First impressions of iLiad Book Edition (with screenshots)

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Originally Posted by DesiLinguist

I got my iRex iLiad Book Edition delivered today. And so far, I really like it! I am not going to bore you with a long-ish review because there have been much better ones posted in this forum and on the web in general. I will just show you some pics and share some first impressions in terms of the things I wanted my iLiad to do when I made the decision to purchase it:

(1) PDF support is fantastic. I am currently reading a novel that was not formatted for the iLiad but it's still very readable in landscape mode with continuous view.

(2) MobiPocket support is really nice as well. I am not a fan of the font they use but I know I can install new ones and I might do that in the next couple of weeks.

(3) Page turning speed is pretty fast. I was worried that it might be annoyingly long but it's easy to adapt to it as others have said.

(4) Reading comics was a disappointment. The uneven sized panels in most comics I have make it hard to read even in landscape mode. May be I can find a way to get properly formatted comics or something.

(5) The pen input is indeed a little slow but not slow enough to be a problem. I am not sure I will use this to actually take full on notes but it will be very useful when reading technical articles.

(6) Regarding technical articles, two column ones are indeed barely readable and I might try out the all-in-one iPDF viewer sometime later to see if that helps (it has a column mode, IIRC). However, single column articles are very readable (much more so in landscape mode). Of course, you can't really use landscape mode for multi-column articles.

(7) I ordered the M-Edge Genuine Leather Cover and it's really nice although I don't like reading with the cover on.

I think that about covers it. Overall, I am very impressed and feel vindicated in my choice. Of course, my impressions could change after I have used the device for a couple of weeks (if they do, I will post an update).

Oh, and you can see the screenshots here.

Please let me know if anyone has any questions. I would be happy to help.

Could you please expand more about this, please? I've been considering buying a bigger ereader, mainly because of comics and manga.

[DesiLinguist]

Well, I tried a bunch of comic files that I had available. For example, a Tintin comic (I am a big fan!) but the problem is that the pages, when fit to the screen, are very hard to read. If you try to read them in landscape mode (with zooming), sometimes half of a panel ends up a page turn away and it's pain to go back and forth. I think manga usually has smaller pages and could possibly work better. I tried with a copy of Maus and that was readable but not as perfect as reading text.

In general, I don't think I would probably ever use my iLiad for reading comics. Of course, there are people on these forums who have told me that they use their iLiad for reading manga and so it's probably doable.

Good luck with your decision!