iLiad article in German magazine C't

[markiehill]

Well said tribble, i think perhaps from other posts yesterday irex are starting to learn what a benefit the so called "arrogant" people on this community can bring to their device. Everybody wants the iliad to reach its potential hence the annoyance when they refuse to engage or listen, lets hope we have turned a corner somewhere.

[cdie]

yeah, right, are you now trying to tell me that the starebook has the same functionality as the iLiad ?? Right, the screens are the same (oops, they're not, 6" vs. 8"), ok, but the functionality is the same (starebook can read pdf's, oops, it cannot but rather unformatted text instead), well, but the screens have the same resolution (oops again, it's only 800x600 for the starebook vs. 1024x768 for the iliad, not to mention the grayscales 16:4), so ... hmmm. Heee, but one thing the starebook can do better than the iLiad, it's only 8mm thick compared to 16mm, yes, that makes it a winner now.

I'm really sorry pals, but only sony is real competition here (although the screen sucks, and so does the pdf reader), while the starebook is just a joke (no pdf's, rather obscure ebook sources, and even more obscure marketing methods ["Defeat Sony, the world No. 1 ebook emerged"] ). The Starebook (and this is not arrogancy but just collecting facts) may have potential, too, but only with future functionality that is already present on the iLiad today.

If Suspense and the (in your impression) eternal 40 second boottime is a roadblock for you, well, that's ok, simply don't use iliad then. Be happy with a starebook and it's fantastic screen size to display content (maybe we should consider renaming it to starenotepad then because you perfectly can read content that has the size of notepads, but books ...)

You can call all the above arrogant, but I'm so fed up with this groaning and moaning going on here about a device that _IS_ good, and just because the choir of some people repeating the same BS over and over again, I will not. The iLiad is NOT: just a smaller laptop, a DRM content machine, coffee making machine, internet browser, open-source project. Its purpose is to display e-content, and it does that very well (at least you don't have to convert all your documents into jpgs to read it [well, at least the people around me don't exactly store documents and manuals as jpg's]

Cheers

[tribble]

Well, you complained, that the two are not compareable. And they are, as you proved. It all depends on your needs.

On the other hand. If you think the iLiad is fine as it is, then you really dont have a clue about its real potential. Most people here are complaining, because they see a great device, which "could" do so much more. And i am not talking about PDA ord Notebook replacenemts here, but turn it into a real great academic tool. And for that it is missing bookmarks, a "go back" button in PDFs, better HTML navigation, full text seach, and i personally would like to see highlighting and commenting features in PDF.

So if you had read more carefully, you would have noticed those things. And while you can use the iLiad as a better reader, we just want more of it. And especially since it is capable of so much more. How do you conveniently "use" a 1000 page manual on the iLiad, if you cant search for text or jump to your bookmarks?

And by the way. It can be an internet browser and it is an open source project. And it is a great machine. And it is not just a device to display e-content. But hey, you can use it any way you like. Even as a coaster, but i want more.

[cdie]

Trust me, I can see the potential, but I also see what it can do today, and what other claim but cannot. I certainly do recognize design and functionality flaws, and I'm also not overly happy with boot time and the stupid travel hub to connect to it, or, as you mentioned it, the missing go-to, search or comment (notes not good enough ?) functionality within the pdf, but I'm also with both my feet on mother earth's ground to see what can be done and what can't, or what's just software and simply requires development and will come (and that's recognizing potential, otherwise I wouldn't have bought it).

So don't compare apples to peaches, on one hand everybody is excusing what starebook can't do today but how great this device is, on the other hand iliad just sucks because version 1.0 of the device can do a lot of things already, but does not satisfy everybody's needs (incl. web browsing). Just as a side note, if iliad would offer web browsing today, one would either complain about slow screen changes (and then those have not really understood the e-ink display technology yet and what is achievable today), or missing colors, right ?

All devices evolve over the time (look at an iPod and its first generation, what a crap device, and now it's just brilliant), and if you're looking for the tool that can do everything today, I'm afraid you have to wait for the next generation iliad and don't waste your time and money on today's device. Also, and I really hate to disappoint you, but the iLiad is not an open source project (although the OS is Linux) and you may be able to install open source software on it, but that's somewhat different; releasing an SDK does not automatically mean it's open source. All the moaning and groaning does not really help (and 90% here is moaning and groaning instead of constructive criticism or suggestions [although I have to admit your post shows at least traces of it what I'm missing here otherwise] )

If it would be sooooo easy to develop all this (as some people claim here), why is not already another company in the game and does all this ? Well, I guess it seems it's still not so easy then

[tribble]

OK, this means we basically agree on most points.

The difference is, that you are a patient person, and you are just waiting for the iLiads potential to come to life, while i am not that patient, and would like to see more of the iLiads potential already being used.

Let me put it this way. There is no device on the market, that can do things like the iLiad even closely. What i am complaining about, is the usability of the device is bugging me a lot. And most of the things that are bugging me, are things that seem like little things to change (we,, i dont have a clue, what really has to be done about it, since i know nothing about ARM programming ) Its just small things like:
- 6 items on a page is not enough, make it more.
- show longer filenames in two lines.
- show me my current pagenumber and total pagenumber in the contentlister
- let me jump to a page directly, by using the keyboard.
- give me callibration for my stylus
- give me an autoshutdown function, so i dont accidentally drain my battery.
- give me a back button in PDFs, especially, when reading 1000 page books, with links in them, and you cant jump back to your previous page, but you have to search it manually.

And thats just the simple stuff, which would greatly enhance the usability experience

More advanced things like:
- fulltext search
- annotations and highliting on pdf for standard information exchange with others (no, scribbles arent enough, because i cant use them elsewhere at the moment, but that will probably change when we get an appropriate merging tool)
- bookmarking support with shortterm bookmarks.
- citation export on publications with BibTex support
- suspend to CF
- categorization system
- make an automatic index for pages with scribbles on them

Well, i could go on and on. But i have to say: You are right, that this is whining on high standard and i wouldnt be whining, if i knew, there was no way, the iLiad could what i want it to do.

So in conclusion, we agree, that the iLiad is a great device with no real competition on the market in terms of functionality. We would not give it up for any of the other devices. If we only wanted to read books, we could save money and buy the sony Reader. But we want the bigger screen, the better resolution, the stylus, the WiFi and we want the iLiad to live up to its potential. Only i want it now and you can wait

BTW, i really love the flipbar, if it only wouldnt make a clicking noise ... OOPS ... darn ... sorry, i just cant stop whining Ill try to better myself.

[cdie]

I think we sing from the same hymn sheet !

[R2D2]

Bravo!