Unboxing iRex 800 and first impressions

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by MikeOnyx

...I'm also curious to get your opinion on why you think the iSlate will take over? Do you believe that the Brand alone will be much more important than the price and will make everyone pay that much more to have the device? What about the iSlate do you believe will give it the competitive edge that other eReaders will not?

Your question is addressed to "cmdahler". He's the one pointing out Apple as the 799 pound gorilla.

I myself don't expect Apple = iSlate taking over. They'll compete in a different market (netbooks) and only will have slight points of contact.

[MikeOnyx]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Your question is addressed to "cmdahler". He's the one pointing out Apple as the 799 pound gorilla.

I myself don't expect Apple = iSlate taking over. They'll compete in a different market (netbooks) and only will have slight points of contact.

Yes I do agree that the iSlate will more so compete in the netbooks type market.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Let's see, whether they really can make the $ 400. Would be kind of frustrating for Europeans. € 500 w/o 3G vs. $ 400 w 3G = about 40% price difference. From a European company! But price aside: Good choice!

Does the PressReader program work? It does on the DR1000S, so it should here.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Does the PressReader program work? It does on the DR1000S, so it should here.

It does. And it does extremely well: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=309
I've sent an email to iRex support before testing it. On iRex 1000S, there explicitly has been the PressReader application. On iRex 800, there's just a folder "news".
iRex did respond, it's basically the same and the PressReader application already is pre-installed on iRex 800.
If re-installed the PressReader application on PC and have purchased a single issue of a German newspaper for testing.
I really like it.
You get 1:1 the original newspaper layout.
Within the headlines of each article there's a tiny "+" as the direct link.
When tapping that "+", you get this article in reflow mode, perfectly done.
In this reflow mode you've got 2 icons on the top left of the page: Table of content and zoom. Both work like a charm.
Table of content is what you know from Kindle and other newspaper styles.
Zoom keeps the original intact, just makes it readable. You can pan around.

The application itself is phantastic. iRex 800 fits great, speedy and responsive.
But there's a huge problem (and now I remember that's the reason why I've never used it on iRex 1000S): I'd like to see my regional German newspaper(s). But all the major ones are missing. There are only "exoting" ones. No harm intended: But I don't want to see the newspaper from Nuremberg. I'd like to see Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg.

Meaning: Americans probably will find their newspaper, lots of choices (you can check on the PressReader website). For UK or Canada it may be okay as well. But for Germany (and for Hungary, as Professzore did point out), there's not enough respectively not the right content.
Still: Nicely done. Way better than Kindle's newspapers (to me, as I prefer the original newspaper layout over pure text. I find it way easier to find the articles of interest). Better than Sony's newspapers. And about the same prizes as far as I checked it out.

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Let's just check some details:
Boot time of iPhone is what? 50 seconds or something like that? Lots of members claimed, iRex iLiad wouldn't be acceptable because of lack of standby.
So users wouldn't leave their iSlate (or whatever it may be called) off, but in standby.
Battery duration of iPhone is what? To me, it seams like 3 hours. I can watch my battery getting drained.....
So we'd need 2 battery modes: Multimedia and reading. Doesn't seem to be that easy, else they'd have implemented something like that into iPhone already.

Battery life has always been a major concern for me for any of my devices. My G1 Android phone is now 1 inch thick due to the 2600mAh extended battery. It was so silly for me to pay $25/mo extra for unlimited data if I need to refrain from actually using it, fearing I won't have enough power to make it through the day or needing to reserve the power for silly things like making and receiving calls.

If an apple tablet appears, I bet the battery will not be user-replaceable, meaning we'll start seeing these weird extended batteries that go around the frame of the device, like on the iphone. And those battery frames can boast that the added margins will reduce accidental contact with the screen.

Hey, if everyone starts using an apple tablet, then it won't be so weird for me to pull out my obsolete-in-comparison epaper device.

If the $200 Crunchpad is now the $500 JooJoo, I can't imagine a comparable apple product will cost less (apple tax!). Heck, an unsubsidized iphone 3gs is $500-$600, so imagine the cost of a device with more than double the screen size. As for subsidized cost, do you really want to pay for *another* phone and service? My guess is that all the publishing deals that apple have made will involve that content being viewable on the iphone as well. I would not be surprised if there is no tablet but instead another version of the iphone of similar size but better resolution screen.

[cmdahler]

Originally Posted by MikeOnyx

I'm also curious to get your opinion on why you think the iSlate will take over? Do you believe that the Brand alone will be much more important than the price and will make everyone pay that much more to have the device? What about the iSlate do you believe will give it the competitive edge that other eReaders will not?

Content, distribution, and capability.

It will be able to do everything all the other readers are trying to do but cannot because of the limitations of e-ink refresh rates and lack of color. You make all the correct points about backlighting, etc., but while all those things sound great on paper (har!), none of those reasons are going to matter in the real marketplace. It's analogous to the whole ePub format standard debacle of the last few years. The vast majority of people accept a ridiculously infantile typesetting model for their multi-hundred dollar devices: a model that renders text on that nice, pretty screen in a way that would make professional typesetters run screaming for the hills, simply because the vast majority of people (even bibliophiles such as populate boards like this, surprisingly enough) obviously don't give a flying rat's ass about good typesetting. Likewise, LCD vs. e-Ink isn't going to mean anything realistic to most people.

What will mean something to everyone who is going to buy one of these things over a dedicated e-Ink reader is that

1. it is made by Apple and will have the "cool" factor
2. it will have artistically beautiful construction design that will make everything else on the ereader market look like something developed by a sloven gang of junior-high-school kids in a single afternoon
3. it will be able to surf the complete Internet, certainly via WiFi, and possibly through 3G as well
4. it will be a gaming platform, a movie player, a music player, a photo viewer, and possibly give access to productivity tools like iWork as well
5. because it will probably have the same audio jack that will accept a combo mic/earphone set, you'll be able to install the Skype applet and use the damn thing to make phone calls for practically free - try doing that with your Kindle!
6. and lastly, and most importantly to the e-reader market: Apple is going to line up distribution deals directly with the publishers, which will simply mean that within the next couple of years, Apple will vault in one giant leap to being the largest single distributor of ebooks on the market, because every book publisher on the planet is going to be motivated to do a deal with Apple to get their books into the iTunes distribution chain in a way that Amazon with the Kindle just can't match. Itunes will be a single-point distributor of just about every kind of electronic media imaginable, and the tablet will be able to use every one of them, not just the books. You can't beat that kind of marketing potential. It's just going to swamp the ebook market completely.

Now, you take your average consumer and give him the choice of buying this tablet or buying a severely limited capability black and white device that can basically only present text to him, and which device do you think he's going to buy? Given the economy the way it is, how many people do you really think are going to shell out hundreds of dollars for an electronic book plus another wad of hundreds of dollars for a tablet? I'm guessing not very many people have that kind of disposable cash lying around, so if they're in the market for a reader, they're only going to buy one device, and any half-wit could predict what the vast majority of Joe Consumers are going to pick given the choice.

The Apple tablet is going to effectively end the business model of all the niche players in this field: Plastic Logic and Skiff, if they are successful at marketing their devices to business professionals, may find a tiny little corner of the market to sell several thousand units each, but not much more than that. The other little players in the ereader field such as B&N, iRex, etc., are just going to quietly vanish within a couple of years. Sony and Amazon might be able to still make their product sell just because of name recognition, but only if their prices are low enough - a $400 ereader is never going to sell next to Apple's tablet, and I'm not even sure Sony's readers will be able to survive, because in the end, the entire question of who is going to win this market war is not going to be who has e-Ink versus who has LCD: it's all going to come down to dominance of the media content. iTunes will have an effective lock on that within just a few years, thus Apple wins. It's as simple as that. All the minor-niche people who yammer on about e-ink versus LCD are picking the wrong battle: none of that matters, because most people simply aren't going to care - what they will care about is "cool", brand, content availability, and functionality. Nothing out there in the e-ink market will be able to touch Apple on any of these fronts, thus the battle is already lost. I predict that for the vast majority of typical consumers, this tablet device is going to make even having a laptop a bit superfluous, especially if it can do basic word processing through iWork.

Anyway, I know most people reading this are going to scream and slaver and gnash their teeth about how you'd have to pry their e-ink reader out of their cold, dead hands and yadda, yadda, yadda. Meaningless noise, basically. If this product launch were being done by Microsoft, I'd be a little more cautious about saying the war is lost. But this is Apple and the corporate business leadership genius behind it is Jobs. Lock, stock, and barrel.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by andrys

Before iRex cancelled the November release, Best Buy had pre-made bins for them that had labels for a device price of something like $425, which isn't far off, but already it had been raised.

It was $449, and it was for the "special edition" version of the DR800SG, which included several additional items (like an upgraded stylus, etc). The "regular" DR800SG is still being planned for $399.

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by badbob001

I know this device does not have a headphone jack, but does it have a speaker at all? I remember the original ipod with the physical scroll wheel and how it made a generated clicking noise when moved. Wouldn't it be a nice option to have the device make a slight noise when tapping with the stylus so people KNOW that it registered the tap and just needs time to process... no need to stab it a second time and harder (it's glass, remember!).

The Que has a speaker for that. I thought it was a vent when I saw it but at CES discovered its a speaker for exactly that- audible confirmation that you have "clicked".

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

But actually, the clicking sound usually is the first thing I turn off. Did so with iRex iLiad.

Same here. Those types of things are novel when you first get the device, but quickly become annoying.

[catharsis]

I have another request for users who already own the device. Can you please check the attached document and comment if it's readable or not? I tried to create a pdf which has the same dimensions as the DR800's screen. I also printed out on paper and it seems pretty readable to me. Can you take a picture of page 4, please?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

So far, I can't complain about the battery. I didn't have time yet to use it intensively. Just about 2 hours per day. After (rough estimate) 15 hours of usage, battery shows drain of 40%. My gut feeling says, about even with Sony 900.

Is that leaving it on all the time (IE in standby), or are you turning it on/off between using it?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

The good thing about folder support is that people don't have to use it if they don't want. Not having them available is difficult to justify.

Did you see the recent post from iRex about the source code being released for the DR800? There's a comment from one of their developers that makes it sound like folder support is fairly simple to re-enable yourself, if you want to.

Having the option to do that should make a lot of people happier.

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Did you see the recent post from iRex about the source code being released for the DR800? There's a comment from one of their developers that makes it sound like folder support is fairly simple to re-enable yourself, if you want to.

Having the option to do that should make a lot of people happier.

From that post (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...78&postcount=4), it looks like one has to look for something like a /system/dr800.ini file and modify the contents.

I wanted to check the software download from irex to see if that file exists and surprise, the software downloads for both the dr800s and the dr800sg have been removed. If the file exists, someone please post the contents.

[DeReader]

Originally Posted by catharsis

I have another request for users who already own the device. Can you please check the attached document and comment if it's readable or not? I tried to create a pdf which has the same dimensions as the DR800's screen. I also printed out on paper and it seems pretty readable to me. Can you take a picture of page 4, please?

I gave it try and displayed page 4 on the DR800. It is readable, though the font-size is small.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by catharsis

I have another request for users who already own the device. Can you please check the attached document and comment if it's readable or not? I tried to create a pdf which has the same dimensions as the DR800's screen. I also printed out on paper and it seems pretty readable to me. Can you take a picture of page 4, please?

It's perfectly readable in original layout.
I certainly wouldn't read an entire book in that font size. But for those 8 pages it's no problem.
When changing font size, strangely enough the screen goes blank.
The picture of page 4 is very dark, sorry. But I hope it gives an idea.