REB1100 - Rocket eBook still available - and cheap!

[jradi]

First, let me qualify this by saying that I've owned a LOT of ebook devices. Just about everything over the past 10 years, and this is by far the best I ever used. I was googling to see if I could find a replacement battery for my old device and I found that this company still makes and sells brand new REB1100's - now upgraded to 1150.

If you want review - look for RCA1100 or REB1100 - there are a ton of them. The screen is backlit, very long battery life, it has the perfect heft of a book, can be read in right or left hand, the buttons are a joy to click, font is adjustable, you can adjust the font, rotate the screen, it's a very comfortable device to use. If it weren't for the fact that I JUST bought a netbook, I would buy one in a second. As it is, I'll probably pick one up for christmas:

http://www.ebookwise.com/ebookwise/ebookwise1150.htm

an active discussion group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EBW-GEB1150/

[jradi]

Very interesting. The company that now sells the Rocket was purchased by Barnes & Noble this past March. We may see a resurgence of this old beauty...

[spamsickle]

According to the specs I saw at your link, it doesn't look like it supports PDF, which will be a deal breaker for me.

[jradi]

It definitely doesn't support pdfs. It's a text based reader, so you have to ocr everything. That's why ocr is so important to me - it can be used on more devices.

[daniel_reetz]

Very interesting... I only became aware of this device because of your introduction. FWIW, I am sure the batteries in your old ones can be replaced. If the majority of my reading wasn't nasty, scanned PDFs I'd buy one of these in a heartbeat.

[StevePoling]

Do you know what format files these devices take? I've been favoring ePub, MOBI and PDF when I don't have text. Calibre does a good job of format conversion for the most part.

[jradi]

It's a proprietary format but they have a converter. That's why I like to keep all my books in either RTF or HTML. They serve as a good base to convert to other formats as need requires...