ILiad

The iLiad was an electronic handheld device, or e-Reader, which could be used for document reading and editing. Like the Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, the iLiad made use of an electronic paper display. In 2010, sales of the iLiad ended when its parent company, iRex Technologies, filed for bankruptcy.

Main specifications:

It measures 155 mm × 216 mm × 16 mm (width × height × depth), the size of an A5 document, or roughly a 6"×9" steno notebook. The display used is an active matrix electrophoretic display, which uses E Ink Vizplex Imaging Film manufactured by E Ink Corporation. Underneath the E Ink screen is a digitizing tablet by WACOM which requires a stylus for input. When it was introduced, the Iliad had largest screen size of existing e-paper products, but the newer iRex Digital Reader 1000's 10.2-inch (26 cm) display is the largest sold as of early 2011.

The iLiad can display document files in several formats, including PDF, Mobipocket, XHTML and plain text. It can also display JPEG, BMP and PNG images, but not in color. As of May 3, 2007 Mobipocket is supported, making the mobipocket digital rights management (DRM) content available on this platform. iRex's product page for the iLiad states that "Support for additional E-book formats will become available over the coming months."

Through its wireless service, iDS, the iLiad can also directly download content. Les Echos, a French financial newspaper, is distributed this way, as is Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Users can connect to their computer over a wireless network to sync new data onto the iLiad's internal memory or an inserted MMC, SD, or CF card.

The distributor of the iLiad is iRex Technologies, a Philips spin-off company. It was initially advertised in December 2005, to be launched in April 2006, but was delayed until July, when it started to be sold as a beta product. It was released to the general public near the end of July, and since then has undergone considerable software revisions.

Its list price in Europe is €649, and in US $699, however it is no longer available in North America due to FCC regulation non-compliance.

One of the advanced features of the iLiad is the ability to add notes to existing documents. With the integrated Wacom tablet and stylus, it is possible to write directly on almost any document and those notes will remain on that document whenever it is viewed on the iLiad. Using the desktop software, those notes can be merged into the original document. This provides malleability, an important feature of physical books that is missing from most ebook products, allowing users to annotate, highlight, and personalize the text.