The Rocket Ebook

Rocket Ebook rating *** 1/2

Franklin's Rocket Ebook is a handheld device that weighs 22 oz. and has a bigger screen than any of the Palm family or imitators but smaller than a notebook. The screen can be oriented to landscape or portrait. I bought one and have had a great time reading web pages on the go. I swore I would try to keep it from the kids but they took one look at it and had to try it. They love it!
The screen is monochrome and backlit at a choice five brightness settings. You can turn off the backlight but I have found few settings where you see the screen well without some backlight. It comes with a docking cradle that doubles as a recharger and a connection to the COM 1 port in your pc. You can also recharge without the cradle. The ebook sits in the cradle and gets data from the pc via a 9-pin serial cable [25-pin ok if you get a 25-to-9 converter] . They claim it can go 20 hours on a 2 hour recharge, longer if you don't use the backlight. It comes with a plastic stylus for selecting screen choices or you can use your finger. A cloth cleaner is included for cleaning off dust and fingerprints.
I used Mosaic in the early 90s and almost never downloaded graphics. The Web is too way graphicky to me today. The ebook can handle graphics but I recommend you use it for text only, that is, web pages without the text. You can download straight text files too. The default font is the very attractive Verdana, a font especially designed for ease of viewing on a computer screen. You can load other fonts at cost of precious memory.
I've been experimenting with downloading other file formats into the ebook. The Rocket Librarian is the software on your pc that manages the HTML and text files that you want to export into the ebook. The Rocket Writer is built in to the Librarian and converts these files into the *.rb format that the ebook can read. With some effort I converted an Excel file containing my personal phone list and also converted an Outlook 98 Contacts list containing all my work contacts into a format suitable for the reader. Great backup if the company server goes down. It's not perfect formatting but there's a Search function that is useful for going through lists, such a phone list.
The price break of $199 is what sold me. It had been $299-399.
Warning: It only holds 4 megs so you might find yourself dumping a lot of stuff when you run out of memory. I already dumped Alice in Wonderland and the Random House Dictionary that came preloaded. They can be reinstalled from the Web or from the installation CD.
They claim it can hold 10 books of 400 page size. I found it has some problem receiving data when it gets low on memory, such as less that a meg. A second effort at sending a file when memory was low fixed that problem.
Here's one advantage of an ebook. I was reading Chapter 1 of the Carl Sagan biography published in late 1999. This was a freebie from www.nytimes.com. A man's last name appeared, Sagan's boyhood friend, and I couldn't place it; I assumed both first and last name must have already been mentioned and I must have forgotten it. I searched for the name and easily found its first mention. Many times I've spent several frustrating minutes finding this kind of item and I felt that the ebook would be a great boon for the too-fast or aging, memory-failed reader. We have a couple of 40-plus readers of the Blackboard who will savvy this more than our younger readers.
I don't enjoy beta testing anymore but this thing is still in the beta stage. I tried to register it over the course of several days, from home and from a proxy server setup at work, but I was stymied by the NuvoMedia server. By registration I mean sending data to their server [successful] and getting their response that goes into the ebook and 'unlocks' it from unregistered to registered. To be registered means I could buy and download books from them and from other vendors such as Barnes and Noble and be eligible for free sample subscriptions.
I tried customer service and they recommended changing the speed on the COM 1 serial port, no luck. This last part is where it gets stuck. I even changed the setting of COM 1 to COM 3 but still no luck. I e-mailed a detailed list of settings I changed to try to fix the problem and they promised a 24 hour response, but after several days of no response I got one. It was anemic and seemed to come out of the manual, i.e., no help at all. I mentioned that they should let their marketing department know about this. About the only thing I feel I'm missing is the free subscriptions that were due to run out quickly. A Rocket Media vp is appearing at a local trade show and I may ambush him to get this done.
12/20/99 UPDATE: I REINSTALLED EVERYTHING BY THE BOOK AND STILL NO LUCK. I ASKED THEM TO SEND ME A BOX WITH POSTAGE SO I COULD SEND IT BACK AND HAVE THEM REGISTER IT. I DON'T THINK THEY WILL.
12/27/99 UPDATE: I TOOK THE EBOOK TO THEIR TECH GUY IN NYC, MICHAEL MOY, AND GOT IT REGISTERED. IT TURNS OUT I HAD THE SAME ID NUMBER AS ANOTHER OWNER AND THAT'S WHY MY REGISTRATION WAS REJECTED. I DROPPED THE EBOOK ON THE WAY TO CONNECTICUT TO VISIT MY SISTER-IN-LAW AND BROKE THE TOUCH SCREEN. THE WARRANTY DOESN'T COVER ACCIDENTS SO I MIGHT BUY A NEW ONE, MAYBE WHEN THE PRICE DROPS AGAIN. I MISS USING IT BUT IT REMINDED ME I MIGHT SPEND TOO MUCH TIME ON THIS STUFF ANYWAY.
Right now I would say that the Rocket ebook is in the gadget phase, as opposed to appliance. I am using it and enjoying it but it requires some facility in playing with software. A true appliance would have something other than an arcane registration procedure and a one or two click conversion of web pages into the device.
After seeing A CHRISTMAS CAROL with Patrick Stewart I downloaded the Dickens classic from Project Gutenberg, a repository of fiction and reference material in the public domain. I enjoyed it immensely on the ebook and hail Stewart for his fidelity to the source material.
If they can add the right mix of romance novels and thrillers to their title list, Rocket will have themselves a winner. There are competing devices out there but for simplicity, utility, and price this baby will be hard to beat. Just make the registration easier. I'm a hard core computer guy and they wore me out. They can't expect Joe Sixpack or Jane Spritzer to spend hours troubleshooting their problems.
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