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1) About the frame: I totally agree with the people here when they say that that frame is wildly overpriced, especially if you consider the fact that for that price you already get a digital photo-frame including a colour screen and specialized firmware which does everything from slideshow to various effects when blending from one picture to the next. Just a little more money would probably already get you one with WLAN to display your pictures right from your PC. Why would I want a black-and-white-only device if I can get a colour frame for about half what they charge for the frame alone (and no, it's not an arts vs. holiday photographs thing because for real art it is way too small, IMHO).
BUT, and here I disagree, I doubt that they had to put a lot of effort into this frame. Someone mentioned that some artist might have approached them with the idea and the fact that they state on their site that each frame is "unique" and "numbered" suggests that it is not mass-produced but crafted by someone outside the company. It, therefore, has no or very, very little impact on issues and deliveries of their Cybook. So, even though I wouldn't buy one, I think it's a very good idea to enable small companies to make a little money with some add-on for their product. I wished that more big companies would add some gadgets and add-ons from smaller firms to their store because that would give smaller firms a chance and wouldn't cost the bigger ones a thing...
2) About the communication with Bookeen: I still think that submitting bugs via e-mail is not a good idea as it takes way too much effort to reply to every single one that it is being looked into. For this kind of communication you need a forum. People can post their findings and other people will see that the issue is already known and being worked on. Info about a release can be given to all interested users and if the date has to be postponed it just needs a single post to let people know.
Most of the people here are not that deperately waiting for the firmware that they need an exact date but if no information gets out or word is only spread by bits and pieces from several sources people get the impression that not much is going on and start to get impatient.
Even if they don't want to host a forum for getting in touch with their customers (and I'd be hard pressed for a reason why they would not) they could at least use the blog to give people an idea what's going on: Post a list of bugs currently being fixed. Post a preliminary release date. Post some info why they postponed the date (be honest, who would really complain if they posted something like "we just got in this and that bug and we felt it important enough to rather postpone the new firmware two weeks than make all the people affected by this bug wait a couple of month until the next release")
Communication is key here, and I fail to see why they make it so much harder on themselves by trying to do all that in a one-on-one way via e-mail instead of using a simple forum or making more of the blog they already have in place.
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