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iLiad news: A complaint and an ‘ultimate “all-you-want-to-know” video’
August 5, 2006 | 9:43 am
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By David Rothman
Check out the “ultimate ‘all-you-want-to-know’ video” of the iLiad E Ink machine. Use this link. Yes, the actual quality of the iLiad screen is better than the photo suggests.
In Other iLiad News, someone has complained to MobileRead about the machine’s performance. Ron Lauzon has responded.
Ron says he now uses his iLiad to “read the content that I used to read on my Palm. I have found that I can read much longer on the iLiad than on my Palm TX.” Ouch. I just bought a TX. Still, I’m using it as much for Web browsing–not a strength of the iLiad–as for books.
Bottom line
Keep an open mind about the iLiad right now. iRex is selling current iLiads with the understanding that development work is not finished, and even then the machine will have the generic limitations of E Ink. Also, in picking hardware, go by your needs, not someone else’s.
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Comments:
I can’t imagine using the iLiad in its current form. I am one of those people who *flips* between pages, reading a section, then refering back to content on the previous page, then checking illustrations and reference material. I can’t tell whether the machine’s processor is woefully underpowered, or the ludicrously long page flipping times are simply inherent in the technology, but as it stands, it’s simply useless.
I’ll stick with my LifeDrive for eBook reading, thank you.
Hi, McQ. FYIW, my old Librie had a delay between pages, but I could live with it. The iLiad is like to get better. Meanwhile, however, I can understand your reluctance to buy. While this thread is really about the iLiad, feel free to share with us your impressions of the LifeDrive for e-reading, especially compared to the TX. Obviously you’ve got more storage to work with. Thanks. David
My brother-in-law has a TX, and from what I can see, it has either the same or a very similar display to the LifeDrive. The postives for the LD are that it has lots of storage, and (for me at least) 320×480 in that form factor provides a perfectly readable experience. Most of the negatives stem from the decision to wart an HD into a device that was never intended to support one: *extremely* long boot times, delays when loading code/data into the ram cache (or even just turning off the power), poor battery life, etc.
Given the size of SD cards now, the TX is a much better choice for an e-book reading platform. In fact, I’m not sure *what* the LD is good at. If the HD was 10x larger, it might be a good multi-media device, but…
I have been using eReader since the days when they were still called “Peanut Press”. Given that it is available for my PDA, my phone, and both my PC and my Mac, and will read all the books I have ever purchased from them as well as unencrypted PDBs, I am actually pretty happy with it. I would love to see them put some effort into improving the library management side of the problem — their current GUI just doesn’t scale to having hundreds of books available on one device. I’m sure I have at least 100 purchased ebooks on my LD, as well as a couple of hundred other personal documents and gutenberg texts.
Thanks, McQ, for the additional info.
> I would love to see them put some effort into improving the library management side of the problem — their current GUI just doesn’t scale to having hundreds of books available on one device.
So you’re not happy with eReader’s category approach? How could it be improved? Seems to me you could do categories by genre. (Meant as a question.)
Thanks,
David
The lag in rendering is unacceptable. I can’t imagine reading a book and having to wait a few seconds between page turns. If the Sony Reader is like this, it will spell doom for the reader. Let’s hope Apple really does come out with a reader.
> The iLiad is like[ly] to get better.
Call me cynical, but I never expect something to improve past launch, regardless of the manufacturer’s reassurances. You’re reliant on way too many variables that are outside both your & their influence: if it’s a commercial failure at launch, will rendering improvements still be likely?
More and more we’re being pressed into active beta-testing of commercial products…and paying for that privilege. I understand that iRex are at least being up-front that this is the case; one has to wonder how long Apple were using the white plastic they fabricated the Macbooks from, given how quickly the first discolouration issues arose.
Hey, Jane and Alex, normally I’d be cynical, but as I understand it, file sizes can be a factor (scroll down to end of just-linked page). And that in turn might reflect differences in e-book software. Let’s see what happens when some good alternatives to PDF show up on the iLiad and othe rmachines–especially if they can load just part of a book into the device. Meanwhile, I’ll check with iRex. If refresh rates are not likely to improve with better software, then I want to say so. Whatever the facts are! Thanks. David
> > I would love to see them put some effort into improving the library management side of the problem — their current GUI just doesn’t scale to having hundreds of books available on one device.
> So you’re not happy with eReader’s category approach? How could it be improved? Seems to me you could do categories by genre. (Meant as a question.)
It’s not exactly the category based organization itself, but more the interface to it. Here’s an example of a place where it breaks down: The other day, I stuck an old 256Meg SD card into the LD and noticed that it had about 50 old e-texts on it. All of these were already on the harddrive of the LD so I wanted to delete them. With the current software, the process looks like this:
- switch the category to “all” (in case the two copies were categorized differently)
- repeat 50 times:
– pick delete from the menu
– find an entry in the list that shows up twice
– tap the details button (for both) to find out which storage device they are on (by guessing based on the amount of free space — bleh!)
– choose the one on the SD card
– hit the delete button
– cancel the gratuitous attempt to get you to open another text
Basically, this whole architecture — based on separate lists for delete, open, beam, etc. — is flawed. They need a single, “library management” view, that lets you perform any of the operations (and *definitely* allows multi-select). That, implemented in a way that performs well, plus tagging support (i.e. multi-categorization), and live search would be just about perfect for me.
OK, McQ, you’ve won me over. I see your points. Same observations might well apply to other e-reading systems. Thanks. David
“all indications are that the battery life will be long. Right now, I get about 5 hours on a charge”
WTF?!? 5 h is nothing! I probably get 5 h from my ultra-portable laptop if I lock it to 300 MHz, for crying out loud. Anyhing below 20 h would not be anywhere near acceptable, so 5 h is not an indication that it would have good battery life.
And it takes over a fracking minute to boot the PoS?!? 5 seconds would be too long, over a minute is ridiculous. Is it running XP or computing the 10,000 first prime numbers or what? If a 1 MHz C64 can boot in a few seconds then so should the 1000+ times faster iLiad!
And 4000 ms page turns?! And that’s not even to a random position in the file, but to the next page. This would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
I understand that it’s still in beta, but not even in my wildest dreams could I hope that they could optimize it to be fast enough not to make reading a nerve-racking experience that makes my stomach cramp.
Thanks, Marcus, for zeroing in in that five-hour issue. If I get a chance, I might bounce the info off iRex and see what the response is. – David
Since last week I am experimenting with the iLiad. It has a beautifull screen; but is still a project under construction. See for my comments http://buziaulane.blogspot.com starting August 20, 2006.