I’ve read your claims over at the mobileread.com forum (in 2 threads) and now here…I’m happy to hear about the news, but somehow i can’t find the V8 on any ebay site I know and the news about “english mode” isn’t really new…
The trouble is/was that the V8 doesn’t properly format english text. The russians have now (with help from an americal apparently) startet to translate the device properly, create improved conversion software and stuff…
If you could point us to these ebay V8 devices we could take a look and try to find out how good the news really are.

Thanks.

THe Jinke V8 has an English mode and does most of what the V2 is supposed to do in the future. Plus, the V8 is on sell on Ebay.

BUT…
As we’ve found out at Mobileread, Irex is not simple able itself to do something with it’s site – they said, their site is served by a third company.

So, they should ask this third company to do last changes at their site at least several days ago.
But at the same time they were telling a barefaced lie about “couple of days web-shop opening”. THAT is very bad, but not the delay itself.

I’m a software developer myself, so I do have a clue about these things. Any company that is a few weeks off from shipping a product like the iLiad should have had the software ready (or at least feature-frozen) for months already and have had beta testers running the software for at least half a year.

Anyway, if a small bugfix a few weeks from launch requires an overhaul of the whole code base then the code is in a shape that would make me even more sceptical of the success of the iLiad.

I find it more likely that the marketing people (which usually aren’t very sharp to begin with) have misunderstood the software people (which usually aren’t very good at explaining things in a way that non-coders would understand). But then it should have cleared up at the first deadline and the release date would have been pushed immediately half a year forward instead of only a month forward.

I think without having more information, saying that they were “just lying” is
overstating the issue. I can think of any number of scenarios where this
sort of delay could occur. A typical scenario is: programmer looks over
specs, sees that he has one more item to complete before meeting spec
for shipping; doesn’t look too difficult, tells boss ’1 month’; boss tells
marketing “set the date!” Programmer starts in on problem, discovers
that there is a second-order effect, fix is more difficult
than thought; still wants to get product out on time, so sweats bullets trying
to make it work — but ends up needing another month. In the meantime,
beta testing shows that people using it as a general-purpose reader run
into some unanticipated issues; say, Japanese fonts work inconsistently,
or popular alternative book format glitches on certain input — things that weren’t
part of the original spec of a B-to-B product for newspaper publishing, but
good for a general reader. Policy discussion by bosses says ‘support this’.
Programmer thows up hands and says ‘OK, but it will take another 4 months’.
Current software good enough for the original specific market, but needs
more work to be a good general-purpose tool. [Reminder that I'm just
positing a way this could happen, I have no more real info than any other
non-insider...]

This sort of scenario is quite common in software development; it is not
as much of a science as one might wish it to be sometimes. (Speaking
here as a software developer myself!) And of course, feature-creep is
a problem regardless of how much science one can throw at the timing
estimates… While it would certainly be nice if a company would tell the
public about the delay in this kind of detail, that’s very very rare.

If we get past October and they still haven’t shipped for individual users, *then*
I’ll start to seriously wonder if they aren’t just putting us on…

–John N.

That’s irrelevant.

> Those who have been listening to tall tales of new Amigas since then have
> been deluding themselves seriously.

Huh? There have been several new PowerPC based Amiga computers the last five years, so if that counts as “new Amigas” then you’re the one deluding yourself. AOS4 isn’t vaporware either, since it’s been available in pre-beta, beta, “pre-release” form for a long time, so if that’s what’s required for those PPC computers to be considered Amigas then you’re still deluding yourself.

Anyway, my point was that the companies involved knew they wouldn’t get the software finished in a year, yet they told the public that it would be finished in less than half a year. Then they’ve pushed the release date forward a few months every few months, and they’ve been doing this for almost 5 years now.

In April, when iRex told the public that the iLiad would be available for the public the same month, they were just lying. If this isn’t the case then I’d be very interested to know what unforeseen obstacles could push the release date forward from a few weeks, first by a month and then by four additional months.

Now, there might be other stuff going on as well. Maybe everyone at iRex will go on vacation for a month in a month and thus wouldn’t be able to provide the support etc. in the summer. If this was the case then they should still tell the truth instead of lies. They can’t just keep changing the story. First they couldn’t release it because they had problems with their web shop. Then they changed the story and now they say the software isn’t finished yet.

The fact that they don’t answer emails doesn’t really make them look great either. I sent them a small email with only a few questions (about battery life, I think) many months ago, but haven’t received an answer yet. After sending an additional email stating that it might not be a good idea to completely ignore potential customers they replied that my email was of technical nature and went to the technical department and will be answered in time. Well, it’s been a very long time now and yet no answer.

> Irex on the other hand does not yet have a track record, and until recently
> deserved the benefit of the doubt (and perhaps still does).

Of course. And if they deliver and if it’s good then I will probably continue telling everyone to get iLiads, and get one myself, too. Until then I’ll recommend against having anything to do with them, thought. I mean, what else could I do if the company first says “it’s basically ready and will be released within a month” and then after two months says “it won’t be ready until after 4 months”?

Branko Collin Said,
“E Ink, by the way, is the brand name of this particular type of e-paper, so that’s where Irex and Sony get their displays: from E Ink.”

2 Bryan and Branko Collin: All theese displays for Irex, Sony, Jinke come from PVI (www.pvi.com.tw).

Irex on the other hand does not yet have a track record, and until recently deserved the benefit of the doubt (and perhaps still does).

AmigaOS 4.0 has been promised to be released “in a few months” for about 5 years now. The hardware became available in 2002, and has since then been through several revisions and versions. The software, which was promised to be just around the corner, still isn’t released in its final form (the 4th “pre-release” (=beta?) version of the OS was released 4 months ago).

In fact, iRex is behaving exactly like Amiga&co with this kind of delay-and-lie tactic, telling “it’ll be released shortly” when they are fully aware of the fact that what they are saying is incorrect. I’ve been speaking very positively about the iLiad to a lot of people, but this changes now. Instead I will recommend everyone against having anything to do with iRex until it has been shown that the company really will deliver.

That’s exactly how I feel now… I decided not to go for Sony Reader as iLiad seems to have better display, but now I’m reconsidering that.

All I need is a good reader device for my PDF files that does’t hurt my eyes. I don’t need all other fancy software.

Irex didn’t just discover on the last day that the Iliad would not be available to consumers, so why not keep us informed. For two straight months they waited till the last day of the month to announce the delay. If they kept us generally updated I could understand, but they chose to keep mum while we kept the buzz alive on this device.

I have to wonder about a company that treats it’s customers this way. I guess I will ask my Cybook to forgive me and take me back