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Irex iLiad 2nd Edition, WiFi, Wacom Penabled, 12 hour battery life wile reading and writing, supports wireless synchronization, 8.1-inch (diagonal) Electronic Paper Display, 768 x 1024 pixels resolution, 160 DPI. 16 levels of grey-scale. Built-in stereo speakers. File formats supported : PDF / HTML / TXT / JPG / BMP/ PNG / PRC (Mobipocket).

IrexShop.com

https://www.irexshop.com/
Try these, they are supposed to be quite good.

Cool. I stand corrected.

But while the Classmate is more powerfull and thus more flexible, it does weigh more than 3 times as much as a Kindle 2. Kindle 2 is 0.64 lbs, Classmate is listed at $352 at Amazon ($499 list price)
Kindle: $359 at Amazon
iRex DRS: $933 at iRex's shop

That iRex is insanely expensive ... heh

When I read a PDF I need quality image support for interpreting graphs and other types of visual data. The Kindle doesn't come close. Yes, Amazon offers a PDF "conversion" service. In the process, formatting and image support is either lost or horribly mangled.

Never mind the total lack of touch support for eink annotations makes the thing worthless for serious use. Fine if you want to spend $350 for a device to read novels on the train. But if you want to read technical papers and annotate in math, the Kindle doesn't come close to being a useful device.

The only thing out there that does meet that need is:

The IREX Digital Reader 1000:

https://www.irexshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_35&products_id=69

That is the first device to come on the market which exceeds the eReader feature set available on the Apple's old Newton MP2x00 from 1998.

Pathetic.

Personally since I live in the Netherlands I can't get the Kindle 2.
I checked out the Sony offerings, but the 500 is quite limited in it's features and the 700 has a bad review on Gizmodo.
I'm thinking about getting this one, the Iliad 2nd edition.
https://www.irexshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_27&products_id=64&osCsid=9095fdd3cc8a4c965f838c95ea72233c

It's expensive though at 599 euros (+/-759 dollars).

This is a neat hack; I'm mildly surprised that you can fit a decent version of Wikipedia in under 4 GB. The text, sure (especially bzip2 compressed), but a decent set of images? Anyone have a breakdown of exactly which version of Wikipedia this is?

The static Wikipedia pages appear to have not been updated since April 2007 (the February 2008 ones stop just before "en"). That version comes in larger than 4GB, but static HTML pages are less efficient, I would think, than what this guy did parsing the XML data.

These days, though, WiFi is available in so many places that even if I owned one of these devices I probably wouldn't use up the flash space with an offline version of Wikipedia.

Side note about the iRex. The ebook version of the reader (which, notably, lacks WiFi compared to the more expensive version) appears to be $599 MSRP. I personally thought the Kindle was expensive at $400, wireless service included. The WiFi iRex is $700, which is getting into the territory of a few low-end (or used, I'm sure) tablet notebooks. I understand that the battery life and screen readability of these things is supposed to be pretty good, though.

Anybody know if the iRex or any other ebook reader has the capability to annotate PDF files? I do a quite a bit of reading of PDF documents, and I find myself printing them all too often so that they're easier to read and I can make notes. These ebook screens are supposed to be easier on the eyes than a standard laptop screen, so all that's left is the ability to make annotations.

If you check the "customers" page on eink.com, you can see all the current e-Book producers and go to each site and check them out.

I have done this and I feel that the iRex Iliad is the top dog. You can read the specs here

Not counting the sweet ability to write with it using the built-in Wacom Penabled touch screen, here are some other plusses:

* It uses the 8.1 inch, 768x1024 pixel screen. All other e-book readers currently on the market use the 6-inch, 600x800 pixel screen.

* It claims 16 shades of grey (4-big). All other e-book readers are at 3-bit (8 shades)

* Decent Processing power with a 400mhz X-Scale processor

* Built-in wireless-G with support for 10/100mbs ether.

* IT'S HACKABLE! There appears to be an active dev community for it and even a sanction dev site

My OLPC just arrived today (less than an hour ago in fact) and I'm planning on using it as my eBook reader. But if I manage to 'outgrow' the OLPC as an eBook reader, the iLiad will be my next one.

If you check the "customers" page on eink.com, you can see all the current e-Book producers and go to each site and check them out.

I have done this and I feel that the iRex Iliad is the top dog. You can read the specs here

Not counting the sweet ability to write with it using the built-in Wacom Penabled touch screen, here are some other plusses:

* It uses the 8.1 inch, 768x1024 pixel screen. All other e-book readers currently on the market use the 6-inch, 600x800 pixel screen.

* It claims 16 shades of grey (4-big). All other e-book readers are at 3-bit (8 shades)

* Decent Processing power with a 400mhz X-Scale processor

* Built-in wireless-G with support for 10/100mbs ether.

* IT'S HACKABLE! There appears to be an active dev community for it and even a sanction dev site

My OLPC just arrived today (less than an hour ago in fact) and I'm planning on using it as my eBook reader. But if I manage to 'outgrow' the OLPC as an eBook reader, the iLiad will be my next one.

The main competition to this sony reader seems to be the Iliad from I-Rex.