iRex DR800 Gets New Firmware But Goes Missing in US

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.