[delphidb96]

Yep. You heard me. I take it all back! (Okay, I'm *NOT* taking back the whine I was going to make about the changed shipping dates. December is way far off an 'end of October' timeline.)

But I have *seen* the future and it is firmware release 1.00!!!

I'm now in the middle of a MASSIVE re-write of my review because so much that frustrated me, was missing or just didn't work the way I thought it should has been *FIXED*!!!

Yes, I can now play my MP3s - while reading an ebook! (I loathe dangly earbuds, so I'm going shopping for a set of earbuds with over-the-ear clips.) (Hint, hint, Bookeen... Make it so the user can return to the currently open ebook after starting the music instead of just allowing the user to go to the Library.)

Yes, I have tried out the Bookmarking function and it works great! Just bring up the contextual menu within the ebook and setting, removing, jumping to a bookmark is a single button-press choice!

And they've set it up so that a user can enter (under the Go To menu) a specific page number and jump straight to that page! If the user re-sizes the font or chooses a different font, the Go To Page option will show the *new* 'last page' number to ensure the user doesn't enter too large a number. And, yes, there is always a Go To First, Go To Last and Start Reading option on the main Go To menu.

I haven't tried the RSS functions, but the rest works as promised.

One thing they still haven't added is a nested folder (what Sony calls 'collections' and others deem 'hierarchy') display of titles to allow the user to only see selected titles at a time. (Yes, wading through 16 pages of 5-titles-per-page, 8 pages of 10-titles-per-page or the 25-icons-per-page grouping gets rather tiresome.)

But I can now state that I *like* my Cybook and would strongly recommend it for those who don't want to be tied to Sony's, Hanlin's or STAReBOOK's proprietary ebook formats - or have to shell out the big-bucks for an iRex iLiad.

But, dang, a total re-write of my review sucks!

Derek