size? Your pictures look pretty decent, font quite small, but would you say it's readable without zooming (I mean increasing the font size)?

It is readable. But I don't see significant advantages in comparison to, let's say, Sony 900. Significantly less glare and slightly better contrast, but PDF capabilities aren't any better. Actually, Sony 600 and 900 can zoom and reflow within PDFs. But only for a single page, so cropping margins isn't easy there as well.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Jumpn Jack Flash

Does the 1000s have this capablity, if so then it may be left until the annotation suppport is done, this of course assumes that the 1000s will not lose any features bar mobi support

iRex 1000S does have this feature as well.

[DeReader]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I've tracked progress online. Mine did arrive in Nuremberg yesterday evening and left their depository this morning 7am.
Was yours on the road this morning already as well?

Oh yes, it left the nearest Depot (thats for me "Frittlingen") this morning at 8:00. Usually UPS is very reliable with shipments to my adress, so I hope it will arrive today.

But back to the DR800S: The missing "intelligent zoom" feature is really a negative aspect, I use this on my Iliad for nearly all PDF files. So I expected that feature on the DR800S too.