The iRex iLiad 2nd Edition

As part of my attempt to reduce my paper consumption, I purchased an iRex Iliad 2/e off ebay last week and have been configuring it. This is a wonderful device. In terms of hardware, it is just powerful enough to do everything I need it to do---read and mark up journal articles. I was originally looking into the Sony PRS-505, or Amazon Kindle, but I eliminated those devices from consideration after reading Richard Chappell's review, which said the Kindle's 6-inch, 600x800 resolution screen is insufficient to display scanned PDF articles like those from JSTOR. The iLiad's 8-inch 768x1024 resolution screen is just good enough to display JSTOR articles comfortably.

Hardware-wise I think the iLiad can be substantially improved in only three ways:

1. Faster processor - the current machine takes 45 seconds to boot, and opening a 3.5MB, 700-page PDF (e.g., a draft of Derek Parfit's On What Matters) can take more than 10 seconds.
2. Higher resolution screen - 768x1024 (160dpi) is still fairly grainy; pumping things up to 200- or even 300-dpi would make a big difference. I think an 8" (diagonal) screen represents a nice trade-off between screen size and device portability, so I don't think a bigger screen would be all that convenient. (A second screen, in a folding format, would be a substantial improvement.)
3. Higher contrast screen - the current screen displays a wonderfully solid and stable black lettering, but does so on a greyish screen which can be hard to read if there's not enough light. Here's a picture that illustrates this:
   

It's always nice to improve battery life, but I'm always able to charge it daily, so 15 hours is enough. Perhaps a slide-out keyboard would be useful for writing comments into papers, but for me being able to scribble, underline and highlight using a stylus is enough.

Of course, the biggest problem with the iLiad is its price: $699 is just too high for the device to gain widespread adoption. Try to get one second-hand.

On the software side, there are many ways the device could be improved. What's great (if you're technically inclined) is that the device is on an open platform (linux), and there's a robust user community that has produced a number of must-have applications for the device. It seems the central "base" for this community is MobileRead's iLiad forum. What follows is a guide to setting up the iLiad with (what I take to be) essential software enhancements.

1. Get a CF card: this is the only way you can "reformat" an iLiad to return it to factory condition. You can find 32GB cards for about $80 now. And the MobileRead forum has a guide to reformatting your iLiad. Make sure you are running the latest version (currently 2.12) of the software.
2. Unlock developer access: This will let you run custom applications. Again, instructions for obtaining the iLiad developer package are found in the MobileRead forum
3. Install PDF enhancements: The best way to do this is to use daudi's Multi iPDF installer. This lets you select from a variety of different PDF readers. You need to be running the 2.12 software to use this. Use 2.12 for the iLiad 2/e, and 2.12.1 for the iLiad ebook edition.
4. Install more Software: You can do all sorts of things with this device. Here's a MobileRead post which lists more useful applications.

With this, you'll have a very usable reader for academic purposes.

Note: the iLiad's screen is only just big enough to display a single article page; there isn't enough room to display both the text on the page and the whitespace that surrounds it. A "facing pages" scan won't be readable. In those cases, you need to zoom. I manually crop my PDFs, which takes about 5-10 minutes per paper, depending on how bad the source is. There is much talk about adding an autozoom feature into the PDF reader, but as of today, nothing has been released yet.

EDIT (9/22): iRex has released an new product, the iRex Digital Reader 1000s. For $750, you get a larger, 10.2" 1024x1280 resolution screen, better battery life, a faster processor, and an upgraded interface. (You lose wifi, though. The 1000sw will be released soon, and it adds wifi and bluetooth for an extra $100.) The screen on the 1000s is large enough to display documents with a margin (so no extra cropping/zooming is needed). And the pictures make it look like the screen is higher contrast. It is likely that the iLiad interface will be upgraded as well, though no announcement has been made yet. I still prefer the smaller format of the iLiad, but this upgrade looks like a very significant improvement.