Indeed.
If you go down the e-book reader route (i.e. display only, not a GPS moving map) then I would not recommend Irex. I had the Iliad. The Kindle DX is the way to go, currently. But the user interface on all these is painful, due to slow speed. And, despite initial promises, their battery life is no better than any half decent 80x86/windoze tablet. Even the Ipad should make a reasonable e-book reader (about all one will be able to do with it, in the aviation context).
The issue with e-book readers (and we did this here a short while ago) is that one needs a means of generating PDFs in bulk. No official means of doing this from Jeppview (although it could be done), no official means of grabbing a lot of the free EAD plates (although it could be done; in fact it was done a few years ago but as soon as a few beta testers were lined up, somebody leaked it to Eurocontrol and right away they changed the website to stop it working)...
The free EAD plates are mostly poorly drafted (to avoid competing with Jeppesen
) and need a larger and higher-res display than the Jepp plates which were designed to display OK on 800x500 or so. The P1610 is about the minimum usable display resolution/size.
I currently fly with a now obsolete LS800 tablet (80x86/windoze) but IMHO the best "EFB" solution right now is a modern tablet / convertible laptop like the one I posted a link to. These are no better functionally than the P1610 (or its successors) but are lighter, thinner, have a better battery life which does away with in-flight charging leads (I m assuming you are not leaving it in the plane!), and come with a GPRS/3G radio which makes it easier (when not on a roaming connection
) to load them up with the odd plate for an ad hoc change to a planned trip. Within the UK, non-roaming data costs virtually nothing (say 30p/day for 20MB) and most of the time one cannot find a wifi connection.
The remaining issue, not likely to go away soon, is a lack of sunlight readability. Only the "military" tablets (starting with e.g. the
Xplore ix104) solve this, at a vast cost and weight. Been there, done that, and they are useless for flying with.
E-book readers don't have a sunlight readability issue but due to the slow display technology they cannot do a GPS moving map.
That's why the certified EFB products all use custom construction, with a cable leading to a box under the dash where the "computer" sits.
The other thing one can do with a windoze based tablet is that a pilot who is cool as a cucumber can pick up a used Thuraya/Hughes 7100 satellite phone, PAYG SIM card and a USB lead on Ebay for under £400, and get weather data and send texts/emails etc while airborne
