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Old 09-24-2008, 04:14 PM   #31
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but I wouldn't recommend that anyone buy an iRex device on the basis of any future development promises.
Personally, I wouldn't recommend anyone buy any device on the basis of future development promises.
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Old 09-24-2008, 04:25 PM   #32
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Personally, I wouldn't recommend anyone buy any device on the basis of future development promises.
I agree-- but most of the other e ink products come with a fairly fixed set of features. I think iRex is one of the worst for putting products on the market with claims to offer more functionality "soon." I attribute a lot of that to the fact that they never wanted to be in the direct customer market in the first place-- they wanted B2B sales in which some other company would develop software and handle customer support.
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Old 09-24-2008, 04:32 PM   #33
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There are two main components that go into producing a display, a screen and a controller. E-Ink has a patent on the screen, iRex designed the controller.
Ah, yes, I see now. Thank you for clarifying that, I misunderstood what you meant before. Probably in too much of a hurry.
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Old 09-24-2008, 04:52 PM   #34
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I agree-- but most of the other e ink products come with a fairly fixed set of features. I think iRex is one of the worst for putting products on the market with claims to offer more functionality "soon."
True. But another way to look at that is the other manufacturers aren't failing to live up to their promises... because they're not making any.

It all goes back to the notion of buying a device because of what it can do out of the box, not because of what you think it should be able to do, or what the company promises that it can do in the future. If you bought an iLiad because it already did what you needed, then the fact that it isn't a fixed set of features is a bonus. All of the promises of future capability haven't panned out, but a lot of them have. You don't really get any of that with most of the other devices.

People tend to forget just how much iRex has improved the iLiad since the initial release, compared to what other companies have done with their devices. They only get a bad rap because they haven't lived up to everything they've said they'd do. Would the general opinion of them be different if they never made promises, but still came out with the same improvements/updates that they have?
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Old 09-24-2008, 05:06 PM   #35
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The basic rule of customer service: set appropriate expectations, and then meet or exceed them.

iRex is pretty bad at setting appropriate customer expectations. Sure, the customers here and elsewhere had some very high expectations for iRex, but iRex encouraged those high expectations with promises they couldn't keep (for whatever reasons).

I bought my iLiad after FBReader had been ported, and virtually all of the time that I'm using it, I'm using community-developed software. I'm ok with that. By the time I bought mine, I knew about the power management problems, and that they would not be fixed. It took iRex a long time to admit that, and even after they admitted it, there were some pretty misleading statements on their marketing web pages about battery life. Talk about poor management of customer expectations!

And this trend continues. By continuously promising something like the multi-format viewer, iRex has in fact discouraged some community developers from working to solve the problems with the current set of viewers. That's what really annoys me. It's bad enough that iRex has failed to support the iLiad to the extent that they promised, but they've made it much harder than necessary for anyone else to pick up the slack.

If they're going to abandon any further development for the iLiad, as seems very likely, I hope they'll at least consider releasing source on the Content Lister so the community developers can fix it.

Meanwhile, the DS1000 is another "not there yet" product, in my opinion. Maybe iRex will deliver this time. Maybe they'll take the business world by storm and a couple of years from now they'll have almost completely replaced the use of desktop printers in businesses. But I, for one, am going to wait until they've got the product to a state where I think it would be usable as-is before buying, or recommending that anyone else buy.
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Old 09-24-2008, 05:30 PM   #36
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You've stated that very correct and presicely, nekokami. Although I have great gadged lust - by the given history it is sage having patience.
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Old 09-24-2008, 05:31 PM   #37
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Originally Posted by nekokami View Post
The basic rule of customer service: set appropriate expectations, and then meet or exceed them.
That's my motto, I try to push at work, but sometimes people are over zelous.

"Under promise, over deliver!" best strategy always.

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Old 09-24-2008, 05:58 PM   #38
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"Under promise, over deliver!" best strategy always.
I have a friend who's quite fond of that saying.
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Old 09-24-2008, 06:15 PM   #39
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I have a friend who's quite fond of that saying.
I am glad it is Steve Sinofsky's motto too.

In case you don't know who he is. He is the new head of Windows group at Microsoft. The previous guy, Jim Alchin, while I'm sure a great guy and good at his job made a major mistake with Vista. Well before it came out they were promising a whole list of features and performance that it just turned out could not be delivered. This is one of the main reasons Vista isn't liked so much. It is a perception.

Steve Sinofsky is keeping the new Windows 7 info very close to his vest. He is making sure that if they say Windows 7 will be or do something that it does that and more. Actually, I think he even said that his goal was to Under promise and over deliver.

So, I'm sure this mistake applies to iRex. When will companies, espesially those that involve software ever learn?

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Old 09-25-2008, 11:43 AM   #40
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That's what really annoys me. It's bad enough that iRex has failed to support the iLiad to the extent that they promised, but they've made it much harder than necessary for anyone else to pick up the slack.
That's certaily a valid frustration, but how many of the other eInk companies even allow users to pick up the slack? Do any of the others openly allow user community development and open source most of their software? I don't know.

Quote:
If they're going to abandon any further development for the iLiad, as seems very likely, I hope they'll at least consider releasing source on the Content Lister so the community developers can fix it.
I agree that would be great. Not only fix the content lister as it stands, but with enough information about the hardware interaction between that code and the iLiad, it should be possible to clone some functionality of the new DR1000 UI.

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But I, for one, am going to wait until they've got the product to a state where I think it would be usable as-is before buying, or recommending that anyone else buy.
Yep. Absolutely good advice, no matter what product/company you're talking about. I think a lot of people lost sight of that with the iLiad, and are now mad that it didn't fulfill their expectations for additional features. If you bought it because of what it could do at the time, then you're a lot less likely to be upset now.

I think many people are finding that they've learned that lesson the hard way. Personally, I bought mine a year and a half ago with software version 2.9.5 (?), and was happy with it then. 2.10, 2.11 and 2.12 were just bonuses as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I'm disappointed that development isn't going to continue, but I don't feel ripped off about it.

Moral of the story: Don't rely on undeveloped features to justify the purchase cost.
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Old 09-26-2008, 05:48 AM   #41
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People tend to forget just how much iRex has improved the iLiad since the initial release, compared to what other companies have done with their devices. They only get a bad rap because they haven't lived up to everything they've said they'd do. Would the general opinion of them be different if they never made promises, but still came out with the same improvements/updates that they have?
Other people seem to forget how much iRex lied to it's inital customers.

Would our opinions be different if they hadn't:
  1. Lied to us.
  2. Actively attempted to cover up their changing (lowering) specs.
  3. Failed consistantly to live up to their responsibilities.
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Old 10-03-2008, 08:33 AM   #42
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Assuming I did so, then yeah, that's annoying, but again, not terribly surprising. The iLiad forum here is lousy with complaints that they haven't done this or that which they agreed to do. Again, I don't like it, but corporations sometimes don't keep their promises for various reasons, it's no shocker. And while they haven't kept them yet, they are saying that they plan to continue to support the iLiad for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I agree that they probably aren't foreseeing very far here.
They have also said, unfortunately, that while they do plan to continue supporting the iLiad there are no plans to add any further functionality to it. So say goodbye to the power management etc that's been an ongoing promise...

That also indicates that they consider the DR a successor to the iLiad - if they were complementary then they would continue development on both so as to serve the different markets that each is meant for.
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Old 10-08-2008, 04:07 PM   #43
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They have also said, unfortunately, that while they do plan to continue supporting the iLiad there are no plans to add any further functionality to it. So say goodbye to the power management etc that's been an ongoing promise...
I'm not sure specifically which promise you're referring to, but they've said that power management is pretty much done on the iLiad. They did originally promise suspend/hibernate and later said that they won't be able to deliver it. That's old news though. In one of the recent updates they started throttling back the CPU in between page turns, which has made a big difference in the battery life. That's about as good as they can get it though, which is what they're currently saying. I'm not aware of any recent power management promises which they have made.

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That also indicates that they consider the DR a successor to the iLiad - if they were complementary then they would continue development on both so as to serve the different markets that each is meant for.
They've said that the main reason they are not continuing development of the iLiad is that they don't have enough resources to work on both. They made a decision to focus most of their efforts on the new device only. I think whether they discontinue the iLiad completely in the future, or else continue to sell it and provide minimal software development, probably depends on what the sales are like. If sales almost entirely switch over to the DR, then they'll probably treat the iLiad as a dead product. If the iLiad continues to sell though, that gives them motivation to budget at least some time towards working on it (likely only bug fixes and small improvements though).
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Old 10-08-2008, 04:15 PM   #44
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If the iLiad continues to sell though, that gives them motivation to budget at least some time towards working on it (likely only bug fixes and small improvements though).
If it continues to sell doesn't that mean they "don't" need to do anything to it? If it doesn't sell they either need to improve it or drop it.

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Old 10-08-2008, 04:18 PM   #45
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At this point, I think iRex is better off giving the source to the community, which is what they seem to plan on doing. That's fine. It would be great if they could also cut the price of the iLiad and sell it as-is, since they don't seem to want to support it anyway, but I suppose the nominal amount of each unit price that they set aside for support wouldn't make much difference anyway.
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