Why i think the Illiad will fail (or has already).

[VillageReader]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter at this point what any of us thinks about DRM. I tried to propose non-DRM PDF as a distribution method to my publisher (for a non-fiction book on language learning games -- formatting matters, so PDF is appropriate for this book). They declined. As things stand, there will be only a printed version of the book, which schools will probably only buy one of and then photocopy, or, worse (from my point of view), keep in some central area so teachers won't be able to access it easily. But the publisher has the marketing engine and presence, and I don't. I'm not in a good position to do without a publisher, if I want this book to be distributed widely enough to do any good.

The mainstream publishers are the ones who need convincing, both to publish eBooks at all and to forego DRM. The question is, what's the best way to do that? iLiad users represent a very small market at this point, so saying none of us are going to buy DRM isn't likely to impress anyone-- certainly not enough to decide to unlock titles that are already available, but DRM'd. Those who think DRM is a fine idea can continue to work to try to get DRM support on their device of choice, and get more ebooks published, albeit in DRM format. For those of us who think DRM is bad for both readers and authors, what's the best approach? We might find that we have common cause with the DRM folks, in the short term-- or we might not. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to discuss strategies for getting from here to a DRM-free, ebook-rich world. Arguing amongst ourselves here isn't likely to change anything. I don't, personally, think a boycott of DRM books is going to change anything, either-- if it is noticed at all, it may just make the market for ebooks look smaller. What are our other options?

Here's an idea for the brave. A cracker breaks DRM and sells the book at the same price as the DRM'd book. Then pays the standard royalty/fee to the publisher. (Better yet, someone convinces a publisher to get daring and try the author in both DRM and nonDRM formats on subsequent works to see which sells better and if DRM really 'protects' them from anything other than extra revenue).

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by jæd

But does it matter if either the Iliad or the Reader "fail"...? And what do we mean by fail. Dunno about others, but at least now we have choice. This time last year there were no e-ink readers around. At least the consumer has "won" in that regard.

And are Irex interested in "winning"...? From the beginning they've said this is a b2b product... I think they still see the consumer market as an extended beta-test. And I think that is working... So far we've seen some important data points come out, eg, the importance of zoom/pan for pdf, and fast booting times.

Perhaps when Phillips bring out a consumer e-reader it will use this research...?

I'd only be really concerned if I had purchased DRM'd books for the reader I've got. Because then the value of the books I had bought would depend on having a compatible reader...!

The prime reason for the existence of a company is to make money. Does anyone think Irex is? Sony on the other hand proves that they're in the book selling market.

[VillageReader]

The latest quarterly report, http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/fina.../06q2_sony.pdf, shows that Sony made less than 0.1%. So selling (which they did a lot of) doesn't equal profit. My guess, and only a guess, is that at the price iRex is making an operating profit, but has losses during development that aren't paid for yet.

[NatCh]

Yeah, they ate a lot of costs cleaning up that battery mess.

[mike b]

The real reason the iliad will die will be the OLPC. Nice engineering particularly as regards power management and displays.

http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastruc...10902326NWHWEV

If not the OLPC itself, I'm sure some clever duck will take the ideas and apply them to a useful product.

My company has an iliad on order (I'll be stuck with it) but looks like it isn't going to impress a soul given what I've been reading here. In fact, I'm trying to get the order cancelled but the only thing slower than Irex is the reaction time of our procurement people.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by mike b

The real reason the iliad will die will be the OLPC. Nice engineering particularly as regards power management and displays.

And how readable is the display in bright sunshine...?

Originally Posted by mike b

My company has an iliad on order (I'll be stuck with it) but looks like it isn't going to impress a soul given what I've been reading here. In fact, I'm trying to get the order cancelled but the only thing slower than Irex is the reaction time of our procurement people.

Well... Its always best to base your impressions on a real device, rather than writings on a web board... If I were you I'd stick with it and actually see for yourself...

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by mike b

My company has an iliad on order (I'll be stuck with it) but looks like it isn't going to impress a soul given what I've been reading here. In fact, I'm trying to get the order cancelled but the only thing slower than Irex is the reaction time of our procurement people.

I think you should wait and see how you like it. I happen to disagree with almost everyone on the board, as to the state of the iLiad. I received mine about a month ago, and short of a few "would be nice to have" features, I don't have a single complaint. The battery lasts an entire day for me at work (I turn it off when I go to lunch), and I can still use it at home. I have no problems reading almost any PDF thanks to zoom and continuous page mode. I didn't expect to be able to get on the internet very well, or have DRM/retail store support. The speed of the device is fast enough that it doesn't get in my way.

I love this device! If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat. I can finally go about my day without printing off useless papers, or carrying around a notepad. I guess it all comes down to what your expectations are coming in. Mine were certainly lower than what I got, so I was not disappointed.

[emkay]

I'm pretty surprised at the level of negative opinion here too.
I use my iLiad a *lot* every day. It has improved considerably via the updates over the four months (not a long time really) I've had it. It's not perfect, but it's great for what it is designed to do - reading books and documents. I'm looking forward to more improvements.

People have different priorities. DRM protected books isn't one of mine. But if it doesn't have a feature you want, that doesn't make it a bad or failed device.

I don't see any other product on the market that can give me what I want in an e-reader - decent sized e-ink screen - annotation - and wifi connectivity.

And once iRex pull their fingers out and give us the SDK things will get even more interesting.

[b_k]

The problem about DRM is that iRex initially had it in their specs. I know it was there at the time I bought the iLiad. However, like you can see from my various posts, I have no interest in DRM. But other people have, since there are no legal sources to get DRM-free popular/mass-market ebooks. And those people don't see the "dark net" as an alternative.

Wifi connectivity on the iLiad is so far pointless. If you don't have the ability to execute .sh files, you can only use it to update the iLiad. I wouldn't call that "Wifi connectivity".

However, iRex seems to be a lot more responsive to the community than Sony.

[pdam]

A lot of the disapointment stems from the marketing hype - the things that the device will be able to do rather than can do have frustrated a lot of users on this board.

I agree that the device is a great piece of hardware engineering and it works really well for reading some documents ... although I like mine, I wouldn't use my own money to buy one at the current price and with the current level of support, those who would I fear are in the minority.

I agree with emkay that not having a specific features doesn't make a device a bad device ... but not selling products, for whatever reason, does make a company a failing company ...

[RWood]

In the early days of the microcomputer the hardware was way ahead of the software, some say that is still the case and I agree. New units and platforms came out every month and software developers jumped from one to another patching their code for the flavor of the month. With all of the new eink devices showing up on the market and those planned/announced/leaked it looks like the same situation again.

To sell to a wider market you need available content that the people want. Picking up from the prior example, the IBM PC did not catch fire and set sales records until Lotus 1-2-3 became the "must have" application. Later, MP3 players did not take off until Apple opened their iTunes store for the iPod. The same will be true here. Without a depth of offerings for the unit -- new and existing books still in copyright -- it will not sell in enough volume to establsh an on-going market for itself. In the eink area only Sony has done this that I know of. Amazon can once they get their unit to market. Those are the two I would bet on to survive at the moment.

The Illiad? An interesting piece of engineering from the early days of eink.

[nekokami]

It may be so-so as an eBook reader, but I still think it would make a great info pad if iRex could get the price down far enough. I'd have bought one already if they were about US$300-350. DRM books are not my main concern, but I can't justify spending nearly US$800 for a document reader, even though I really need one.

[mike b]

[QUOTE=jæd]And how readable is the [OLPC] display in bright sunshine...?

From the article:

Keeping the 377-Mhz AMD processor processor from having to sip from the battery was a key concern. When used as an eReader, a separate frame buffer keeps the LCD updated, rather than having the processor do the job. This drastically reduced the power needed to keep a page displayed while a child reads. In general, the XO uses what Bletsas calls "Extreme Suspend," going to sleep after two seconds of inactivity, but waking up within 300 milliseconds of an action.

The innovative display design serves two purposes. By overlaying a lower resolution (1024x768) color screen over a very high resolution (200 DPI, 1200x900) black and white one, then can get what to the eye appears to be a much higher color resolution. The color display is transmissive and requires a 1-watt backlight, which is provided by power-efficient LEDs. The black and white display is reflective, and actually performs better the brighter the ambient light is. This makes it ideal for rural teaching settings, where classes may be held outdoors. Switching from color to black and white is simply a matter of turning off the backlight. The ultra-high resolution black and white display is meant to make the eReader highly useable for textbooks. Bletsas notes that although the display cost only about one-third what a typical laptop LCD costs, it will have a higher resolution that 95% of the laptops on the market.

Elegant.

[markiehill]

maybe i am doing this all wrong but the pan and zoom is really hard to use.

there are bugs which cause cutting off of text both in PDF's and HTML documents.

there is no search function within PDFS, i really need this if i want to use it for work.

format support is pretty bad, we need working and reliable rtf, txt, html & pdf support at the very least.

i need instant resume something i came to expect with the librie.

Dont get me wrong i am learning to love it, but i want a device that does the above and if sony or amazon or even iriver get it all right in one useable device then irex will find themselves in trouble. So get the software right now , make a bug push and correct these and other issues that people have mentioned or get the community to help you.

None of the formats mentioned above are exotic or have to be written from scratch, searching within a PDF cannot be that hard !! And if suspend and resume will never work tell us.

Just my 2p again

Mark

[Riocaz]

[quote}there are bugs which cause cutting off of text both in PDF's and HTML documents.[/quote]

I don't use HTML, but I have not seen this with PDF. Can you give an example please?