Software upgrade 2.0 for DR1000S available in April
In addition to the DR800S software release IREX Technologies is proud to announce the new software for the DR1000S, the release of this software will take place at the same time as the DR800S software. (formal release expected in April)
It is vital that you read the following information before updating any software.
- When updating the software please use a different SD card, all notes on the old SD card will be over written and you will not be able to use them again. Before updating, make a full backup of your SD card. Your old notes will still be viewable.
- Flashing the software forward (2.0) and backward (1.71) will be possible, for this please keep a copy of the old software on your system and install when needed, this will give you the option to read your Mobipocket books and old notes.
General Information
This major release for the DR1000S synchronizes the Digital Reader software platform to a single code-base.
It features the upgraded clear look and feel of the Digital Reader 800, adds an overall improved responsiveness of the GUI and features Adobe® Reader Mobile™ 9.1 EPUB and PDF rendering (including DRM support).
Detailed Features and Improvements
- Completely new DR800-style GUI, including new Menu
- Many performance improvements making the GUI much more responsive
- Minor improvements to Power Management have been made
- DR800-style views (Books, News, Images, Personal Documents) in Content Browser in addition to “SD Card” folder browsing
- ‘Recently Added’ view in Content Browser
- Search in Library (to locate a file) based on metadata
- Documents are shown with their Title and Author in the Content Browser (instead of filename)
- A dedicated Notepad Application which adds the possibility to insert pages and rename the Note. This replaces the old templates.
- Adobe RMSDK 9.1 EPUB and PDF rendering engine, including B&N EPUB support and PDF reflow
- Support for opening password-protected PDF documents
- Added Greek GUI translations
- Automatic indexing of title, author and thumbnail when a file is added to the device
Limitations / Regressions
In addition to the features and improvements above, there are unfortunately also some regressions from the v1.7.1 release. For this reason we will keep the older firmware versions available for download.
- The PC Companion Software application does not work anymore. There is currently no way to merge scribbles or safely rename a file on the PC.
- Mobipocket Support (both DRM and non-DRM) has been removed in favor of Adobe DRM and EPUB (see previous posting on this subject)
- Dictionary Support has been removed, because this relies on the Mobipocket format.
- Shortcuts have moved to a subfolder of the Home screen, v1.7 shortcuts are not automatically converted.
- The Toolbar is not configurable anymore but hard-coded. We aim to fix this in a future software release.
- Automatic ‘Hide Margins’ zoom factor is not available anymore. We aim to improve this in a future software release.
- Template support has been removed in favor of the new Notepad application. We aim to add different templates (lines, squares, …) to the Notepad application in a future software release.
Switching between documents using tabs, scribbling on PDF documents, and selection zoom are still available.
Edit: changed warning about SD card and notes, and added clarification on features that did not disappear.
25 Comments so far
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Being able to write on top of pdfs is the main use of my DR1000 at present, to mark up/correct drawings documents etc. Will this be possible in the future? I understand from above that it won’t be initially.
Great news on the update, been looking forward to it
I’ve got a large collection of Adobe DRM’d books ready to go.
Can you confirm that ‘tabs’ will remain after the upgrade? To lose these would be a disaster for business users.
Good news. I think the new firmware for the iLiad I bought less that 1 year ago is coming too, isn’t it?
worse than the old version, Irex’s future is doomed, people are buying Plastic logic instead
Great news ! I’m looking forward this new version.
Dictionary Support has been removed, because this relies on the Mobipocket format.
+
Automatic ‘Hide Margins’ zoom factor is not available anymore. We aim to improve this in a future software release.
=
FAIL.
@Howard: you can still write (scribble) on top of PDF documents.
@Chris: tabs are also still there.
Mathijs,
Yes I understand I can still write on the pdfs, my point is, that I would appear to no longer be able to let any of my colleagues or contractors see what I’ve done. I use the scribble function on pdfs to mark up drawings, comment on standards and documents.
Without the ability to save the modified pdf with scribbles so that others can view the comments I may as well go back to using pen and paper
It may be the new software does allow the scribbles to be exported and merged with the odfs so others can see them, but that isn’t the impression I am getting from the blog above.
I also assume that the Xournal app that was ported to the DR1000 will not work (it allows merging of the scribbles with the pdfs too) as it uses the existing software framework I think. Not being a programmer, I am making an assumption here.
It’s a bit frustrating as I would really like the bulk of the other “modifications”.
regards, Howard
and are all these upgrades with their problems also valid for nupcoming DR800SG firmware?
@Dave: No, the above is only valid for the DR1000S.
Seriously I cannot see how you guys (iRex) would like to continue the business, taking off essential features and calling it “new release”… Is this a dilbert world or something?
DR1000 is great because of the screen size, but taking into account iRex simply fails to deliver usable, reliable firmware, next time I will be something else, to simply put not iRex. This company is total disappointment.
It is nice to hear of a SW update for the DR1000.
Looks like you put some work in the new release.
But removing the dictionary support is very disappointing.
Why?
It is one of the best features and you have removed it.
Choosing between a nice GUI with thumbs and a usefull function – I choose the function. sorry.
I hope mobipocket will be back soon.
Because of the DR1000, I bought only mobipocket ebooks.
Is there any reason to delete mobipocket support?
Is this the only way that you could coorporate with Adobe?
I am really thinking about reselling the DR over ebay and moving on to firms that provide reliable and predictible support?
Until now, I was really happy with your updates. But this policy change (that you call update) is very disturbing.
Hi Frank,
Please see our previous blog post regarding the ePub – Mobipocket issue.
iRex DRM policy: Mobipocket DRM and Adobe ePub DRM status
Chris,
why is it exclusive – Mobipocket DRM or Adobe?
What is the technical problem to support both?
Is there no way to serve your customers, like me, the new firmware with either Adobe DRM or Mobipocket?
Mobipocket requires an exclusivity contract. If you use Mobipocket DRM, you cannot use any other DRM.
Blame Amazon.
please, the customers want:
- MSWord (doc), Fictionbook (fb2) and many other format support (see competitor´s Hanlin-Support!), of course without need of third-party software
- No “Please, wait”-comment (aprox. 8X4cm!) at the center of the screen! This disturbs the normal reading!
- Faster Startup and improvement of battery management
- we want to read books with it, we don´t want: dictionaries, games, agenda, writing, fingerplaying “now with two fingers i make a zoom, i don´t need it but i do it just because it´s cool” and neither all-in-one-concept. We just want to read books and documents. is it to difficult to understand?
thank you
Etienne,
thanks for the explanation. I did not know about the contract of exclusivity. Nonetheless, it is the decision of Irex to cut off the customers from mobipocket. Is it not possible to provide also updates (that include power management, design etc.) for those who would like to use their mobipockets?
It is really not fair to penalize the customers for the mobipocket policy. Besides, it was because of Irex that I bought mobipocket-ebooks…
Frank
Dear friends at IREX,
I’m happy you guys finally about to bring the update everyone was anticipating for months, most new features will improve the usability of the 1000s. Though I have to say I’m a bit disappointed to see that your much awaited upgrade isn’t just solving a lot of the issues and providing new ones, no it appears you guys simply adapted the 800 series software to keep all 1000 customers happy. Sorry to see that somehow the 1000 series users are welcomed at first and now are no more that a burden to your will to grow further in the e-reader market with other models. Maybe its wise to say that its always important to keep your early adapters happy!
Maybe you guys are able to form some sort of programmers group who are willing to work on the necessary improvements all users love to see and will make the 1000 series as good as it could be!
- Build two software versions one for mobipocket and one with adobe (both with new features)
- Work on speeding up startup
- Create a way to scribble and export so scribbling is not wasted, make it sharable and make it work with ocr software
- Please make sure the dictionary comes available for both versions
- Work on smart zoom functions
Can’t wait to see the update!
My last week visit to the e-reading event at the high tech campus made clear you guys need to switch to top gear now or …. Well you got the point!
Bas
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I really am torn by the DR-1000S … it _could_ be so useful, and also there isn’t anything better available in Germany (being designed in Germany doesn’t make the Que Reader automatically available here…).
I am trying to convince myself that the battery life issue, practically tying the device to my desk (seriously — I picked up my Hanlin V3 after weeks of idling and could continue reading, the DR-1000 is gone after one night!), can be side-stepped by this device being used at work only, where I’m mostly at my desk. But then, I tried viewing a PDF I prepared, including some color map plots… I have to see that the performance for PDF rendering is abysmal. I cannot wait several minutes for a page turn (without indication if the DR1000 is working or frozen; a “please wait” every 5 seconds or so _is_ a good thing). I was kindof hoping that the new PDF engine from Adobe is faster, so was looking forward to this new firmware.
But now, I am hesitating. You didn’t even have the time to add some line/square templates to the Notepad? Could it be that you have only one poor guy working on the reader firmware, part time, while also being kept busy with other projects?
You really should consider going fully open with the firmware development. You started this community thing already, with releasing sources… I have the impression that you simply don’t have the resources to develop the firmware without the community. So, please embrace it. You could start by avoiding to write a notepad application with limited functionality and instead integrate Xournal and possible enhance it along the way. Likewise, include fbreader … include a working browser. There are offline HTML archives one wants to browse… I even paid for having the Bronstein mathematics reference book as HTML, with Java-Script-powered search … that would be useful on the DR1000.
I really don’t get it why manufacturers have to spent time and money on inferior stuff compared to what is already there in the free software world. Your device is already sporting the Linux kernel and free / open source software infrastructure… so continue along that path.
It is not iRex alone, also Jinke made their own firmware for the Hanlin reader that sucks in many ways (it’s available in dozens of localizations, but it cannot properly cope with umlauts in txt/epub files… txt wrapping/layout is plainly broken), but there is a quite promising alternative in form of OpenInkpot in sight. It is not there yet, having some stability issues, but the configurability of the PDF and txt/epub readers shows how it should be done from the beginning.
One should also not forget that we are talking about the basic idea of how the firmware is supposed to work… I did not yet mention simple bugs like the tabs for switching between documents sometimes not working, or only in one direction (not between documents, but from document to content browser and then to another document).
About configurability: I get the impression that this new firmware is also a step backwards… I have the fear that the new content browser won’t allow me to configure it to show the file names again. Likewise, I would rather be able to turn of any automatic indexing / document database stuff, unless it offers real value in form of full text search in _all_ documents (now that is something the reader really should support!). I already hated mp3 player firmware insisting on spending half an hour our on indexing a 2G SD card with a few new tracks added — just give me folder browsing and m3u support, thank you.
I did not yet need to merge scribbles… but I figured I’d use one of the free tools for that — the companion software is of no use for me anyway (not using Windows here). Is the storage format for the scribbles changed so that these tools also don’t work anymore?
Considering the DRM mess: I don’t bother for reading any DRMed material, but I want maximum format support. Isn’t it possible to include non-DRM mobipocket _and_ epub? I mean, look over at the Hanlin Reader… and tell me a non-DRM format it doesn’t support (not even via OpenInkpot)…
Well, I think I will still try out the new firmware, for seeing if the Adobe PDF engine is the opposite of its variant on the desktop (i.e. not bloated and slow) … as currently, I see that the reader fails as soon as a PDF gets a bit more scientific (meaning: colorful plots, even if it’s grayscale;-). And if I cannot view large-format PDFs with scientific plots, this device is rather useless. As it is now… it would be a big improvement to get a conversion kit to use the DR1000 as external display for my laptop. The laptop can do the rendering much faster — and since the DR1000 doesn’t live long when disconnected from a power source, this wouldn’t even reduce portability.
Heck, couldn’t one implement a mode of operation that uses the USB connection of the iRex to send it pre-rendered pages as bitmap? Really use it as external display? That way one could reliably use the hardware… well, of course, the hope never dies: There might be a future with a (community) firmware that manages to get sensible battery life for an eInk device and manages to render PDFs efficiently.
Oh, and not just render: Searching text in PDFs almost feels slower than reading through it all in person. Maybe the Adobe software improves on that, too. Efficient full-text search is one big point where eReaders can beat paper books. It is a mystery why they don’t really try (the Hanlin V3 doesn’t seem to have search at all).
And on startup time: Since you indeed have to power down/up the device because of the … let’s say non-existing … power management, it is very irritating that the boot process takes so long. Again, looking at my Hanlin V3, in the time needed for one DR1000 boot, I can power up the stock firmware in the V3, plus boot OpenInkpot from that.
Well, iRex… please take the firmware issue seriously. Go for the community (that includes picking software that exists and submit patches to these projects), make it easy for people to start hacking/improving the current firmware code. You see what people already do in form of add-ons and publish that in the forums … why not integrate such work and let “normal” users benefit from it?
Sincerely,
Thomas.
I just downloaded the latest beta build. I have to say, looks really good. I only have one issue. I got the feeling that my pfd’s text are not as black as they used to be with the old firmware. Also the pdf’s are smaller in my screen due to the fact that there are borders around it. I hope you can fix this before the final release.
Excellent improvement. When we have the final version? Thanks
Just installed the beta which seems faster in pdf. One suggestion is to include a “fit to screen width”. I would prefer this together with “non-continuous page flipping” for reading papers. Best regard.