TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

USA Today hates iRex Digital Reader 1000S: $749 ‘kludge’ isn’t ‘user friendly’ enough

By David Rothman

iRex e-readers have won over many a serious e-booker.

The sleek new 1000 series strikes me, at first glance from afar, as a joy for recreational reading at home. Not just the business uses that iRex Technologies  is focusing on. Thin and stylish, the machines boast 10.2-inch screens and can even survive a drop of a meter.

I hated to send back a review unit of an earlier model, the iLiad 2nd Edition. Especially I loved the ease of flipping pages. iRex and Sony, while not perfect, might well be the champs of ergonomics in the E Ink World.

The nonmysteries behind iRex’s mass market challenge

So why aren’t iRex e-readers a mass market phenomenon?

It isn’t just the prices, which start at US$599 for the iRex Book Edition (now out for stock—some hope here?). Nor generic e-book problems such as DRM and eBabel.

Despite pleas from me and others, iRex refuses to simplify its software. Nor has it made its wireless as easy to use as the Kindle’s. Either iRex isn’t using focus groups or is failing to use them properly. I’m baffled. Yes, I am eager to hear from my friends at iRex and others who might disagree.

USA Today: Glitchy even by beta standards

The latest unfortunate result of iRex’s shortcomings, in the ease of use department, could be a USA Today review headlined $749 electronic reader by iRex could be more user-friendly.

I’d like to catch up with a 1000S and see for myself, once iRex has had more time to wipe out glitches (as an aside, there’s also a cheaper $649 model, the 1000, without a stylus). Meanwhile Personal Tech columnist Edward C. Baig’s impressions would certainly jibe with my past ones of iRex devices as a consumer products; I just hope iRex’s business-oriented strategy succeeds. Later in this post I’ll pass on some cool, B2BISH wrinkles from another source.

More from the USA Today pan

But first, as an act of tough love for a company I very much like, let me reproduce Baig’s comments at length, while keeping in mind that B2B apps aren’t his main focus:

The large display and E Ink-based screen are well suited for digital newspapers and other reading materials, though at least one PDF document I added was tough to make out. To be fair, the original document was in color, while the iRex device is gray-scale.

I sampled PDFs of Alice in Wonderland, Crime and Punishment and other works. You can jump to pages in a document by using the stylus to tap on tabs at the bottom of the screen. Or you can use your finger to lightly tap physical arrow sensors on the outside of the screen.

But the system is slow to boot up, and the interface is unattractive and unintuitive. If I turned the machine on when the SD card (with content) was inserted, the first and only thing visible on the home screen is an icon for settings.

Icons for documents, inbox and help showed up only if I inserted the SD card after the machine was turned on. An oddly labeled "up a level" icon on the home screen is a dead giveaway that iRex could use a lesson in designing far-friendlier software.

By summoning a main menu, you can rotate the display, add bookmarks, find words and look up dictionary definitions. But the only way to turn the device off is to summon that menu again and tap or navigate to a turn-off-device icon.

I’ll make certain allowances for a beta device. But I’m hard-pressed to recommend something this expensive and this much of a kludge.

Enough said. Now, far more positively, here are some nifty B2B possibilities passed on to me from Weibe de Jager of Ebookreaders.nl (thanks Weibe!):

iRex will provide businesses with local IDS (irex delivery server) systems in the future. That will allow one person to upload documents, which will be automatically distributed to a number of ’subscribed’ dr 1000’s. This of course is a very important step forward for e-learning applications, project teams composed of members which are working at different locations, and business documentation and knowledge distribution systems in general. Willem Endhoven told me that the local IDS feature will be available in the near future.

Of course, some might argue, "Why not take care to make all documents electronic to begin with, so that regular e-mail or other alternatives will work?" But that isn’t always possible.

Along the way, Weibe shared with me his thoughts on the one-meter drop test—once again confirming my high opinion of iRex as a hardware company. I’d earlier quoted another astute e-book connoisseur, Robert, who’d attended the Amsterdam news conference where test took place. I was curious about the details of the methodology, and Weibe’s comments are enlightening:

I was there too…Ome of the iRex engineers dropped [the iRex] from about 1 meter on the floor (no carpet) and it survived. Ok, it fell horizontally, not on one of its corners (which would maybe be more damaging), but the "test" was very impressive anyway. Later the engineer told me that glass can actually bend, as long as it is supported well by a rigid framework. They have put quite some effort in the mechanical side of the new hardware.

So there you go, gang. There’s a lot more to iRex—both the machines and the company—than the USA Today article by itself would suggest. I just hope that iRex can get the software and wireless issues right.

Guys, do you think you might want to collaborate with Lexcycle (Stanza) and Feedbooks toward a seamless interface through which people can buy books, especially the nonDRMed ePub variety? Perhaps you can look beyond the standard suspects and think about creating a new e-book ecosystem.

The fact that you go for quality hardware, without cutting corners, might actually be one argument for experimenting with nonDRMed alternatives.

People should be able to enjoy books, too, for years, not just the hardware, and that is what e-book standards and lack of "protection" can help accomplish.