iRex Technologies iLiad in Ebook Readers

It's the onboard software that lets it down, though. It isn't that it's unusable - you can browse your virtual library and read eBooks on it - but it isn't as intuitive or polished as a device this innovative deserves. You can't, for example, copy a book from a USB flash drive to the internal memory without hooking it up to a PC. It's also fairly slow - not a problem when you're staring at static pages, but it can take ten seconds to open a file, and a second or so to change pages.

So we're left with great hardware, let down by poor software. It does the job, but it lacks the polish of a truly consumer-orientated device. If iRex can fix the software issues and, ultimately, bring down the price, it could even have a potential iPod for books on its hands.

Author: Will Head