| iLiad Reader Review
Bron: Egofood
07.05.07
So I picked up the iRex Iliad reader, and so far
I am way more impressed than I thought I'd be. What does that mean?
Well lets break this down. I read an entire book on the device,
one sized by Manybooks.net specifically for the Iliad, and so I
have a good feed for what it means to read on it now.
First, the screen: A nice roomy 8 inch electrophoretic
screen. This is the E-Ink that has been talked about for a few years
now. The screen on the Iliad is has 16 shades of gray and is functionally
a 768x1024x160dpi screen. The contrast is really quite remarkable.
Not as good as an actual book, but this technology is really getting
close.
The real issue of sorts for these devices is the
ghosting and the interpage reset flashing of the screen. It seems
if you are going to be updating a significant portion of the screen
it will cycle the screen. I don't like it but I also don't think
that it is a huge deal. The ghosting has the effect of degrading
the experience as well, but it isn't a major big deal.
Page turn speed could be faster, too, but it isn't
a big enough problem to break the flow of reading for me (and I
am a fast reader). It is significant when the pdf is heavily graphic
(like a graphic novel) but acceptable for more pdfs, for me. Screen
size being what it is, your PDFs should be sized for an A4 paper
to give a good experience on the device.
The pen based input is fun, but unless the software
is improved, I can think of only a few tasks that would excite me
to use this feature, and that is editing a document. By editing
I mean "editing", as in, reading a manuscript and noting
where it needs to be edited. The delay inherent in the system right
now is annoying and frustrating if you try to sketch something.
The Iliad companion software so far is pretty disappointing.
They were going for syncing functionality for the machine, but the
implementation is horribly weak. Luckily the device is functionally
a usb hard drive. Also, the 'news, books, docs, notes' buttons only
apply to the limited internal memory, not on the externally changable
cf or sd cards.
SD cards work, by the way, even though only mmc
is noted to be supported. I haven't plugged in a CF card yet. Settings
are easy enough to , ah, set, and I had the Iliad on the network,
updated and runing quite quickly. The presence of wireless, like
the pen enabled input, was neat but in the end nothing all that
exciting due to the lack of fun things to do with the pen or on
the internet from the device.
The software that is running on the Linux based
Iliad is, well, serviceable. I've certainly used worse software
on a ce device, but they could make the device quite a bit more
usable. The mobipocket reader which recently pushed to the reader
is pretty great, but I think that the main reader app should be
revved to be just as good. The Sony software is, well, better than
the Iliad software, but it is my hope that Iliad continues to improve.
Also, power management needs a fair amount of work,
as does the aforementioned ui. As I found out, if you lose your
pen, then you can't set a variety of settings. Also, I want to smash
the ethernet/usb/power dongle. It angers me. The device should have
USB built in and charge from it. To add insult to injury, it wants
a B style USB connector to connect to the dongle, while every other
device I own wants a usb-mini.
The form factor is just about perfect. Great texturization
of the chassis and the page flip bar is brilliant. Good, big screen
with decent enough contrast. Books are better for contrast, but
reading the Iliad is like reading a very thin-papered paperback
book.
But...is it worth the price? If it were cheaper,
then I'd say yes, right now, it's pretty expensive, if useful. I'll
post again in a few months, if I'm still using it and after a few
trips to London....
Chris DiBona -
egofood.blogspot.com
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