As with the Kindle, the wireless plan offers unlimited e-book and periodical downloads and is included in the price of the DR800SG.
The company said that Kindle was the first e-book reader on the U.S. market with a cellular Internet connection, supplied by Sprint Nextel (
News -
Alert) Corp. The DR800SG is claimed to be more advanced, and its screen size is 8.1-inch, which is in between the size of the two models of Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle. It is unclear what the optimal display size will be for e-readers, but some people want screens larger than 6 inches. Many people find the 9.7-inch screen of the Kindle DX too large.
The DR800SG touch screen only works with a stylus and has 2GB built-in memory which works out to around 1500 e-books. The formats supported on the Irex e-reader are the Adobe PDF, EPUB, Newspaper Direct, Fictionwise, eReader, TXT. The e-reader has a user-replaceable battery and a leather cover.
The DR800SG has tied up with
Barnes & Noble's e-bookstore and for newspapers and other periodicals. Irex will continue an already established partnership with
NewspaperDirect. Irex has a deal with Best Buy to sell the DR800SG in Best Buy stores nationwide. According to the
New Times, this week "Best Buy is training thousands of its employees in how to talk about and demonstrate devices like the Sony Reader and Irex, and adding a new area to its 1,048 stores to showcase the devices."
The Irex reader has no note-taking capability at the time of launch, but company sources said claim that the feature will be added via a free upgrade in the near feature.
In its
write-up of the DR800SG, The New York Times cited market research firm iSuppli in saying that more than 5.2 million e-readers will be sold this year worldwide. As
reported earlier, worldwide e-book shipments are expected to reach 28.6 million units in 2013. Market drivers include new entrants to market, international expansion of e-book availability, anticipated price declines, and the electronic distribution of newspapers.
Edited by
Amy Tierney