Quick First impression

[cjp]

Originally Posted by pthwaite

Well, the dictionary is in the machine and in the place it says it needs to be. You can read the dictionary and search for words in it.

I (and possibly anyone else) cannot, while reading a mobi-book, look up a word. The DR1000s says it cannot find a dictionary and tells me to ensure it is the place I put it...

Not very successful. If their companion software worked as the manual suggested it should, the function may work but I suspect this may be a bug.

I haven't sent a correspondence to iRex about the dictionary issue - mine is exactly the same as yours - but thought I'd wait to see if anyone here can find a 'workaround.' Do you think iRex is aware of this problem?

[allovertheglobe]

Originally Posted by Over

I guess it's a bug. How can people guess that going full screen means no stylus control? Point that out to iRex, so that they can fix it in a subsequent firmware update.

Well, in all fairness to iRex, the fact that fullscreen means that there are -NO ICONS TO CLICK ON- should be a big clue that the stylus might not be so useful...

There IS a bug, as ptwhaite wrote, in that the unlock key combo doesn't work, and I tried a number of different ones too.

BTW I love this mode esp. for comics/manga. I asked about it for the iLiad ages ago on here, never got a real reply, don't know if they later added it. Can't do it on the Sonys. A big screen like this is very nice, but with a proper interface-clutter-free full-screen mode, that's just the icing on the cake.

[b0rsuk]

Is it possible to connect any USB devices to the reader ? A flash drive ? Anything at all ?

This is the feature I'm most curious about. I would be very, very happy if I could connect an USB keyboard for note taking.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

I would be very, very happy if I could connect an USB keyboard for note taking.

It isn't possible. The DR1000SW will have bluetooth, which may allow a keyboard (although these are more expensive than a USB one).

I agree that iRex has missed an opportunity by not providing host mode USB. It would have been easy to do, and might still be possible with upgraded software. One reason not to provide it is that host mode USB has to provide a significant amount of power to attached devices. Keyboards and USB sticks don't typically need much power though.

[junkyardwillie]

What ever happened to the video review?

[duckface]

It took about 3 weeks to arrive, as indicated.

I'm on a Mac, and was able to use it without problems.
As others have indicated, The SD media appears as removable drive
on the Mac.

I installed the 1.02 software by downloading it to the mac,
then unzip into the top level directory of the removable drive,
then restart the Irex.

With the 1.02 software, I got (very roughly) 10 hours of battery life,
with the sound and feedback lights turned off, but the stylus turned on.
Probably the stylus is a major drain however.

I purchased an 8gig SDhc - it works, however: *do not* format it on
the Irex, it reduces the capacity to 1gig, and you then have to reformat
on a computer. When I first popped the card into the irex, it showed 8gig.
Then I did the format and install software steps, resulting in a 1gig card.
I then tried reformatting it on the Mac as mounted through the Irex -- this
did not work, I think it resulted in a corrupted format. Finally I got
a card reader, formatted it on the Mac (as a ms-dos volume of course),
mount in the irex, install the software, all ok - after some unneeded steps.
When you first get the SDhc card it is almost certainly already formatted,
just skip the format step and install the software.
As someone else mentioned, the install software step does not copy the .pdf
manuals, so copy these off the original and resinstall them on the new SD.

The folder /Volume/IREX/System/Desktop (as seen from the host) is
a place to put things that is visible from the irex.

Positive: the screen can display a full page .pdf, small details such as subscripts are generally readable.

Some negatives:

The interface is confusing. I can see why USA Today and others gave it
a poor review. The linux foundation is presumably pretty well developed,
but it seems like they have developed an interface from scratch, it reminds
me of software the first dos computers, with additional bugs.
The hardware interface is also confusing -- there are three
left-dot-right hardware controllers, but the meaning of the middle "dot"
is different on the bottom controller. It should have a different shape.
The touch buttons do not work perfectly, and on my unit one of them
does not work well at all, requires multiple presses.
The placement of the controllers on left and
right makes it difficult to hold the device without accidentally pressing
page advance sometimes. There is a feature to turn off ("lock")
any of these controllers, but at random the lock seems to disappear
and reappear. The unit is too heavy to hold for a long period
(unlike the Sony reader, which can be held in one hand...
on the other hand, the Sony can display about a paragraph's worth of text).
The unit has frozen twice in about a day of use. The second time, it was
turned off I thought, and it would not turn on. I thought it was broken,
but a hard reset allowed it to turn on.

Due to these negatives, I'm not sure what I'll think of it in the long
term. However, it is a new device and is the only choice a the moment that is even
capable of displaying full page .pdfs, so it's silly to complain.
On the contrary I am grateful to be able to at least try this device.
No doubt the software will rapidly improve over time, doubly so
since it is open source.

Looking forward to djvu support, which is probably coming soon...

On Mac/Linux it is possible to convert djvu to pdf with djvups followed by ps2pdf
(If DjView is installed, in the terminal do
/Applications/DjView.app/Contents/bin/djvups file.djvu tmp.ps
ps2pdf tmp.ps file.pdf)