iRex's iLiad E-ink eBook Reader is Now Available

An anonymous reader writes "iRex has just started shipping its e-ink eBook reader, the iLiad, starting today (July 3rd) — making it the first e-ink reader commercially available outside of Japan. It is available for purchase though iRex's website, for 649 euros (ouch!). Hopefully this price will come down before Sony releases their eReader later this summer."

Comments

Re:Yeah, but what format?

[Ethan Butterfield]

Odd that they didn't copy their supported format list from their product spec PDF, but oh well. In any case, if you check out that PDF here, they list the supported formats as PDF, XHTML, TXT and APABI (only in China). Support for OEB files as well as MP3 playback is due in an August/September firmware update.

Expensive, 2 seconds per page flip, no backlight

[lonesometrainer]

Even for an early adaptor this thing is disappointing.

1. VERY expensive, Euro 649 (that includes VAT over here) for a black+white ebook reader. I'm come on... Please leave the WLAN out next time.
2. VERY slow, VERY slow. Page flipping sometimes takes 2 seconds, sometimes 3-4. That's bad for a newspaper, but it's simply unusable for a technical documentation where you're searching for specific parts, etc.

see mobileread.com for videos.

3. No backlight, I (as a consumer) don't care wheter that's realizable or not, but I would like to have some sort of backlight. Yes a book doesn't have a backlight, too. But my books at least don't cost 650 Euros.

Nice is: a 1024x768 resolution, everything else is not usable for my purposes.

I'm waiting for the next generation.

Please note that this is a developers version

[mean pun]

Although the website is not very clear about this, iRex considers the current version a developers release. On this page there is this sentence:

To individual consumers who have sent in their request for notification, we recommend to wait for our consumer version, which will have a more extended functionality (September 2006).

Other technologies are waiting in the wings

[smartalix]

Don't forget that none of this development is going on in a vacuum. Cholesteric LCD (www.kentdisplays.com), Iridescent display (www.qualcomm.com/qmt), and electrowetting display (www.liquavista.com) technology are all reflective bistable formulations. Any of these could leapfrog E-ink and make a better, cheaper E-book.

Pics of these technologies at the last Society for Information Display Show is here:
http://www.smartalix.com/Consumer/SID/page2.html