In news from the Netherlands, iRex Technologies has applied for suspension of payments because of disappointing sales in the US, which explains why the iRex DR-800 disappeared from Best Buy’s website last week.

According to iRex CEO Hans Brons, the situation is not hopeless, but there is no cash and the banks are cautious at this time. Because the revenues from the U.S. are far behind expectations, there is no more working capital.

The DR-800 was supposed to go on sale last October in the US, but was delayed by the FCC and didn’t see a US release until February, missing the holiday season. To add to the problem, the DR-800 only sold from Best Buy’s website and not in stores for people to see and use. And there was virtually no marketing done for it whatsoever.

At least iRex was able to get a new firmware update out last week to make existing customers happy, but as to what will happen to the DR-800SG’s free 3G wireless if iRex doesn’t come up with a solution for their financial problems remains to be seen.

Source: FD.nl, eReaders.nl

Filed under: iRex, News | Tags: dr-800, irex dr-800, irex technologies | 3 Comments »

After 2 months in the Beta phase, iRex has announced the new Release Candidate 1 firmware update for the DR-800 SG and S.

Below is a list of the most notable feature additions and improvements. Visit the iRex blog for information on how to install the firmware update.

Update: iRex released another update on June 10th that fixed some the bugs with PDFs. Here’s the link to the updates page.

New Features and Improvements

• Now supports Barnes and Noble’s EPUB DRM.
• Adobe 9.1 RMSDK based rendering of PDF and EPUB.
• Faster 3G connection time and signal strength icon added.
• Notepad app added.
• Add hand-written notes to PDF documents.
• Zoom in on PDFs.
• “Go To Page” feature added.
• Folder organization option added for SD cards.
• Enhanced text contrast in document viewer.
• Language support added for Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Spanish, and German (SG).
• Automatic indexing.
• Move “continue reading” icon on home screen.
• Fixed power management issues that caused the battery to drain quickly.
• Fixed EPUB rendering issues with non-English languages and added support for EPUBs without embedded fonts for e.g. Greek, Polish, Russian.
• More details shown for ebooks’ information.

Reported Issues

• Can’t merge or export notes.
• Annotations made using v2.0-beta software may show up at a different scale or location.
• Not all (new) GUI texts have been translated into all supported languages yet.

iRex DR-800 Missing in the US?

I noticed at the beginning of the week that the iRex DR-800 is no longer listed on Best Buy’s website. The only other place that it sold from in the US was Car Toys, which also sold through Amazon’s marketplace, but it hasn’t been listed for several weeks now. Even the link on the US iRex reader website goes to a missing page at Best Buy.

In Europe, Pixmania shows the iRex DR-800S as being on-of-stock until 09/06/2010, while Amazon UK seems to be the only place that has any available.

The shop at the iRex website says delivery is 4 weeks off under the DR-800S section, so it might be a month or two before they start getting back in stock.

Filed under: iRex, News | Tags: dr-800, firmware update, irex dr-800 | 2 Comments »

Best Buy.com has the iRex DR-800 marked down to $379 from the usual $399. It still says available online only, not sure why they haven’t gotten them in stores yet, considering it was released back in February.

Filed under: iRex, Sales and Discounts | Tags: best buy, dr-800, irex dr-800 | No Comments »

iRex has released a Beta version of a firmware upgrade for the iRex DR-800. Visit the iRex blog for the download.

Improvements from v1.0

* 3G Connection Setup time improved by using Qualcomm Network Driver
* Show 3G signal strength on status bar while connected
* Add Notepad application

* Add Advanced Settings, allowing:
o Scribble on PDF documents
o Zoom in PDF documents
o Enable folder-browsing of your SD card
* Adobe 9.1 RMSDK based rendering of PDF and EPUB, including B&N EPUB support and image dithering

* Integrated B&N Creditcard input dialog into the document open flow (ask only if needed)
* Support EPUBs without embedded fonts for e.g. Greek, Polish, Russian
* Add Go To Page function to document viewer
* Move Continue Reading to the first position of the Home screen

* Automatic indexing of Thumbnails and Title/Author metadata (can be disabled in Advanced Settings)
* Added Time Zone selection to the Date/Time Settings
* View Book Information menu function that shows more details for PDF and EPUB
* Fixed issues with EPUB rendering when GUI language is non-English
* Fixed a bug where the Power Management would fail and the battery would drain quickly (related to pagination of PDB and TXT documents)

* Many other bugfixes

Filed under: iRex | Tags: dr-800, firmware | No Comments »