At one point in time it seemed like
iriver had a monopoly on insane, imaginative designs. Sure, it was mostly centered around PMPs, but iriver's stuff in its heyday was fun enough to make even a
screenless MP3 player seem interesting. Lately, however, things seem a little more conservative. Take this
iriver Story, for instance: it's a sexy device that seems very on par with other e-readers on the market... and that's about it. We played around with it a bit on the show floor, and found the keyboard to be pretty great, the design solid and slim, and the software pretty slow. With all the extra function-specific buttons on the keyboard, there's less of the arbitrary UI navigation limitations posed by some of the more simplistic e-book readers, but there's nothing so amazing or useful on the device that it would tempt the Kindle faithful. We're particularly worried about book load times, but it'll take some more time with the unit to really see how it stacks up across the board. For now you can check out a video walkthrough of the device after the break.
posted January 8th 2010 10:02PM
There are WAY too many e-readers these days. Most of these will fail because this market is now officially over saturated!
@XChrisX It would be nice if Engadget put a table comparing all the e-readers.
@bo3of That would be very helpful. And I'm not against e-readers, it just seems like every company out there lately has one, and the smaller ones will slip through the cracks un noticed.
@XChrisX
These days?
We only increased the number of models from 5 to 100 this week.
@XChrisX
If there are too many for people to choose between, poor sales will bring the price down... this is a good thing.
So if nothing special, why sin't this cheaper.
@NeoXY Agreed.
Hard to pick and choose at trade shows but if at all possible please show the pdf support and zoom in action if you can when reviewing e-readers.
I made a ereader in my basement. Engadget, will you write an article on my ebook? Lol
so can we declare this the year of the e-reader yet? Or have the votes between e-readers and slate style tablets not been counted?
I saw someone using a kindle2 today and it just looked clunky and obtrusive. I don't see how one of these would be better than buying a book at the current price.
@dystroglycan The point is they don't want to buy an effin book. That is why they buy a digitized version of it. If people wanted to buy physical books then no company would be releasing these products.
Why are all these E-Readers white? Can someone please make me a sexy black E-Reader up to the quality level of the Kindle?
@FauxNews
Sony Daily Edition, or the Touch Edition.
@Maxwell I knew I could count on Sony, although I am sure it costs a significant amount more.
@Maxwell How rude of me not to respond with a thank you. Thank you
There are way to many e-readers out there right now. It's like every major company has to come out with one. Next thing you know Apple, Microsoft, and Google will be making one also. Well this is quite possible with Apple because all these rumors for the iSlate, this device will most likely be primarily used as a e-reader.
**Sigh**.... I used to love iriver. I had a series of their PMP's for a few years with my favourite of all time being the ifp-590. It was the most awesome music player for the gym, went round the world with me and survived till an ill fated spill accident, nothing at that time came close. Their products were always, usable, functionally rich and ahead of the others with ridiculous build quality as well. I wish they'd get back into that mindset.
Problems to consider:
1. The Zoom with the four steps, should be possible to customize in settings, so I would be able to have it on medium/sec.medium/high as my own customized standard.
2. Zoom in both versions does not work in landscape mode. Why?
3. The corner Zoom has to be easier in functionality, (sorry but to 80es software engineer loves his idea)
4. When I have a book on my SD card and read in it, the Story does not save my Reflow and Zoom settings, this means that i every time I read a book from my SD card have to inter the settings once more. (sorry but that's really crappy)
5. Why does the Story not recognize any book in the book section when i only have my books on a SD card, should recognize them. (have my books on diffrent SD cards, categorized)
This means that each time re-inter another SD card it shall remember where i was in the book and what Reflow/zoom i had, otherwise it wont be real to call it an expansion possibility.
6. The Reflow display some pdf, very weird, exampled under:
Fred is fat and lives in a shel
ter while eating fish with his toes, and usually he sleeps with fresh herring under his pillow.
Unfortunate for the other resi
dents in the shelter, he is resisting any fish related arguments.
So it breaks the lines in some words, this is really not acceptable, please fix it.
7. Must agree with critics that it is cheap not to deliver a cover with the story.
8. There should be a possibility to set the story, to re-inter directly into the book you just read last time, so you dont have to g0 through the menu every time.
9. I can not bookmark pages in pdf's.
10. Recent book, should be resent books, if you are reading several at the time.