Lately I’ve been getting a lot of referral links from google images for the pictures I posted of the iRex iLiad e-ink reader. I thought this curious, so I did a search for “e-ink” on google images. Sure enough, the first two images are linked to my webpage. It’s rather ironic that my images, which are stock photos from iRex, are ranked higher than the iRex itself.
In any case, I came across this picture on the google image search, which looked like an iLiad in the wild. It turns out someone (named “Yak” on the forum where the image is) bought one for 500 euro before the public release somehow.
The iLiad is currently on sale for 649 euro to the general public.
Yak mentioned that the iLiad came with a stylus, and is touch-sensitive – you can write on it. Yak doesn’t mention if it is touch-sensitive, as in “use your finger” passive digitizer, or “stylus only” active digitizer, so I nosed around on the iRex site. I found a docs page. In the User Manual v2.7 (pdf), it explicitly states this uses Wacom Pen-abled technology. Yay! This is what the Tecra M7 uses. They even incorporated a power-saving feature in the iLiad – the digitizer turns off after 3 minutes if not used. I don’t think the M7 has this feature… though I’m not sure.
As e-readers go, the iLiad is definitely the pack-leader for now.
- XGA (1024 x 768) resolution, vs. Sony’s VGA (800×600)
- Screen size = 122 x 163 mm (4.8 x 6.4 in.), or 8″ diagonal
- Wi-fi connectivity (connects to a special iRex site only, not web browsing currently… nuts) – only one that has this to my knowledge. Supports standard wired 10/100 LAN as well.
- Wacom Penabled – read and write!
- 128 MB Flash memory
- Accepts USB memory sticks, CF type II, MMC cards for memory expansion
- 400 Mhz Intel X-Scale processor
Yak reports that the current firmware isn’t very good at power management. The charge does have a set lifetime (~7 hours) because the Wi-fi cannot be turned off. She reports that future updates will give more power management options, and speed up page refresh.
This product still isn’t quite mature enough for me to want it, even if I had the ~ US$ 830 extra to spend on such a thing.
Features I’d like to see incorporated:
- Letter size (8.5 x 11 in.) or A4 size (210 x 297 mm) screen. Anything smaller isn’t really useful for taking notes
- Wi-fi that isn’t crippled (e.g., can browse any page you want)
- faster processor (reportedly, the 2 second lag right now is not due to the e-ink itself having a slow refresh, but because the processor has trouble with vector graphics. It’s a bit better with text though.)
