Great product, terrible support
Written: Nov 23 '01 (Updated Nov 24 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good 'ergonomic' design, the built-in modem is handy.
Cons: Support sucks, sucks, sucks.
The Bottom Line: The Rocket e-Book was a best-of-breed product. Nowadays, with other options to choose from, you should shop around.
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| jugglhed's Full Review: Thomson Consumer Electronics RCA eBook 1100 Handhe... |
I am somewhat jaded about things technological and don't have many technological 'wow' moments. When I received the RCA e-Book for Christmas of 2000, though, I was very impressed.
I had seen and used my wife's Rocket e-Book, after first making fun of her for wanting to get one. I was quickly converted and admitted the e-Book was indeed a cool thing, and wanted to borrow her e-Book all the time. This was a big reason why I received my own e-Book as a Christmas gift. In addition to the novelty factor, it is great in that it allows you to take several books with you on a plane trip in one very lightweight package, allows you to read at night and provides it's own light, and is a very well-designed and easy-to-use product.
With the RCA version, I was at first skeptical, worrying that a big company taking over a small innovative company could really screw up a good thing. Tech-wise, they didn't ruin it at all. The new version has a built in modem, allowing you to download catalogs and place orders from the e-Book itself, with no need for a docking station or connection to your PC.
Among other improvements were such 'small things' as changing the slightly swelled and rounded, easier-to-grip side of the device (a definite improvement ergonomically over the 'slab' body design) so it's now rubber instead of plastic, and therefore even easier to grip than before.
The grip side has 2 buttons for paging forward and backward. They wisely made these buttons larger, and now the default setting is to have the page forward button on top, which makes a lot of sense as that's where your thumb rests. If you like having to bend back your thumb to page forward, you can switch it around, and you can also choose which of the 4 possible screen orientations you want, which is good for left-handed people.
These seem like small things, but with user interface, the little details can really make a difference.
A stylus comes with the device, but I've found I can touch the screen with a finger tip and get the results I want. This is kind of a lazy habit, and can cause fingerprints to accumulate on your screen, but it hasn't been a problem.
I find the type to be easy on the eyes, and I tend to opt for the larger print.
So overall, the product is as good and a bit better than before. Unfortunately, when I did run into some problems, I discovered that when it comes to technical support, the big dumb company factor is in FULL EFFECT.
My problem was very simple: I had misplaced the USB cable and wanted to buy a new one. I looked around the RCA site for a way to buy one, but couldn't find one. I sent an e-mail to RCA tech support, and got back an e-mail reading, in its entirety: "Check the RCA site.".
I ended up buying a USB cable at Wal-Mart, hoping for the best, but alas, that wasn't quite right (had any information about what KIND of cable to buy been available to me, or provided, I'd have had no problem). No big deal though, I was out a few bucks.
As I mentioned earlier, I was able to connect the book directly to the phone line, enabling me to make many e-Book purchases and have hours of pleasurable e-Book reading. Not having the option of storing all these e-Books on my PC became troublesome, as the book can only store 5 or so books at a time.
Fortunately, I found my cable in a dresser drawer, nearly a year after receiving the book. I thought my troubles were over. Unfortunately, now I did not have the driver software. Ick. I RTFM'ed (read the friggin manual), and it directed me to go to the e-book website for software and software updates. Unfortunately, on arriving at the site, I discovered I could not find the software. There was plenty of marketing crap on the site, but nothing that really helped me make use of my otherwise wonderful e-Book.
Without going off on a tangent here, I will say this re-affirmed some of my opinions about open vs. proprietary software. After RCA support failed miserably, I went off on a software hunt and support hunt, to no avail. When I've had problems with the open-source Linux operating system, there's no shortage of discussion group archives and on-line documents to comb through to get an answer.
Further research on e-Books has revealed that there are e-Books on the market with more open approaches, supporting more than just one proprietary format, giving the user a wider range of choices of e-Books. So if you're pondering an e-Book, I will not say 'Go out and get the Gemstar/RCA REB1100 e-Book today, forget about the others'. Instead, I'd recommend considering some of the other options out there.
In summation: the e-Book is a wonderful, well designed (by the Rocket people) product which was purchased by a very large company who so far have managed to maintain the technical quality of the product and have added some very nice features, but whose tech support is horrible. I give the e-Book 4 stars for technical greatness and product satisfaction, and a big 0 for the RCA tech support, who would totally sink the product if it weren't so solid in every other respect. Personally, I am very happy with my e-Book overall, but given the range of options out there, if I were buying an e-Book today, I wouldn't necessarily buy this one.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 300
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Epinions.com ID:
jugglhed
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Member: Max Power
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Max Power is a mathematician gone bad (computer programmer) living in southern Indiana.
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