Archive for the ‘irex DR800SG ereader delayed’ tag
Irex DR800SG Reappears at Best Buy Website no comments
Remember Irex’s daringly named DR800SG ereader? Well it is back on the Best Buy website again. 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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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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