Archive for the ‘irex DR800SG ereader’ tag
Irex DR800SG Software Update Released no comments
The new software for the Irex DR800 ereaders is out of beta and has been released. The new features:
- Cycle through pen states in document viewer by clicking status bar icon
- Add “Shortcuts” button next to “Search” button for quick access
- Add Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish languages [DR800SG]
- Enhanced text contrast in document viewer
- Pen calibration improved and reduced accidental input with tilted stylus
- Improved Notepad application:
- Show Thumbnail for Notes
- Improved performance when navigating in Notepad
- Improved writing speed, especially for thick lines
- Improved page turning speed in complex document
- Fixed 3G connection when resuming from Suspend [DR800SG]
- Fixed a bug that would occasionally drain the battery quickly while in Suspend (white screen)
- Fixed a bug in Scribble on PDF that allowed you to write outside of the physical PDF page
- Many other smaller improvements and bug fixes
Improvements from v1.0
- 3G Connection Setup time improved by using Qualcomm Network Driver
- Show 3G signal strength on status bar while connected
- Add Notepad application
- Add Advanced Settings, allowing:
- Scribble on PDF documents
- Zoom in PDF documents
- Enable folder-browsing of your SD card
- Adobe 9.1 RMSDK based rendering of PDF and EPUB, including B&N EPUB support and image dithering
- Integrated B&N Credit card input dialog into the document open flow (ask only if needed)
- Support EPUBs without embedded fonts for e.g. Greek, Polish, Russian
- Add “Go To Page” function to document viewer
- Move Continue Reading to the first position of the Home screen
- Automatic indexing of Thumbnails and Title/Author metadata (can be disabled in Advanced Settings)
- Added Time Zone selection to the Date/Time Settings
- View Book Information menu function that shows more details for PDF and EPUB
- Fixed issues with EPUB rendering when GUI language is non-English
- Fixed a bug where the Power Management would fail and the battery would drain quickly (related to pagination of PDB and TXT documents)
Known issues for the new software:
- There is no way to merge or export Notes and Scribbles for usage on a PC.
- Annotations made using v2.0-beta software may show up at a different scale or location.
- Not all (new) GUI texts have been translated into all supported languages yet.
For installation instructions see the iRex Blog. Make sure to get the correct file - DR800SG for the US and DR800S for elsewhere. The 03-Jun-2010 version is the new release.
There appears to be a bug in the new software that cuts off a few pixels of the right edge of PDF documents.
One fix that I have been able to verify so far is the page-turning speed. I installed the beta software while reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I noticed that in the final 100 pages or so ( this book is a little over 400 pages) the page turns were getting slower and slower – up to six seconds! After installing the update page turns in the latter parts of this ebook are back to normal (big sigh of relief).
The DR800 ereaders seem to be sold out pretty much everywhere at the moment. Best Buy and Car Toys no longer list it and the iRex store seems to be out as well – they just link to a no longer existing page at Best Buy. Someone is selling DR800SG ereaders on eBay for $1500 – don’t laugh, it looks like five have been sold already at a lower price of $500!
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M-Edge Executive Jacket for Irex DR800SG eReader no comments
I usually choose device covers in black, but for my Irex DR800SG ereader I
went with the brown (M-Edge terms it Smooth Mocha if you want to get technical) as it is the first color available. It turned out to be a good choice as the brown leather with gray plush interior compliments the pale gray bezel and bronze posterior of the DR800.
This is quite a good case, especially considering it only costs $20 plus $5 shipping. The Executive Jacket has stiffening panels in both the front and back flaps to add protection. The edges of the cover overlap the ereader’s edges by a quarter inch so that there is good cushioning should you drop (please don’t try this at home – we’re professional tech breakers here!) your ereader and it lands on a corner.
The DR800 has a couple of pin holes on the top and bottom left corners that the official Irex cover uses for its hinge system. M-Edge has instead opted to use elastic corner bands on the top and leather bands on the bottom corners. This feels quite secure, but for my own peace of mind I also stuck a wee bit of Velcro on my ereader’s backside.
The Executive Case also provides a handy holder for the stylus. M-Edge has also
provided a few (unnecessary to me) pockets in the front flap for business cards and papers or whatever.
One minor complaint is that the leather strap on the bottom left covers the power switch, and you will need to pull it out of the way for access, but I can live with this. The USB port is unblocked.
The Executive Jacket is also compatible with the M-Edge e-Luminator2 Booklight.
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Borrowing Library eBooks on the DR800SG eReader no comments
Since I have ADE up and working again I wanted to try borrowing something on my Irex DR800SG from the public library to see how well it works.
The Los Angeles County Library system currently has something over 700 fiction and nonfiction ebooks available. This is not a lot, but they are slowly building the collection. With California having fallen off into an ocean of red ink I’m sure that the library’s budget has been curtailed.
I borrowed Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Yes, this is a public domain title and I could get it elsewhere, but I wanted to make sure library downloads work okay on the DR800SG ereader and there was no waiting list for this title. I read many of Hesse’s works when I was a teenager – it was the thing to do back then. I’ve wanted to revisit them to see how they hold up, but many of Hesse’s titles do not seem to have made the jump to ebooks yet. I seem to recall that Narcissus and Goldmund and Steppenwolf were my favorites.
After a few clicks I was able to download the ebook to my PC and then to my ereader. Pretty painless and everything works as advertised.
I also found a few other new titles that I want and put myself on the waiting lists. Neal Stephenson’s Anthem was available with no waiting list, but at a thousand plus pages this is a nut I did not want to try cracking in view of my present reading backlog and the 14 day loan period. I will probably just buy this one later.
When borrowing library ebooks for your ereader you are probably going to find yourself in the position of having to drop whatever you are presently reading to jump on your requested book when it becomes available and finish it in the allotted time.
Having access to public library ebooks is a great feature, but I’m not sure if I would make it a priority when choosing which ereader to buy – at least not at the present time. You can find out how much material is available at your local library by visiting Overdrive’s site and entering your zip code in the search widget.
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Irex DR800SG Unboxing no comments
I just received one of the Irex DR800SG ereaders from Best Buy. 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 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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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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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.
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Irex DR800SG a No-Show? 1 comment
Irex’s new DR800SG ereader was supposed to hit Best Buy’s shelves at the end of October at a price of $399. Best Buy did have it up on their website very briefly. The DR800SG was listed as backordered with a price of $449, but has since totally disappeared from their website. Not sure if the higher than MSRP price was due to exchange rates or if Best Buy thought that they could sell it for a higher price.
The only thing from Irex is their press release of October 19, in which they just say that the DR800SG will be “available later this fall”. I was starting to think that an October release was looking pretty suspect, then I received an email this morning from Irex stating that “The DR800SG will be available end of October at Best Buy”. Guess they still have a few more days to make that come true.
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Lots of Press Releases Today, Timed to Steal Thunder from Amazon’s Launch of Kindle International no comments
Today there were several press releases, some of which did not contain a lot of new information and seemed timed more to distract from Amazon’s launch of the International version of the Kindle rather than to provide us with much new material.
Plastic Logic announced that its upcoming ereader will be named the Que and will debut at the CES this coming January 7th in Las Vegas. They released more photos, but nothing really new: only side views, no views of the actual display. In fact we see more of the hand model in the photo than we do of the Que.
The Que will have a screen size of 8.5 x 11 inches and will be mainly aimed at business users. It will have an e-ink based touchscreen that will be shatterproof. Supported formats include PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. AT&T will provide 3G connectivity, and Barnes and Noble will provide books for Plastic Logic’s upcoming ereader. Wi-Fi is also indicated.
Irex also put out another press release about their upcoming DR800SG, which was supposed to become available at Best Buy Stores later this month. The press release now says “later this fall”, so not sure if it will still be this month or not.
The DR800SG will also have a larger 8” screen and will be priced at $399. AT&T will also provide the 3G connection for this ereader, and Barnes and Noble is providing the ebookstore.
A new ereader from Spring Design named Alex was also introduced today. 
This ebook reader also sports a smaller LCD screen below the e-ink display similar to that shown in leaked photos of Barnes and Noble’s Athena which is expected to be unveiled at B & N’s press conference tomorrow. There is some speculation in fact that this is B & N’s new ereader, although the pictures look different.
Spring Design’s new ereader will feature a 6” e-ink screen and a 3.5” color LCD display. Not exactly pocket-sized. There is an SD card slot for added storage. Spring Design says that the Alex will release to “selected strategic partners” by the end of this year.
The Alex is based on Google’s Android and will have full browser capabilities, so this ereader should work well with Google Editions. It is more of a multimedia device though than current ereaders like the Kindle or Sony. I can imagine it being very easy to get distracted from reading with this device.
“This is the start of a whole new experience of reading content on e-books, potentially igniting a whole new industry in multimedia e-book publishing for secondary authors to create supplementary content that is hyper linked to the text. We are bringing life to books with audio, video, and annotations,” said Dr. Priscilla Lu, CEO of Spring Design. “This gives readers the ability to fully leverage the resources on the Web, and the tools available in search engines to augment the reading experience.”
Meanwhile, back at the launching of the Amazon Kindle with US and International Wireless, it seems like more of a tempest in a teapot with little enough thunder to go around. Looking at Amazon’s websites outside of the US it would be hard to know that something “groundbreaking” was taking place. The Kindle is not displayed on Amazon UK’s homepage, nor can it be found on the electronics or books category main pages. It was also MIA at other Amazon international sites I looked at until I finally found it in Japan. I guess if you are big in Japan……
It is increasingly looking as though the launch of Kindle International is aimed primarily at Americans travelling abroad. It also seems as though the international release was a rushed job because of the competition from all of the recently announced new ereaders which will be coming to market soon.
£149.00
£109
