2th hand dr1000s or iliad 2th

[dwarrel]

Ive been playing with the idea to buy a ereader for my studie for a while. A lot of my books and information is also given in pdf forms. So i was hoping to spare some money buy using a ereader instead of buying the books.
Now since im a student i cannot afford buying a new device. So with a bit of luck i found two 2hand ereader the dr1000s for 200euro or the iliad 2th for 150 euro. Both are around a year old and not much used.

But i still have a few questions i was hoping i could get help with.

First off are these prices reasonable?
Does anyone have experience with using one of these two devices as a alternative to study books?
Is there any information about how long most these devices last? (Like the first ipod generation had a reputation of breaking after 1.5 year, its a lot of money for me and since its 2hand i wont have warrenty.)
Do both devices run linux? And are they both evenly editable?
Do they have a bookmark function in wich i can quickly switch from page A to B and how many bookmarks are possible?

Also any tips and advice about wich one to choose would be more then welkom.

Many many thanks in advance
Greets Dwarrel

[rvs]

Hi Dwarrel,

I'll try to answer your questions as best I can, though the answers may differ wildly from those that others might give. I can only relate about the DR1000, as I don't have any experience with the Iliad.

Originally Posted by dwarrel

First off are these prices reasonable?

The price for the DR1000s seems very reasonable. I don't think you'll easily find a cheaper one.

Originally Posted by dwarrel

Does anyone have experience with using one of these two devices as a alternative to study books?

I haven't used it for study, except for self study. So I have read a lot of textbooks (study books), but just for fun In my experience the screen of the DR1000 is just big enough for most textbooks. With full-screen mode and a little zooming it's often quite readable. I wouldn't recommend a smaller screen than the DR1000.
The DR1000 doesn't compare well to real books, though, mostly because of its lack of speed. You can't skip through a book very quickly. If you're planning to use it in the classroom, you might be disappointed because of this.

Originally Posted by dwarrel

Is there any information about how long most these devices last? (Like the first ipod generation had a reputation of breaking after 1.5 year, its a lot of money for me and since its 2hand i wont have warrenty.)

Mine is about 2.5 years old. I can't say much about the reliability of the DR1000, though. It's always a gamble to purchase a device out of warranty. The screen is very breakable of course, so it also depends on you.

I've had one episode a few weeks ago where I thought for sure it was broken but then it slowly but completely recuperated from that. You'll probably have some scary moments with the device, but usually it's just for show .

Originally Posted by dwarrel

Do both devices run linux? And are they both evenly editable?

They both run Linux. Can't compare the 2 in editability/hackability though. They are both no longer supported by Irex (since they've gone bankrupt), so you won't get firmware updates for either.

Originally Posted by dwarrel

Do they have a bookmark function in wich i can quickly switch from page A to B and how many bookmarks are possible?

On most pdf's it's very easy to create bookmarks, and often reasonably easy to use them if you don't use too many. I don't know if there's a theoretical limit on the amount of bookmarks, but I've seen behavior where the DR becomes very slow when using a lot of bookmarks (say 20+), though I'm not sure if this only happens with certain books.

Originally Posted by dwarrel

Also any tips and advice about wich one to choose would be more then welkom.

When choosing between those two, I would say go for the DR1000.

There might be other options though, like using a library, that might suit you better in the end.

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by dwarrel

Ive been playing with the idea to buy a ereader for my studie for a while. A lot of my books and information is also given in pdf forms. So i was hoping to spare some money buy using a ereader instead of buying the books.
Now since im a student i cannot afford buying a new device. So with a bit of luck i found two 2hand ereader the dr1000s for 200euro or the iliad 2th for 150 euro. Both are around a year old and not much used.

But i still have a few questions i was hoping i could get help with.

First off are these prices reasonable?
Does anyone have experience with using one of these two devices as a alternative to study books?
Is there any information about how long most these devices last? (Like the first ipod generation had a reputation of breaking after 1.5 year, its a lot of money for me and since its 2hand i wont have warrenty.)
Do both devices run linux? And are they both evenly editable?
Do they have a bookmark function in wich i can quickly switch from page A to B and how many bookmarks are possible?

Also any tips and advice about wich one to choose would be more then welkom.

Many many thanks in advance
Greets Dwarrel

For .pdfs go for DR1000. Price is ok... better than ok in fact.
As rvs has already mentioned be extra careful with the screen. Company disappeared and there isn't any kind of support.
Just note that paper books are faster to search for some items on the TOC, index or passsing fast through the pages.

Ah, and don't forget to install mackx's improvements.

Iñigo

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by rvs

On most pdf's it's very easy to create bookmarks, and often reasonably easy to use them if you don't use too many. I don't know if there's a theoretical limit on the amount of bookmarks, but I've seen behavior where the DR becomes very slow when using a lot of bookmarks (say 20+), though I'm not sure if this only happens with certain books.

Some technical detail: Bookmarks are stored in the local metadata.db files. When you bookmark a page, a thumbnail of the page is also stored in the database. So the limitations for bookmarks seems to be the size of your SD-card.
W.r.t. performance I do not know how many bookmarks impact it. The code for that is in the closed-source UDS-program. Maybe the thumbnails of the bookmarks are read into memory (it at least needs to read the location to make the special marks on the pages) causing performance problems if there are too many?