Best Electronic Readers

iRex iLiad Book Edition List Price: $699.00 Used From: $474.00 Average Rating:

Description

The iLiad 2nd Edition is a portable eReader. Read and Write notes with the Wacom stylus. Annotating pdfs is easy as writing on paper. Store notes in the notes folder. No more paper! Print documents to the iLiad documents folder. Store Mobipocket Books, in the Books folder. Mobipocket company with more than 50,000 books for sale. Les Echos a Paris business newspaper subscription available for additional charge.

Features

• 8.1" ePaper, E Ink Display. Read in Full Daylight
• Free Software Updates
• WiFi, USB, and Ethernet connections
• Portable reading for pdfs, Mobipocket Books, HTML, TXT
• Stores thousands of documents with external memory

Reviews

The ILIAD Reader is of a very poor quality indeed. This is a very, very expensive piece of kit that as an electronic reader fails on every level: 1) It is TERRIBLY SLOW: it takes for ever to get started, for ever more to find the book you need, and like a tortoise when it comes to turning pages! 2) It is big and heavy: most unconfortable to hold in your hand,bulky to carry with you around. 3) It is very temperamental: I had problems with it from the begining as it would not be recognised by my computer. Also, when you are out there and in the middle of your reading experience...it all of a sudden friezes for no reason! 4) It is supposed to work with mobipocket: forget it, if what you want to use it for is books with tables and graphics (like medical books, for example), as these apppear SO SMALL that you will not be able to read them! 5) It is supposed to work with Adobe: again out of luck here, as very often the writting on the adobe documents is quite packed and small. You then need to blow it up... sounds simple?..well, IT IS NOT. You will be forever struggling with the stupid system the Iliad reader uses for this, that blows up the page you are viewing...leaving on sight only one section of it at a time. The problem is that a lot of the time you end up with the wrong bit of page! And on and on you struggle to get that right, which TAKES FOR EVER (very slow this machine...remember?) AND consumes all the battery. 6) And last, but not least, THE CUSTOMER SERVICE IS AWFUL: you will be confronted with a totaly inpersonal system whereby your questions go into anebulous cibernetic territory from which you get thrown back a reply that comes about one week later, signed by an anonymous assistant (you will NOT deal with a person), that will give you a very general reply and will not accept any responsability. And the more inpatient you get, the thicker the wall that isolates you from 'them', the more delayed the answers, the more unsuported you feel (YOU ARE). And all of this at an outrageously expensive price! When I bought it I naively assumed the high price would be buying me high quality!!! At least you won't be able to say that nobody warned you...

Learn from my mistake and avoid purchasing any iRex product. I purchased an iRex iLiad three years ago. At first, it was everything that I'd been looking for, but then overnight it began freezing up and requiring use of the emergency reset button on the back (which also occasionally didn't function). And then, after

A couple of months ago, I bought an iRex iLiad. It lasted a whole two weeks. I don't know if it's common to all e-ink displays, but the display on the iLiad is unusably delicate--I destroyed mine just by treating the iLiad just like I would any other book, stacking a couple of other books on top of it. iRex is, of course, perfectly aware of this critical flaw--damage to the display isn't covered under warranty. It seems to me that not only is iRex knowingly selling a product unfit for normal use, it's not even making any effort to caution potential buyers about this defect. Stay away from iRex.

I love this thing! Finally somebody has figured out how to provide an electronic device that allows you to eliminate paper. I am a consultant in the software industry, and use it for reading technical manuals (PDFs). I have also used it to read some paperback novels I downloaded, and that also works great. This device is very flexible in the type of material (pdf, text file, ebooks, etc), so unlike other readers, you are not locked into a proprietary format. It's also a little bit bigger than other readers. If you only read electronic versions of paperbacks, the smaller size of other readers might be appealing. However, the iRex is an excellent format for reading larger format material (i.e. PDFs). The electronic ink is just plain cool. I've had the iRex for about a year and am still amazed by the clarity of the print...maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm pretty sure it is magic! If you are looking for an electronic book, buy this one.

For the price, you would expect this system to be a WHOLE lot better than the competition. The main advantage this system has over the Sony, or the Kindle is its support of open formats so that you aren't locked into one particular source for books (though Sony has opened up it's content somewhat to allow you to add non-DRM content which has been a big plus -- the Sony store and the LRF format is still provide superior and more enjoyable formats because they were custom made for the reader). The interface and the feel of the iLiad is much better than the Kindle. However, I still like the Sony better for the solid construction -- not to mention the price. If the iLiad was in the same cost range as its competitors, it would probably be a much more serious contender. However as it stands now, you can buy 2 kindles or a kindle + a sony for what it costs for the iLiad. That will significantly limit the Iliad's ability to cut into the market share that the Kindle and Sony readers are starting to carve out.