It's ALIVE!!!

Just so everyone knows, the Wizards of Bookeen (Laurent and staff) have found a fix and my Cybook is back up and running! Now I know to not put ebooks in 'untested formats' directly onto my Cybook. I'll put those I wish to test on my SD card so I can pull it if the new ebook formats cause problems.

Whew! I am so HAPPY! BTW, they passed along a set of ebooks in properly formatted pdb files and I am happy to report that the Cybook opens them as easily as it does the mobipocket prc files. I am a happy, happy camper! More to come.

I 'bricked' my Cybook.

Yep. My Cybook Gen3 is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. I've tried to turn it on and off - that didn't work because it no longer turns on and off. I've tried pressing the Reset button. That works just long enough to get to the point where it freezes all over again. I've tried re-installing the 0.98 firmware update image. That works long enough to get right back to the point where my Cybook froze when I hit the reset button. I've tried holding the Reset button down for a minute. No go.

I've tried re-connecting it to my PC in order to take off the offending files. (I'd copied an .rtf and .pdb file into the /eBooks folder to see if it could open them. Note, I did not OPEN these files, just moved them to the Cybook.) Doesn't work because the PC no longer recognizes that the Cybook exists. I'm about to pop open the battery compartment and see if completely disconnecting the battery will work. But that's iffy because I don't know if I'll be able to re-connect it as the battery uses one of those weird connectors.

In the meantime, I'm without my ebooks!

I am NOT a happy camper right this minute!

Stop the Presses! The Cybook firmware update has arrived!

That's right. It arrived. It is about 5.6 Megabytes in size. It took about 4 minutes to install from the SD card and I'm quite happy to report the process went very smoothly. There are a lot of new features and changes, so I'll need to take the time to study them. But I'll post a quick guide to them later today.

Just about ready to release a preliminary review.

That's right. I don't really know when I can count on getting an update of the firmware for the Bookeen Cybook Gen3, so I've decided to do a 'preliminary' review, based upon the engineering sample unit I have - complete with the 0.91 (beta) firmware. That means my review deals with hardware that will have changed in the production release and firmware that does not include all the features which should be available by the time the Cybook is available for purchase. But I just can't wait any longer.

I'll be posting my preliminary review here, and on MobileRead.com, tomorrow.