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By Genene Miller Cote

Moderator’s note: I’m more upbeat about the iLiad e-paper machine—still in beta—than Genene Miller Cote is. Even so, she’s a tech-savvy publisher and very much worth paying attention to. Meanwhile, for a fascinating examination of the potential of iLiad-style tech for the academic world, see Peter van de Graaf’s PowerPoint. – David Rothman

Gene Miller CoteE-book acceptance has been a long time coming. Viable hardware, interchangeable formats and a universal standard would go a long way towards bringing e-books into the mainstream. iRex has an opportunity to push the reading public towards a real e-reading solution. The iLiad in its present form is a long odyssey away from epic success.

Before buying my iLiad, I read everything I could find about the device, talked to the iRex people and actually held one in my hands last May. One of the main attractions was the promise of reading PDF eBooks on a large screen. I am, after all, an e-book publisher and have lots of PDF files to read.

After a seemingly endless wait, my iLiad arrived. The packaging is beautiful and the form factor is exactly right—slim and light. The reader as currently shipped, however, has three significant limitations:

The documentation

The documentation did not come with the device. The only paper was a 5×7 sheet that welcomes you to the world of electronic reading and then warns you that if the iLiad runs out of power your unit will be irrevocably damaged. Interestingly enough, there is no indication that you should charge the machine before turning it on, or indeed, how to do that.

Screen readability

The PDF reading software shows a full page in approximately a five-point typeface. The software does not allow the user to adjust the font size. The E-Ink technology shows a clean crisp image that is virtually impossible to read because the font is so small.

The PDF reader

It might be possible to persist in reading the very small type face, but the real killer is that the device will not read protected PDF files. All of the literature, packaging and documentation clearly state that the device reads PDFs. There is no mention that it won’t read protected files. Incidentally, there are no search functions available; an unexpected weakness.

The overall implementation has other noteworthy flaws: the unit freezes on a regular basis, there is no power management and an exceedingly slow screen-refresh rate occasionally leads to ghosting.

As a long time software and hardware developer, my view is that this device is barely at beta quality and yet it is being sold as a finished consumer product. The documentation and the Web site both state that new software will be regularly released. Obviously iRex realizes that it has work to do, but the company never uses the word beta in describing the product.

All of the problems I encountered are eminently fixable. None of them are serious enough to damage the long term prospects for the device. Unfortunately, they have done the consumers and themselves a disservice in the short term.

It is hard to figure out the iRex management strategy. iRrex is on a short timeline with Sony and Jinke at its heels. On one level it makes sense to rush to market. On the other hand, all the advantages of being first to market stand to be obliterated by the poor implementation.

While this incarnation is certainly a disappointment, it is too early to write it off. The E-Ink screen is a true breakthrough technology. It is important to remember that e-books are about the reading experience and not about technology.

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Genene Miller Cote is a publisher, software developer and a marketer with a decade of experience in e-commerce and Internet-based marketing strategies. Her company (DigitalPulp Publishing) and its DPPstore were created to help authors, self publishers, and independent press take advantage of the e-book opportunity.

(iLiad PowerPoint found via Paul Miller‘s comments in the IWR Blog.)

 
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