I first ordered a Fire HD, then cancelled it. Then I ordered a Keyboard 3G (which is almost like my Kindle 2) but then cancelled that, because it was too much like what I'd already had. Then I ordered the little 5th Generation Kindle thinking I'd just go cheap for now, but then cancelled that too. I still wanted a real upgrade and really wanted a reader large enough and with the right aspect ratio to read PDFs. I even considered buying a cheap used DX but couldn't find any. I finally came across a review of "Kindle alternatives" that mentioned the Jetbook and it looked pretty much like what I wanted. I'm a bit disillusioned that the WiFi doesn't really amount to much, and that I can't use it for online reference material, but perhaps they'll get that worked out. It looks like they're aimed at the K12 market, but there isn't really much competition for that niche in higher ed. Profs use iPads and various other similar devices, but they have terrible battery life and the displays are hard on the bifocal population.

This hardware would be ideal if married to some sort of Linux implementation. I'm a little concerned about the programming expertise. It was sort of a bad sign when I clicked on a few of the hypertext links on Ectaco's main page and nothing appeared to happen until about three hours later when the page suddenly opened. First time I've ever encountered anything like that, but maybe it's some quirk of my browser.