14 DAY TRIAL // For the past couple of days, iRex, the manufacturer of the iLiad and iLiad Book Edition portable eBook readers, has been touting a product that, according to the company, was supposed to forever change the way in which we perceive e-reading (reading books or text materials in electronic format, while on the go).
It did manage to deliver on its promise (of launching a new product) by introducing the iRex 1000 Series of digital readers, but it's actually quite debatable whether the three new models in this family will actually stand a chance against the similar offerings from Amazon, Sony or PlasticLogic (a newcomer to this market, whose product is still to prove its actual worth).
According to iRex, the new 1000 series is designed especially for the business sector, featuring a 10.2 inch screen (with 16 grey tones) to allow easy reading and referencing of documents from A4 PowerPoint presentations to PDF files and from HTML to TXT and JPEG. Despite the large screen size, the device is actually quite slender (1.2 cm deep) and lightweight (just 570 grams).
None of the three new 1000 models provide any built-in memory, but instead they rely on 1 GB SD cards for this particular task. Additionally, the portable digital readers feature a mini-USB connector that can be used either for transferring various files to the reader or for charging the built-in Li-Ion battery, which offers an average functioning time estimated at several days.
We've seen what the three new readers have in common, now let's take a look at the differences. The DR1000 base version is equipped with a USB connector, while the DR1000 S adds a stylus for writing or making annotations to the various pages. Finally, the DR1000 SW is the flagship model of the series, incorporating, besides the stylus, a WIFI and Bluetooth module.
The DR1000 and DR1000S retail for around $649 and $749 respectively (a lot more than Amazon's Kindle), while the SW version, albeit not available immediately, will sell for roughly $900. These prices are actually pretty steep, and given the fact that the market of portable readers is getting a bit more competitive (with a serious threat posed by netbooks as well), they might actually turn customers away from iRex's products.
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