Sony Reader vs. iRex Iliad e-book reader - Page 2

Charles Gray · 01-30-2006, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurens

I asked for a price indication and got a canned "wait until April 2006" response. My guess is 600 euros at least. Also note that the device is meant for the European market only, at least for the time being.

Which is kinda odd-- most businesses (and small busineses might very well be interested in this) plan their purchases ahead-- so the coy nature of their price info doesn't make me tremendously confident. I could see not nailing it down exactly, but a nearest hundred euro would be a very nice price range...unless they actually *haven't* ironed all the full production bugs out.

As for the expense, I think that might hurt them, especially for non-businessmarket. Granted, this is a business market item, but the home market will eventually be much, much, larger.
I just wish I trusted Sony more on the DRM end of things-- the fact that they're being coy about the need to convert PDF's bugs me. If it's some software that basically takes your PDF in and give you a txt. only file out, forget it. I really, really wish they'd have learned their lesson with the first forey into ebooks.

NatCh · 01-30-2006, 01:58 PM

I just called iRex's U.S. Product Support line and asked for a price estimate. Today they were quite willing to give me very clear 650 euros (~785 USD), with discounts for volume purchases, of course. Ouch. All that fancy networking capability, I expect.

On all these e-ink readers, I've been thinking not backlight, but front-lighting for night time reading. Like a Lightwedge approach. They could even build it directly into the unit by thickening the screen's front plastic and running LED light into it at the edges -- that should light it quite nicely, and be fairly easy on the battery power. Even if they won't build it in, the price of a separate Lightwedge starts getting more reasonable given a set page size for (most) all of my books.

Charles Gray · 01-30-2006, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

I just called iRex's U.S. Product Support line and asked for a price estimate. Today they were quite willing to give me very clear 650 euros (~785 USD), with discounts for volume purchases, of course. Ouch. All that fancy networking capability, I expect.

Or they may not want to get into the retail end of things-- the "discounts for volume purchases" might be a sign that we'll see cheaper Illiads in general retail stores, when those chains purchase a lot of units from irex. I don't know if that's what they're going to do, but generally, if you want to get retail penetration, you don't want to make your direct sales too attractive-- no chain store will pick up a unit if they think you'll just directly undersell them.

Alexander Turcic · 01-30-2006, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurens

I asked for a price indication and got a canned "wait until April 2006" response. My guess is 600 euros at least. Also note that the device is meant for the European market only, at least for the time being.

At least you got a response. I contacted them a few weeks ago and never heard back ;(

NatCh · 01-30-2006, 02:26 PM

I didn't really expect to get so clear an aswer, actually. I was hoping for an "in the such and such range." Perhaps they just decided to admit to a price recently. I figured the worst they could do was tell me they couldn't tell me anything, so....

I share Charles' hope that retailers will pick the thing up. I can't imagine why they wouldn't, they carried those ghastly iRocket things about ten years back.

The piece they all seem to be missing is that in order to get the average consumer to use such as this (as opposed to just us technophiles) they're going to have to figure out how to get the prices down to something the average consumer will pay. iRex seems to be planning to allow their content providers to foot some of the bill for the end user, perhaps Sony will do something similar, such as offer a few free books from their service to get us started.

I can't help wondering just how fast a processor an electronic reader really needs to have. Could they not do the job with, say, a nice, cheap 286 chip? Do they really have to be heavier hitters than my desktop PC? Maybe they'll have an "econo" line in a year or two, once we early-adoptors have defrayed some of their dev costs.

Charles Gray · 01-30-2006, 02:42 PM

Well, to be fair, a lot of the features of the Iliad seem to be aimed (as they said) at the industrial and busines smarket. For example, a big repair shop where you can shoot PDF files and such to the mechanics. The long lasting e-ink means you can just grab your illiad off the desk in teh morning, without having to worry about it dying midway through the day.
So, if you *use* those features, it's probably a much better buy. Now, for someone like me, who really just wants it for a ton of books I have on my computer, the questoins are different. I don't need the wireless features, and the "write on the file" while nice, are also not needed.
My biggest question is simple:
What sort of DRM, and.... What does the conversion process do to my pdf's? In fact, if anyone here has had a chance to play with it, at a show, any information on that would be very welcomed.

Charles Gray · 01-30-2006, 03:07 PM

Good news-- according to adobe, the sony reader DOES support full PDF:
http://blogs.adobe.com/billmccoy/200...eader_and.html

Laurens · 01-30-2006, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

The piece they all seem to be missing is that in order to get the average consumer to use such as this (as opposed to just us technophiles) they're going to have to figure out how to get the prices down to something the average consumer will pay. iRex seems to be planning to allow their content providers to foot some of the bill for the end user, perhaps Sony will do something similar, such as offer a few free books from their service to get us started.

Good thoughts. Following through with this, I'm thinking of subsidized, subscription-based pricing models, similiar to those used for selling mobile phones cheaply. For instance, if you purchase, say, a 2-year electronic subscription to The Times, you get the reader for half the price.

Alexander Turcic · 01-30-2006, 03:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurens

Good thoughts. Following through with this, I'm thinking of subsidized, subscription-based pricing models, similiar to those used for selling mobile phones cheaply. For instance, if you purchase, say, a 2-year electronic subscription to The Times, you get the reader for half the price.

I remember reading somewhere that this is exactly what iRex has planned for the Iliad reader. They want to work hand in hand with a couple of mainstream newspaper agencies and offer the reader in conjunction with a e-paper subscription. I don't know if you actually *own* the device or just borrow it for the duration of the subscription, and also if you actually have to pay a one-time introduction fee.

Brian · 01-30-2006, 03:54 PM

That's exactly what I think will happen. Something along the lines of how Audible.com offers $100 off "Audible Ready" devices like Treos and iPods with a subscription commitment.

If they could knock 50% off the price with a daily subscription to a major newspaper, a monthly subscription to a popular tech magazine, and give me 2 e-book credits per month, all for $20-$30 per month, I'd buy one.

The more content you consume per month, and the longer your subscription commitment, the lower the initial price for the hardware.

arivero · 02-01-2006, 07:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

I can't help wondering just how fast a processor an electronic reader really needs to have. Could they not do the job with, say, a nice, cheap 286 chip? Do they really have to be heavier hitters than my desktop PC? Maybe they'll have an "econo" line in a year or two, once we early-adoptors have defrayed some of their dev costs.

You need fast decompression of pages, and you need font building on the fly. But this kind of gadgets run roughly as fast as a cheap pentium 100 or so, it is not a heavy hitter anymore.

NatCh · 02-01-2006, 10:54 AM

Okay, I can see that, I was thinking in terms of pre-loading the "next" page into RAM, so that it can just be flipped to the screen. There would be a longer delay if I wanted to jump to somewhere totallay different in the book, but for the next or previous page, the loading would take place in the background.

But I guess you'd just be trading more sophisticated software to reduce the hardware requirements. I don't know that that would necessarily be an improvement.

Lorphos · 02-07-2006, 03:29 AM

Personally I think when reading on a device that glows in the dark there will always be issues with eyestrain.

Charles Gray · 02-07-2006, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorphos

Personally I think when reading on a device that glows in the dark there will always be issues with eyestrain.

Well, E-ink doesn't produce any light of it's own, so even if some light source was built into a reader, it would be more like reading a paperback book with one of those book illuminators you can pick up for travel purposes.

That is, IMHO, the biggest advantage of Eink, that it can be read in daylight or indoor light, without causing eyestrain like illuminated displays will.

Snappy! · 02-10-2006, 09:00 AM

Maybe they can use Frontlight for eink displays instead of backlighting? Reflective LCDs uses Frontlighting, eg Sharp Zaurus SL5500 PDA. einks are "reflective" in nature, so a frontlight should be good, and probably better than the traditional Reflective LCDs in look-and-feel.

The European · 02-17-2006, 02:24 PM

Why is their beiing mentioned a price of 600$ here? Its 400€.

http://www.pocketinfo.nl/artikel/5224

NatCh · 02-17-2006, 06:52 PM

I'm afraid I don't read Dutch, so I'm having to rely on AltVista's Babelfish for a translation of the article.

iRex's customer support folks in California told me 650 Euros (776.13 USD) on Jan. 30th -- maybe they've come down already? That'd be nice. 400 Euros (477.62 USD) is much more attractive, but still kinda steep.

It might also be that the lower price is with some sort of discount for a content subscription contract.

Alexander Turcic · 02-18-2006, 06:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The European

Why is their beiing mentioned a price of 600$ here? Its 400€.

http://www.pocketinfo.nl/artikel/5224

Colin covered that earlier:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5916

Best,
Alex

Laurens · 02-28-2006, 05:02 AM

They removed the price tag earlier, but the Sony Reader will, indeed, cost $349. (Via Engadget.)

CommanderROR · 03-06-2006, 06:14 PM

Hi everybody!

I've been looking for a "book-alternative" for quite some time now since i read a lot and am in danger of getting buried under books in my apartment...^^

So far there has been little of actual use for me. Backlighted displays were not really my favourite...readability was fine as long as the room was not too dark (with little surrounding light it became very eye-straining)...but the battery life of most PDAs is not really great.

Now there seems to be a solution...finally..although I have not seen an eink display in action yet it sounds like they are quite good if you belive the various reviewers...although the pictures of the various devices often look a bit "black und grey" instead of black and white...

Now here comes my problem/question:

The Sony Reader is only on for a US release so far (and I'm in Germany...) and "It's a Sony"...which from past experience (MD-Player for instance) is a possibly bad sign. The iRex Iliad looks cool (although it is a bit heavy at almost 400g) and offers a lot of features (some of which I don't really need) but should be available in Germany a lot sooner than the Sony...or maybe not...they state something like "available to business partners in april" on their website...

Now...I'm worried that the Sony won't be available in Germany anytime soon, that it won't read -txt, .doc and similar formats, and that it might have some very crappy "Connect" software like the MD-Player/Recorder I used to use before I bought my Iriver H340...

The Iliad "should" be available in spring, should read the formats I like, but probably won't work with the Sony connect store, so Content could be seriously limited. I really like the iTunes system. (I'm a music student and sometimes need to listen to a piece of music or find out how long a certain movement is or stuff like that, and iTunes REALLY helps there...and the prices are ok as well. I don't like the way it interacts ith iPods...deleting stuff from the Pod and such...but luckily I need not worry about that as i don't use an iPod...^^)

My main concern with the Irex Iliad is the battery-life.
The Sony can "read" several thousand Pages on one battery. That is really what I want, because it makes the Reader "book-worthy" and truly mobile.
The Irex battery-time is given at about 21 hours if you take the "about a week with 3 hours of reading a day" information from the website.
This means that I can't even read one book on the Iliad without recharging....

Please give me some comments on the issues I posted above.
I'm very sorry for making my first post so long...I've been reading a lot in the past and somehow needed a long time to express my ideas...i'll try to do better from now on...we all know how bad reading from an LCD is for the eyes...

01-30-2006, 01:58 PM	#22
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	iLiad Price I just called iRex's U.S. Product Support line and asked for a price estimate. Today they were quite willing to give me very clear 650 euros (~785 USD), with discounts for volume purchases, of course. Ouch. All that fancy networking capability, I expect. On all these e-ink readers, I've been thinking not backlight, but front-lighting for night time reading. Like a Lightwedge approach. They could even build it directly into the unit by thickening the screen's front plastic and running LED light into it at the edges -- that should light it quite nicely, and be fairly easy on the battery power. Even if they won't build it in, the price of a separate Lightwedge starts getting more reasonable given a set page size for (most) all of my books. Last edited by NatCh; 01-30-2006 at 02:03 PM.

02-01-2006, 10:54 AM	#32
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	Processor Speed Okay, I can see that, I was thinking in terms of pre-loading the "next" page into RAM, so that it can just be flipped to the screen. There would be a longer delay if I wanted to jump to somewhere totallay different in the book, but for the next or previous page, the loading would take place in the background. But I guess you'd just be trading more sophisticated software to reduce the hardware requirements. I don't know that that would necessarily be an improvement.

02-17-2006, 02:24 PM	#36
The European Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2006 Device: iRex Ebook Reader	Only 400€ Why is their beiing mentioned a price of 600$ here? Its 400€. http://www.pocketinfo.nl/artikel/5224

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01-30-2006, 02:26 PM	#25
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	I didn't really expect to get so clear an aswer, actually. I was hoping for an "in the such and such range." Perhaps they just decided to admit to a price recently. I figured the worst they could do was tell me they couldn't tell me anything, so.... I share Charles' hope that retailers will pick the thing up. I can't imagine why they wouldn't, they carried those ghastly iRocket things about ten years back. The piece they all seem to be missing is that in order to get the average consumer to use such as this (as opposed to just us technophiles) they're going to have to figure out how to get the prices down to something the average consumer will pay. iRex seems to be planning to allow their content providers to foot some of the bill for the end user, perhaps Sony will do something similar, such as offer a few free books from their service to get us started. I can't help wondering just how fast a processor an electronic reader really needs to have. Could they not do the job with, say, a nice, cheap 286 chip? Do they really have to be heavier hitters than my desktop PC? Maybe they'll have an "econo" line in a year or two, once we early-adoptors have defrayed some of their dev costs.

01-30-2006, 02:42 PM	#26
Charles Gray Member Posts: 10 Karma: 30 Join Date: Jan 2006	Well, to be fair, a lot of the features of the Iliad seem to be aimed (as they said) at the industrial and busines smarket. For example, a big repair shop where you can shoot PDF files and such to the mechanics. The long lasting e-ink means you can just grab your illiad off the desk in teh morning, without having to worry about it dying midway through the day. So, if you use those features, it's probably a much better buy. Now, for someone like me, who really just wants it for a ton of books I have on my computer, the questoins are different. I don't need the wireless features, and the "write on the file" while nice, are also not needed. My biggest question is simple: What sort of DRM, and.... What does the conversion process do to my pdf's? In fact, if anyone here has had a chance to play with it, at a show, any information on that would be very welcomed.

01-30-2006, 03:07 PM	#27
Charles Gray Member Posts: 10 Karma: 30 Join Date: Jan 2006	Good news-- according to adobe, the sony reader DOES support full PDF: http://blogs.adobe.com/billmccoy/200...eader_and.html

01-30-2006, 03:54 PM	#30
Brian MobileRead Editor Posts: 447 Karma: 84 Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Massachusetts Device: Treo 700p, Zodiac2	That's exactly what I think will happen. Something along the lines of how Audible.com offers $100 off "Audible Ready" devices like Treos and iPods with a subscription commitment. If they could knock 50% off the price with a daily subscription to a major newspaper, a monthly subscription to a popular tech magazine, and give me 2 e-book credits per month, all for $20-$30 per month, I'd buy one. The more content you consume per month, and the longer your subscription commitment, the lower the initial price for the hardware.

02-07-2006, 03:29 AM	#33
Lorphos Librie lab rat Posts: 32 Karma: 2760 Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Dortmund, Germany Device: Tolino Vision 4 HD	Personally I think when reading on a device that glows in the dark there will always be issues with eyestrain.

02-10-2006, 09:00 AM	#35
Snappy! Addict Posts: 260 Karma: 4256 Join Date: Feb 2006 Device: SHARP Zaurus C1000	Maybe they can use Frontlight for eink displays instead of backlighting? Reflective LCDs uses Frontlighting, eg Sharp Zaurus SL5500 PDA. einks are "reflective" in nature, so a frontlight should be good, and probably better than the traditional Reflective LCDs in look-and-feel.

02-17-2006, 06:52 PM	#37
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	I'm afraid I don't read Dutch, so I'm having to rely on AltVista's Babelfish for a translation of the article. iRex's customer support folks in California told me 650 Euros (776.13 USD) on Jan. 30th -- maybe they've come down already? That'd be nice. 400 Euros (477.62 USD) is much more attractive, but still kinda steep. It might also be that the lower price is with some sort of discount for a content subscription contract.

02-28-2006, 05:02 AM	#39
Laurens Jah Blessed Posts: 1,295 Karma: 1373 Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: The Netherlands Device: iPod Touch	They removed the price tag earlier, but the Sony Reader will, indeed, cost $349. (Via Engadget.)

03-06-2006, 06:14 PM	#40
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	Hi everybody! I've been looking for a "book-alternative" for quite some time now since i read a lot and am in danger of getting buried under books in my apartment...^^ So far there has been little of actual use for me. Backlighted displays were not really my favourite...readability was fine as long as the room was not too dark (with little surrounding light it became very eye-straining)...but the battery life of most PDAs is not really great. Now there seems to be a solution...finally..although I have not seen an eink display in action yet it sounds like they are quite good if you belive the various reviewers...although the pictures of the various devices often look a bit "black und grey" instead of black and white... Now here comes my problem/question: The Sony Reader is only on for a US release so far (and I'm in Germany...) and "It's a Sony"...which from past experience (MD-Player for instance) is a possibly bad sign. The iRex Iliad looks cool (although it is a bit heavy at almost 400g) and offers a lot of features (some of which I don't really need) but should be available in Germany a lot sooner than the Sony...or maybe not...they state something like "available to business partners in april" on their website... Now...I'm worried that the Sony won't be available in Germany anytime soon, that it won't read -txt, .doc and similar formats, and that it might have some very crappy "Connect" software like the MD-Player/Recorder I used to use before I bought my Iriver H340... The Iliad "should" be available in spring, should read the formats I like, but probably won't work with the Sony connect store, so Content could be seriously limited. I really like the iTunes system. (I'm a music student and sometimes need to listen to a piece of music or find out how long a certain movement is or stuff like that, and iTunes REALLY helps there...and the prices are ok as well. I don't like the way it interacts ith iPods...deleting stuff from the Pod and such...but luckily I need not worry about that as i don't use an iPod...^^) My main concern with the Irex Iliad is the battery-life. The Sony can "read" several thousand Pages on one battery. That is really what I want, because it makes the Reader "book-worthy" and truly mobile. The Irex battery-time is given at about 21 hours if you take the "about a week with 3 hours of reading a day" information from the website. This means that I can't even read one book on the Iliad without recharging.... Please give me some comments on the issues I posted above. I'm very sorry for making my first post so long...I've been reading a lot in the past and somehow needed a long time to express my ideas...i'll try to do better from now on...we all know how bad reading from an LCD is for the eyes...

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