Archive for the ‘Irex’ Category
Irex DR800SG Ereader Update – First Impressions no comments
I love reading books on the DR800SG. The e-ink screen with its 16 grayscales and 768 x 1024 resolution is gorgeous. I also find that I much prefer reading on the 8.1 – inch screen to the usual 5 – 6 inch ereader screens. The larger screen does add a little width to the device though, which may impact portability for some.
I am also a fan of the minimalist design of the DR800SG ereader which does not waste space and which is devoted to and complements the display screen. I hope other designers of new ereaders will take a close look at Irex’s design choices here and maybe stand on Irex’s shoulders, as Steve Jobs would say. The DR800SG definitely has some qualities worth emulating. I would like to see some more ereaders with this screen size format for one thing. That being said however, the DR800SG’s design as executed does lead to some control awkwardness that I think could have been avoided by Irex.
Page turning and menu navigation are accomplished via the flipbar on the left
side of the bezel and the Menu button underneath it. If you hold the flipbar to one side for a longer period it will turn five pages at a time instead of just one.
To use the DR800SG with one hand you will need to hold your ereader in your left hand and use thumb power to turn pages. This works fine, unless you want to shift hands for awhile. This control scheme will also not work if you are left handed and want to hold the ereader in your right hand so you can have your left hand free. Adding a couple of small page turning buttons on the right bezel might have impacted the aesthetics of this ereader, but it would also have greatly increased its functionality.
You can navigate through most menus and make selections without the stylus by using the flipbar and menu button, but sometimes it does feel a bit awkward. Since there is no docking bay for the stylus on the ereader it is good to be able to do as much as possible without it.
Unlike most ereaders that come with a stylus, you cannot turn pages with a swipe or touch of the stylus on the edge of the screen. There are a couple of small arrows at the very bottom of the screen (you can just see them at the bottom of the picture) you can touch with the stylus for page turns, but they are quite small and inconvenient. It feels as though the Wacom digitizer is minimally implemented at best.
There’s Not Enough “There” There
The DR800SG has five four different font sizes to choose from, but only one font style. The
pic shows the largest font size, which is about 3/16 inch height for capital letters. You can also set the page margins from 0 to 1/2 inch.
The search function so far seems to work quite well. You will need to use the stylus for this. It would have been nice if Irex had added a Go To Page function as well.
You are able to sort through your library or documents by Name (title), Author, Date Added or Recently Added. It is also possible to delete content from the ereader itself without connecting to a computer, which is nice.
With its larger screen, Wacom digitizer and $400 price tag you would assume that Irex is targeting users who need to handle a lot of PDF or other documents with this ereader. Judging by what is missing you would be making a wrong assumption. There are no annotation, note taking or even highlighting functions. Bookmarking is as good as it gets. It kind of makes you wonder why Irex bothered to use Wacom technology on the DR800SG at all. At the moment it seems like the digitizer is wasted.
PDF zooming is unavailable on the DR800SG as well. Even viewing a PDF in landscape mode does not seem to achieve any magnification – you just get the same size doc with very wide margins. With PDF’s made up only of text you may be able to enlarge the font as long as there are no graphs, schematics or tables, etc.
So far my take is that the DR800SG is a wonderful ereader for general book reading. But is that enough to justify paying $400 for it – especially in view of all of the soon to be released competition? True, Irex will hopefully have a firmware update soon that will add some of the missing functionality to their new ereader, but I can not recommend buying one based on that expectation/speculation alone.
If there were a dictionary on this ereader it would probably have a picture of the DR800SG next to half-baked.
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Irex DR800SG Unboxing no comments
I just received one of the Irex DR800SG ereaders from BestBuy.com. I hesitated to order this one as quite frankly, it just does not seem as compelling as it would have been if released four months ago as originally announced by
Irex. There does still seem to be quite a bit of interest in Irex’s newest and greatest ereader though, so here it is.
As you can see in the photos, inside the box is a wall charger, USB cable, slipcover, quick start guide and of course the DR800SG ereader itself. And a loose stylus. That’s right, the stylus does not have a storage slot in the body of the ereader . There is a place to put it into the sleeve. We will have to be careful not to let the stylus become a chew toy for the household zoo as a new EMR stylus would have to be ordered from Irex (or perhaps another supplier) for $24 and up depending on the model.
I’m also wondering if this will affect the battery life? The Bebook Neo, which also has a Wacom digitizer, senses when the stylus is in its slot and turns the digitizer off to extend the battery charge. Not sure how much effect this will have. I have not seen any estimated battery life numbers for the DR800SG; Irex just says things like their new ereader has “longer battery life”.
I have just been able to play around with the Irex for a few minutes while I
get it charging, so I only have a few first impressions to give so far. The Dr800SG is a handsome ereader and I do like the larger screen. The 8-inch screen feels more like viewing an actual book page. Text looks very nice and I think the e-ink screen is enhanced by the color Irex chose for the bezel.
I’ve also been able to conduct a small test of Irex’s customer service already. When I got home last night the package was waiting for me so right away I opened it up so I could get the DR800SG charging. Unfortunately it seemed DOA and would not charge. Nothing I did seemed to help. Thinking to myself that things were already off to a lovely start indeed, I tried calling the Irex customer service number shown on the startup guide. As it was already 10 PM here on the West Coast I did not really expect to find anyone home. In fact, after only about a minute and a half on hold a friendly CS person came online and got me sorted out. He had me reset the ereader while it was plugged in to the charger and everything was fine. I had tried the reset, but not with the reader plugged in.
I’m sure I would have been able to revive the Irex after more futzing around on my own, but it was encouraging to know customer service was there when I was in need. This is always a worry when purchasing a new device made and primarily (until now at least) marketed overseas.
I’ll be able to spend some more time with my newest friend this weekend and will have more to report – stay tuned.
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Irex DR800SG Ereader Now Shipping From Best Buy 2 comments
The DR800SG is finally making its appearance about 3 1/2 months later
than originally announced, but better late than never.
BestBuy.com is now showing the Irex DR800SG ereader as shipping within one to two days if ordered from their website. The price is $399 plus tax and $6.99 for standard shipping. Store pickup is not available at this time. The package includes a USB charger and cable, sleeve, stylus and manual.
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Irex DR800SG Reappears at Best Buy Website no comments
Remember Irex’s daringly named DR800SG ereader? Well it is back on the
Best Buy websiteagain. This time it is priced at $399 – apparently without the “Limited Edition” content that appeared very briefly on Best Buy’s site in October of last year for a price of $449.
Not sure when it will actually become available for purchase – right now it is listed as “coming soon”.
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Irex Ditching Mobipocket no comments
Irex announced today that Mobipocket DRM will not be supported on the 800S or 800SG ereaders. This is because Mobipocket, which is owned by Amazon, does not allow Mobipocket DRM to be supported on devices which also support other DRM systems such as Adobe Digital Editions.
Irex’s iLiad ereader will be the only Irex ereader to continue Mobipocket DRM support. Owners of the DR1000 will be able to choose whether to keep the current Mobipocket support or replace it with ADE when the ePub/Adobe Digital Editions upgrade is released.
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Irex to Begin Selling DR800S Ereader in Europe Next Week no comments
Or at least that is what their latest press release dated yesterday says.
The 8.1-inch touch-screen device boasts a sleek design, easy to-use interface and open DRM policy – it will be available January 18 2010 in stores (amongst others Mediamarkt, FNAC and Selexyz) throughout Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK and online in the IREX Web shop (www.irexshop.com ).
The DR800S is the European version of the DR800SG ereader (which has 3G for the US market) which was supposed to be available at Best Buy stores in the US a few months ago. The US version has never shown up, and Irex has been silent for the most part about its missing ereader. The company has apparently opted to employ the time honored Ostrich Strategy, Head In The Sand (OSHITS) method for dealing with bad news when it comes to the US version of their new ereader.
The DR800S ereader will sell for $601.44 in the Irex online store.
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CES 2010 no comments
I was able to spend about a day at CES this year. If you are a gadget boy/girl
then going to CES is kind of like being a kid again in a mega toy store with a large candy department on the side. If ereaders are one of your most favorite gadgets, then being at this year’s CES was kind of like being Willy Wonka and getting a ticket to a chocolate factory.
One problem though, is that many of the gadgets one sees and gets to hopefully try out are prototypes and are not always fully functional as well as being subject to change (or cancellation). In some cases this seemed to be very true for ereaders this year. Many of the ereader demos only had a few public domain titles loaded, and a few had dead batteries from all of the handling.
I managed to break my camera while at CES (Spirit Guide: fortunately grasshopper could fix it when he was back home & had access to his mini tools), so some of the pics are taken with my cell phone – sorry!
Some of the booth designs are pretty amazing. The cell phone picture at the top, which is of Samsung’s walls of flat panel screens does not do it justice.
The picture at the left is of a large touch screen at Intel’s booth with 500 slowly spinning cubes, each of which represents a live website. If you touch one of the cubes a small detail window opens for a few seconds. All powered by a thumbnail-sized Intel chip. Have we left Kansas yet Toto?
eReaders at CES 2010
Plastic Logic Que
Plastic Logic’s Que was probably one of the most eagerly anticipated ereaders
at this year’s CES.
The display is quite good; newspapers look good on the Que. As you probably know by now, the Que display utilizes plastic rather than glass to create a shatterproof screen. Overall, the Que felt a bit too plastic to me. The bezel is a shiny acrylic or similar material, and I expect it to be very scratch prone. I think Plastic Logic would have done better to use a matte material.
The announced price of the Que ereader is somewhat stratospheric; $649 for a 4GB model with WiFi, and $799 for an 8GB model with both WiFi and 3G. At these prices it will probably be in pretty direct competition with the Apple iSlate.
Notion Ink Adam
Notion Ink’s Adam tablet is Android powered and is the first announced device to use Pixel Qi display technology. I really wanted to have a look at this, but the closest I could get was a non-powered demo in a glass case at the Nvidia booth. 
According to an Nvidia booth-boy, the only working unit at CES was in the hands of Notion Ink Director Rohan Shravan, who was booked up giving private demonstrations with it. Liliputing.com was the happy recipient of one of these sessions and you can see their video and reviews.
Pixel Qi looks very promising. Engadget said in a post yesterday that they have been told that a manufacturer that “everyone is familiar with” will be announcing a Pixel Qi equipped device in 2010. Hmmm…wonder if the manufacturer alluded to has a name starting with the first letter of the alphabet and is named after a fruit or a river?
Irex
Also at the Nvidia booth was an unpowered (or maybe just the batteries were dead) Irex DR800SG ereader. I couldn’t do much with it as it had no power, but I still think that the design has promise; an 8-inch screen in a package that is the same overall size as a Kindle with 6-inch screen.
Still no idea when this will be released. There were some rumors of a mid-January release, but Irex seems to have a history of setting release dates that don’t materialize. There is still nothing on Best Buy’s website about the DR800SG.
Liquavista
Liquavista is one of the color display technologies that should be making its way into
future ereaders. Liquavista is based on existing LCD manufacturing infrastructure. This display tech is capable of displaying color video while using very low power. It looks as though it won’t be integrated into an actual ereader that you can buy until possibly the end of 2010 or more likely early next year. Qualcomm has said that its Mirasol color display technology is on track to enter production in the fall of 2010, so it may be able to beat Liquavista to market by a few months, but of course we will have to wait and see.
The colors and video playback in the Liquavista reference designs displayed at CES were quite impressive. The display does look very paper-like.
iRiver Story
The Story ereader by iRiver has been selling in Asia and Europe, and is supposed to make it to the US this month. 
iRiver is a Korean company best known for its portable music and video players. The Story is iRiver’s first foray into ereaders.
The Story has a chiclet style keyboard similar to the Kindle ereader. The display is a 6-inch e-ink screen. There is 2GB of internal memory plus an SD card slot. There should be an MS Office doc viewer as well as some sort of comics viewer. Adobe Digital Editions as well as non-DRM’ed epub should be among the supported file formats.
The Story ereader seemed to be solidly built, but other than the features noted above, there wasn’t anything that seemed to really differentiate it from the other ereaders out there. Refresh times and navigation seemed to be pretty much on par with other current ereaders. The price and availability has not been announced yet, but the Story was selling for about $290 in Korea. I don’t see this ereader being really competitive unless it is priced less than the Kindle or nook.
Dual-Screen “eReaders”
Both MSI and Asus have their dual LCD screened ereader concepts on display at CES, but these really seem like netbooks with two screens rather than ereaders. Perhaps if the screens were to use Pixel Qi they would be more viable as ereaders. As laptop/netbooks, however, both could be quite good. The two screens can work separately or together as one larger screen, or one screen can serve up a virtual keyboard.
enTourage eDGe
After Plastic Logic’s booth the enTourage Systems booth was probably the busiest ereader show at CES.
The Kindle Chronicles has a good CES interview and video of the eDGe in action.
My take is that while the eDGe with all of its study tools and bells and whistles would be good for students and their etextbooks or perhaps as a netbook replacement, it is obviously overkill for someone looking for just an ereader. It is rather bulky for reading in your bed or armchair. Also it appears that the eDGe ereader will be tied to enTourage’s ebook store for DRM’ed ebooks. Currently enTourage claims to have 200,000 ebooks in addition to the usual Google public domain suspects.
At a price of almost $500 the eDGe is more expensive than most netbooks as well. Still, it is the most interesting multipurpose “ereader” that I’ve seen yet. A lot of thought obviously went into its development, and the eDGe is capable of doing just about anything you would ask of it.
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Barnes and Noble nook eReader Shipping Date Slips; Still No News of IRex’s DR800SG 2 comments
While previously placed preorders for the nook ereader should still ship at the end of November, purchasers who have preordered Barnes and Noble’s new ebook reader over the past few days are being advised by the company that their expected shipping date will be December 11.
This may be bad news for potential purchasers who planned on looking at and 
playing with a nook demo at the end of the month at a Barnes and Noble store before placing their orders. If the shipping date slips again, the end of November may be too late to place an order and have your ereader arrive in time for Christmas. This perhaps wouldn’t be such a problem if B & N had a friendlier return policy; if you preorder a nook and then don’t like it and return it within 14 days you will be charged a 10% restocking fee.
While it is always possible that this is a tactic Barnes and Noble is using in an attempt to create a rush to buy, it seems unlikely. The delayed nook shipping date is not mentioned on the site, rather you seem to find out about it after you place your order. More likely they didn’t anticipate the demand for the nook ereader.
Barnes and Noble also seems to have at least partially heard the many complaints about their pricing. They are advertising reduced prices on books for the holidays (for orders placed through Nov. 30) and free 3 day shipping for orders over $25, or over $10 if you are a member. However, the reduced prices don’t seem to apply to ebooks, which are still higher priced than elsewhere in many cases. Members do not receive any discounts on ebooks either.
Besides the nook ereader, Barnes and Noble will also support Plastic Logic’s Que ebook reader, which is due out early next year and which they have said will be available for purchase in all of their stores. They are also the ebook store of choice for Irex’s DR800SG ereader, which was supposed to be out by now, but has been delayed. When in place these three ebook readers will give B & N a very strong hardware presence; with a pretty wide range of feature sets, screen sizes and price points. Unless they fix their ebook store (it presently has fewer titles at higher prices) however, their challenge to Amazon for dominance of the ereader market is somewhat crippled. By the way, speaking of things nook vs Kindle; the nook is not the same price as the Kindle if you consider sales tax. Where I live that is about enough to pay for a Kindle cover.
And Speaking of the Irex DR800SG eReader
Meanwhile, back at the Irex camp, there is still nothing official on the missing DR800SG ereader. There are a couple of comments on the Irex blog by an Irex rep to the effect that Irex’s new ebook reader has suffered delays due to circumstances beyond Irex’s control, but may be on the shelves by the middle of this month; and she notes that all of this is is not official. She also says that the initial version of the DR800SG will be a special edition that includes “a ton of free content to get your reading started” and will be priced at $449. This probably explains (or is an attempt to explain) why the ebook reader was priced higher than MSRP when listed on Best Buy’s site.
Perhaps the DR800SG ereader is the victim of production delays, distribution problems (perhaps the container fell off the back of a ship?) or even a last minute bug reared its ugly head and had to be squashed by a firmware update. New gadgets are often plagued by delays and shortages, especially around the holidays. However, the way in which Best Buy displayed the DR800SG ereader very briefly on their website before disappearing it seems a bit suspect. If the ereader was just delayed why didn’t they just leave it up and list it as backordered? Perhaps the bug is in the Irex – Best Buy relationship? If the companies are still negotiating this might explain all of the silence.
At any rate, the silent treatment seems a path not very well chosen for instilling confidence in the minds of potential purchasers of Irex’s new ereader.
Photo courtesy Barnes and Noble
Clichés courtesy Clichés-R-Us 
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Faster and Cheaper eReaders on the Way no comments
Several days ago chip maker Marvell announced that in collaboration with E-Ink it has developed an integrated system-on-a-chip that is not only faster than present solutions, but should bring us lower ereader prices. Marvell’s new Armada 166E chip is said to as much as triple the screen refresh rates of present ereaders and is also designed to enable ultra-fast PDF rendering.
Some of the already announced ereaders that are due out by the first quarter of 2010 and use the Armada 166E include Plastic Logic’s Que, the enTourage eDGe and Spring Design’s Alex.
Speaking of the Alex, Maximum PC has some new photos of this ereader and
it definitely looks more impressive than it did in the first picture that was released by Spring Design. Unlike Barnes and Noble’s nook, which also has a small LCD screen under the e-ink screen for navigation, the Alex’s larger LCD screen also is used for web browsing. You can select a web page or sections of it and reflow it to the e-ink screen for reading. The LCD is also used for navigation.
Photo: Maximum PC
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Irex DR800SG Still MIA no comments
Apparently the Irex DR800SG ereader is more trick than treat; at least if you
planned to see it at a Best Buy store near you this month. The ereader is still a no show on Best Buy’s website, and there is no new information at Irex’s website either.
In an effort to see if I could learn anything new I stopped by my local Best Buy last night. No luck there either; a sales associate could find nothing on her computer.
While there I also wanted to have a look at their new Gadgets and eReaders Collection announced in a press release on October 8th. The ereader display turned out to be a 4 foot by 4 foot display panel with one each of both Sony Touch and Pocket Edition ereader demos, a few covers and AC adapters, etc. If they do still plan to add the Irex they are going to need a bigger display.
And so I return home,
with empty hands and heavy heart,
with nothing of import to impart.
