iRex - Misleading Advertising

[nekokami]

I do have an iLiad. I'm happy with it, but I bought it used, at a discount, because I could see from the experiences of others that it wasn't worth the full price iRex was charging, at least not to me. (And this means that another customer absorbed that cost differential.)

Taking responsibility for one's own actions is mature, yes. But it applies to the management of iRex as well as to the buyers. Commitments were made, in writing. We now have notice, again in writing, that some of these commitments will not be kept. I personally feel that the battery replacement program is an excellent step in the right direction. If this remedy does not go far enough for some users, they may be entitled to a full refund in exchange for their units.

I don't want to see a witch-hunt take iRex down. I think the company still has a lot of potential, based on recent changes in attitude that they've shown. But they have only shown those changes in response to community pressure. This is how companies usually behave. Their job is to make money. Our job, as the user community, is to keep that pressure as steady as possible, without temper flare-ups and name-calling. We need to thank and support the folks at iRex when they do well, and let them know, openly and honestly, when they fall short of their commitments. White-washing iRex won't help any more than vilifying them.

There are different categories of users, each of whom ask different things of the iLiad. Some folks are very happy with their units, which I think is great. Others are not getting what they need. Rather than criticizing the needs or wants of others, let's focus on making that list of unmet needs as concrete as possible, so we can work constructively with iRex on either meeting those needs, or acknowledging the limits of the device so folks can move on to other solutions that will meet their needs.

And as we do this, we'll need to continue to encourage iRex to be more clear about the capabilities of the device in their marketing materials, which still cite capabilities the device doesn't yet support.

[CommanderROR]

Well, I'm afraid a full list of features we user want would go on for ever, but I think most of us would like to see one big thing:

BATTERY LIFE!!!

and that is something we won't get, not if the only change iRex is willing to make is a larger battery...

Things like more viewers, speed improvements for booting and UI, Wacom calibration, presure sensitivity, webbrowsing are minor things that can be fixed by communtiy developers if neccessary (unbricking utility would help though).

DRM support is another one of the biggies, but I guess until the Iliad version X offers some kind of powersaving that can make it comfortable to use (or has a booting time <5 seconds) most other improvements seem like an excersize in futility to me.

I remember quite clearly that I incredulously inquired about the strange "low battery life of 21 hours" for the Iliad which was clearly inferior to the 7000-8000 pageturns other eink devices announced at that time promised. The reply I got was that the Iliad would manage 10000 pageturns and that the 21 hours included some WiFi useage for getting content every day. Unfortunately I don't have the mails with the original text anymore...

As it stands right now, I would live going back to the Iliad, now with dicitonary support and FBReader, but as soon as I remember the hassle of having to boot and shutodwn the device for every reading session I decide to stay with my STAReBOOk that has ugly fonts and crappy formatting but at least let's me use it in a paperlike way.

[mill0r]

I am really tired of the negativity on this forum... first I wasn't gonna reply on this post but I guess one can only ignore something for so long.

I believe a forum should be a place where people can discuss and exchange idea's and opinions in a positive, constructive way and respect other people's opinion.

Each time somebody posts something positive or in defense of the iLiad in response to all the negativity (in this case JayK), they get hammered by many posts that keep repeating the same thing over and over again. I am tired of reading them.

As Jaed I think this will be my last post here...

Cya on the flipside

[CommanderROR]

@mill0r

I think you might be right. There has been a lot of negative posting about the Iliad and iRex here and the arguments are basically always the same, both on the positive and the negative side. You must see however, that there is a lot of positive and constructive work going on here as well, just check out the developers section.

The reason why many here (including me) are so mad and negative is because the Iliad has one very serious shortcoming and that is not being fixed (it's not even on the horizon) because it's a hardware design error. However, maybe we should take that fact as granted for now and try to look onwards.

[nekokami]

In my opinion, the three things to focus on are:

1 - Holding iRex to their commitment to the battery replacement program

2 - Getting iRex to finish developing and release the unbricking utility

3 - The Mobipocket deal. That doesn't matter to me personally, but it matters to many people, and is something that's unlikely to happen without iRex involvement.

Everything else, the OSS community can provide, including power management improvement. I bet we could even cobble together our own software distribution using apt-get or similar.

Anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with that scenario should probably ask for a refund and buy one of the other models, perhaps the upcoming NAEB reader. I'm generally an optimist by nature, but I think at this point what we see is what we're going to get. It's time to decide if you can live with it, or you want your money back.

Just my humble opinion, of course.

[jayk]

Originally Posted by nekokami

We need to thank and support the folks at iRex when they do well, and let them know, openly and honestly, when they fall short of their commitments. White-washing iRex won't help any more than vilifying them.

Personally, I don't think saying 'The ILiad doesn't suck, nor does IRex' quite qualifies as white-washing. There are people who have a beef with IRex - and rightly so. But IRex has offered to exchange the battery, and we know you can get your money back. So why are we still shouting about it?

I mean... Come on, this conversation amounts to: "This sucks, the battery life is too short" "That's fair, we'll give you a bigger battery, and keep trying to improve things for you." 'Yeah? Well you still suck."

I've been reading about the ILiad on this very forum since before it was released. I was actually originally after the Jinke V2. But after reading about what the ILiad could do, I decided to go ahead. I posted because I think that IRex and the ILiad get a bad rap here, and I wanted to lend some positive comments to it, because on the whole I believe the device is excellent, in spite of the shortcomings it does have.

If it had 4 hours runtime, I'd probably be bothered, but 10 hours solid is what I get when I leave it running... That's more than a full day's work for me - and if I turn it off when I know I'm putting it down for 20+ minutes, it lasts well over a week on a single charge... I've only had it discharge completely once, and I don't even keep the charger plugged in and available, it's in a drawer until I need it.

Originally Posted by nekokami

In my opinion, the three things to focus on are:

1 - Holding iRex to their commitment to the battery replacement program

2 - Getting iRex to finish developing and release the unbricking utility

I agree 100%. I'm glad that they are replacing the batteries, I think it's an important step towards proving they care about their customers and their word. But Quite frankly - #2 the more important one I think - here's why - I've done embedded programming before, I know that there is a lot more that is possible than you usually realize. With an unbricking ability, we can go to town with the kernel and really start tweaking things. Other folks have already proven just by tweaking things in user-mode you can extend the usage to 12-15 hours on the current battery. That means with the additional 30% battery life the updated battery is supposed to get, we are getting closer to 16-20 hours. If we can get into the kernel and do dynamic cpu scaling based on load, which is possible on desktop linux installs, we can make the CPU throttle down whenever it's idle, and throttle up as it needs to do things.

This means instant improvement across the board. We can also look into boosting boot time. I have had Linux desktop machines that boot in 16 seconds (including that 8 second or so bios screen / hard drive probing time) all the way into X. I can think of a ton of ways to speed up the boot time, and with a boot time of 15 seconds or so, people will not be so reticent to turn the thing off, which will improve the length of time you can use the device.

The point is - the device is solid. There are issues, and some folks are really pissed about them. That's understandable, and they have every right to be.

What I have an issue with is that they feel the best thing to do is complain about it repeatedly, and bash anyone who says they are happy with the device. I'm not being sarcastic when I say I'm sorry it is not meeting your expectations. I hate it when that happens to me.

Let's have some perspective here, though. If it really bothers you, return it and buy something else, or wait for the next model that suits you better. If you aren't willing to do part with your ILiad, then obviously the device has value to you, and you are doing everyone who owns an ILiad a disservice by constantly attacking the people who are here to help us and support us.

We all bought a device that we knew was a rev-A product and was not 'final'... We knew it would be improved upon as time went on. The most important 'Feature' of the ILiad for me, apart from my being able to 'print' things to read on it, is the fact that it is being improved and actively developed by both the company and third party developers.

I have issue with anyone who is threatening that. If someone continually attacks IRex, and anyone who is happy with the ILiad, they are threatening the future open development of the device and it's software. When people are attacked, it chips away at their desire to keep doing what they are doing. I don't want that to happen.

Again - I have no issue with legitimate complaints, and there are some, as I stated in my original post. However, we've covered it and then some. IRex has acknowledged the big issue, they have given straight information and initiated an upgrade program... They are continuing to work on improving battery life. They are working on the problem. If that's not good enough for you, then I suggest you take the option of getting your refund.

In any case, please, stop attacking the people who are here to assist. You are doing everyone a disservice and hurting the whole community.

JayK

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by jayk

In any case, please, stop attacking the people who are here to assist. You are doing everyone a disservice and hurting the whole community.

Excellent advice which applies equally in the other direction: personal attacks on someone with a different view aren't useful, whichever side of the debate either person happens to be on.

[jayk]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Excellent advice which applies equally in the other direction: personal attacks on someone with a different view aren't useful, whichever side of the debate either person happens to be on.

You are absolutely right. I apologize for implying immaturity in my second post.

I am very glad to see CommanderRoR's post at the top of the forum, and I hope we can get back to talking about how to get the most out of our device.

[Riocaz]

And I should take my own advise. Given the commander's posting earlier I have removed this and try to look onwards.

[NatCh]

Well said, both of you, good show.