When will the iRex webshop launch?

[Gameboy70]

Originally Posted by vranghel

The high price is justified by iLiad being beleeding edge technology.
Also R&D costs so they have to get some money so they can continue research and developing new improved products.
The price is quite high, as stated on their website the device is for businessmen primarily.
I just hope that the friendly neighbourhood hacker will develop new apps to offset the cost of the device a bit.

Prohibitive pricing will not recover iRex's R&D costs. Landfills the world over are strewn with artifacts of good ideas intended for sale to that holy grail of conspicuous consumption, the affluent businessman. But even businessmen with deep pockets are a conservative lot. They'll spare no expense when it comes to established goods -- laptops, watches, cars -- but require more persuasion to buy new products than would teenagers (e.g. iPods, PSPs, Sidekicks), a demographic with, counterintuitively, more discretionary income than the former.

If iRex intends these devices for the vertical market, that space it too crowded with specialized handheld devices where E Ink adds little value. Would warehouse managers really care what kind of displays their employees have? This is one market where I can imagine Origami actually making serious inroads, since it would leverage the vast pool of extant Windows business software. I'm convinced that for E Ink readers to succeed, their initial appeal must be personal, not professional, particularly since justifying their purchase to corporate as a business expense would be an uphill battle.

iRex made a smart move by concentrating on supporting open file formats like XHTML natively. They probabably had no choice, given Sony's intent to license thousands of mainstream titles for distribution through an iTMS-style nexus. It also relieves them of having to license a DRM solution or develop one in-house. But I think they made a serious mistake by adding wireless ethernet, which only makes the device unattractively expensive. There's no way I'm going to pay an extra $300 over what Hanlin and Sony are offering just to avoid an occasional USB connection.

[Snappy!]

Two more days and April is effectively over, unless they intend to release it on a weekend!

[ElaHuguet]

I think maybe they've realized that THEY might have a B2B focus, but not the rest of the world, hehe... having allowed people to sign up for the shop's opening, they might have realized that they can't handle just now the volume of people that seem to be ready to buy an iLiad.

[CommanderROR]

well...that's what I think too.

I called iRex a few weeks ago, and although the lady i talked to couldn't answer my question (she wasn't one of the technicals) she did give me one piece of interesting information...

iRex is being swarmed with hundreds of emails daily, and somehow I can't imagine all those being b2b related...
The fact that they don't answer emails (with the exception of emails coming through one of their partners, something I found out after contacting them through Jörg Wrobel) could of course have frightened away sme people, but I think even with the high price, there will be many buyers right at the beginning.

@Alexander
About that hint with the girlfirend...you're right of course and I know that...so I moved my big computer "rehousing" to the week when she is in Paris...THIS WEEK...^^
So no trouble there...fitting my stuff into the server cube I bought was more of a problem..I'm still not quite done...

[yokos]

Originally Posted by Snappy!

Two more days and April is effectively over, unless they intend to release it on a weekend!

Yepp, same thought. imho Irex will miss the open-shop-in-april-deadline.

It's still curious: months old "news", no events are listed @ irextechnologies. Hey, there PR could be much better! They just could write "it's worth to wait." or something.

[Snappy!]

Or they could

1) Setup a mailing list for potential buyers and send them unique urls for buying in the first week of launch
2) Allow pre-order to start so that there is no sudden overload on launch day.

I think *if* the delay is because they are afraid demand will crash their b2b servers, they can use #1 to process the orders in batches. Say they get 10,000 unique emails registered. They can send out 1000 emails on day one. Another 1000 on day two. etc. That way, its controlled. And if say on day three, they find the load too heavy (1000 buyers for a day should be manageable right?) They can also further stagger the emails.

There are many ways to skin the cat. Just don't delay dinner!

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Snappy!

My attempt at translating the chinese text

Thanks, Snappy, I gave up entirely on the BabelFish xlation halfway through the first answer.

[CommanderROR]

Snappy...I think the guys at iRex won't be able to handle even 100 orders a day.
My feeling is that they are mainy tech-geeks and not marketing/sales people...but I could be wrong...and I hope I am.

Tomorrow is the day of the artec exhibition...let's see what happens.

[Snappy!]

Originally Posted by yokos

Yepp, same thought. imho Irex will miss the open-shop-in-april-deadline.

It's still curious: months old "news", no events are listed @ irextechnologies. Hey, there PR could be much better! They just could write "it's worth to wait." or something.

Or maybe they are not able to produce enough units, so their PR groups are told to cool off for a while ...

[Snappy!]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Thanks, Snappy, I gave up entirely on the BabelFish xlation halfway through the first answer.

You are welcome! It's a bit tricky sometimes and yeah the Babel xlation is really babbling ... ... but for a machine, it did pretty well ...

Anyone want the other parts translated?

[Snappy!]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

Snappy...I think the guys at iRex won't be able to handle even 100 orders a day.
My feeling is that they are mainy tech-geeks and not marketing/sales people...but I could be wrong...and I hope I am.

Tomorrow is the day of the artec exhibition...let's see what happens.

I guess that's why Michael Dell is raking in the dollars simply because he manage to make sense of the suuply chain process for building PCs.

Granted, we have to cut the iRex folks some slack, since its not like every hardware company out there have a end-user online order system. But since the iLiad did not land on their lap last week but was developed for ... years (?) back, surely they would or should have the foresight to rig up a team to handle these transactions. ... unless they did not intended it at the first place!

That would solve the mystery. They are a spin off from Philips R&D, so they would not have such a web team to start with. And when the product materialise, they probably expected retailers and verticals to buy from them and not handle direct transactions from customers. So in that way, they were caught off guard. Their saving grace however, is that they seem like they are trying to change their gears to cater for the consumer direct-buy schema. Hopefully they will finish up the song on a good note and not do a CLIO*.

------
* What is to do a CLIO? To do a CLIO is to preannounce the release of a CLIO NXT product back in Q4 '04 that it will launch in Feb '05, and start taking pre-orders, only to delay it to April '05 and then totally refuse to reply to subsequent emails and disappear from the IT scene, and finally announce in Q2 '06 that they are beginning a trial run with a school!

[Dale Jones]

Hi, a "Clio" There was a very good reason the Clio did not come out on time, and a reason for the year delay. I am due to hear from the CEO of Data Evolution soon and will update you on the product's progress at that time.

Originally Posted by Snappy!

I guess that's why Michael Dell is raking in the dollars simply because he manage to make sense of the suuply chain process for building PCs.

Granted, we have to cut the iRex folks some slack, since its not like every hardware company out there have a end-user online order system. But since the iLiad did not land on their lap last week but was developed for ... years (?) back, surely they would or should have the foresight to rig up a team to handle these transactions. ... unless they did not intended it at the first place!

That would solve the mystery. They are a spin off from Philips R&D, so they would not have such a web team to start with. And when the product materialise, they probably expected retailers and verticals to buy from them and not handle direct transactions from customers. So in that way, they were caught off guard. Their saving grace however, is that they seem like they are trying to change their gears to cater for the consumer direct-buy schema. Hopefully they will finish up the song on a good note and not do a CLIO*.

------
* What is to do a CLIO? To do a CLIO is to preannounce the release of a CLIO NXT product back in Q4 '04 that it will launch in Feb '05, and start taking pre-orders, only to delay it to April '05 and then totally refuse to reply to subsequent emails and disappear from the IT scene, and finally announce in Q2 '06 that they are beginning a trial run with a school!

[Riocaz]

I have to say I do love my Clio (1050, Vadem branded), even if I use the Zaurus more. the batterylife isn't too bad. and the handwriting recognition is great.

Very good for notetaking.

And when snobby businessmen, all but push you off the table's on intercity trains, getting a Clio out does make then go green (or did prior to tablets becoming relatively commonplace).

Though this discussion really doesn't belong here.

[ThinkNeXT]

Just on a side-note - did anybody notice the "This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 06 December, 2005." line below the product page for the Iliad in the Irex-shop? Wonder what the technical difficulties were then?
(just trying to post something to keep me from checking my order status every other second...)

[Riocaz]

Go play in the arcade some: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/arcade.php

I need a challenge. :-)