iRex DR1000S reviewed by The Register
By Paul Biba
The Register, the site with the best logo in the world, reviews the iRex DR1000S ereader. Here are some highlights. You can find the full review here.
… Electronic-ink screens have been pushed into the role of electronic books but, like Amazon, iRex has realised that the real money isn’t in electronic books at all, but in electronic document readers. Executives, or journalists – who have to plough through enormously long documents – will pay handsomely for a device that enables them to easily read, and make notes on, such documents with the minimum of fuss. …
In short the screen is a joy, and the device is so slim and that one quickly starts carrying it around like a clipboard, and using it in much the same way. If you ever wanted one of those electronic pads they’re always handing the captain on the Starship Enterprise then this is it. It may not have a colour screen, but everything else is here. …
… because while the hardware is superb, the user interface is the kind of mess that can only result from engineers being let loose with icons. Luckily the functionality is limited to navigating directories and a few settings, but you wouldn’t know that from the appallingly designed processes. …
Battery life is also disappointing – the capacitive screen draws power even if the display doesn’t, and we found a fully charged battery would rarely allow 10 hours of reading. We were using complex PDF files, and taking lots of notes, but we would still have hoped for longer. Luckily, the DR1000S will turn itself off after being ignored for half an hour, unlike its predecessor, the iLiad.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I’m dying to play with one of these. From what I can see you “print” to an SD card and then transfer the card o the reader where you can make notes on it.
1.) Can you then move the annotated version back to your computer for email or storage?
2.) Is there a sync cradle that you could print to a queue and then sync to get what you printed?
3.) I’m assuming you can create new hand-written documents on the device, but can they be sync’d back to the desktop and OCR’d into a word processor?
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Any iRex employees out there want to offer up a corporate demo unit for field tests in s semiconductor company? :o)