[Doranwen]

Hmm, not necessarily, though these are my criteria:

- Must present me straight off with a file system to browse, NOT sorting by author/title/etc., nor a screen requiring two touches to get into the browsing. My collection of e-books includes a ton of fanfiction as well as small text files of music lyrics, etc. I have to be able to browse them comfortably. I used the Astak EZ Reader Pocket Pro before the Onyx Boox i62 Firefly; at the time I switched (which was due to the Pocket Pro just dying suddenly on me) the Onyx brand, I was told, was the only one that would have this sort of browsing as default. The C67ML Carta lets you do it, but it acts more like my phone (and I'm not as impressed with its e-Ink screen--there's a lot of overlays from the previous pages, which I never had with my i62); you can get to the directory, but you have to go through here and there to get to them, and each file or folder was in a gigantic entry row, as if the table of rows were two or three times the size they should be. Whereas with the i62 you just had to choose Internal or SD card (they were options on the main page, not through a menu or secondary page) and you were immediately in a system that was designed for directory browsing, as if I were using a flash drive or computer. My parents thought it was small print when they saw it, but they need glasses to read anything; each page of the directory browsing held like a dozen entries or so (compared to the Carta's five gigantic entries--ridiculous! takes forever to get through a directory with 100 entries, which shouldn't be the case).

- It needs to handle a lot of e-book formats. I have more epub than anything, but I also have mobi, html, pdf (though I try to avoid that because 6" readers don't handle those all that well), txt, even rtf and doc sometimes. Possibly others, but not sure about that.

- No ties to any stores; I'm definitely steering clear of Nook/Kindle. Most of what I read is freely available on the Internet, but I download it on my computer, sort it, and copy the epubs (or the next best option) to a folder to transfer to the e-reader (the fanfics are usually available in html, pdf, and often epub as well, and I download all three because on my computer I prefer to read in pdf, and that's where I discover them in the first place). No interest in buying anything on the device itself. I turned off the wifi on my i62 the first day I got it and never turned it back on. I don't mind the e-reader having the ability to get online, but I don't want it in my face, because I'm just going to turn it off and never use that feature.

- I'm looking for something that is specifically just an e-reader, not an e-Ink tablet of sorts. Which I think I sort of said in my first criteria, but yeah. I was rather disappointed with the Carta, that's for sure! If I want a tablet I'll buy one with an LCD screen. But I can't see myself using one all that often; I tend to prefer a device be very good at its specific function and not try to get an all-in-one. (I run big desktops but I use a small flip phone for voice calls, and my smartphone is on wifi only, mainly for texting and a few key apps.) The Carta feels like an e-reader trying to be a tablet as well, and that's definitely not what I'm looking for. I have no need for a page with all the apps--half of which are designed for the 'net--or anything like that; the only thing I want to do on it is read.

- Must take a microSD card - I have a 32GB one that I've been using and would like to continue to use, which has all the books on there organized and ready to plop into a device. These days I gather that's more common that it used to be, which is good.

- I can't say that it's an absolute must, but after having gotten used to the two-buttons-on-each-side feature of the i62, I really miss that. It was nice to lay in bed and use one hand to turn pages back and forth. The C67ML requires a hand on each side because you only have one button on each side. If I want to go forward, I have to press the button on the right, backward, the button on the left. There's no way to easily use my right hand (without awkwardness) to hold and press a button to go backwards if I should desire, nor the converse with my left hand to go forward. Having experienced that system and finding it very logical, I wish I could find another e-reader that would do the same thing.

I suppose I should post all this in the "Which should I buy?" forum, lol. I hadn't thought I'd need to go outside the Onyx brand, but perhaps I do - maybe there's something better out there.

Honestly, though, I still want my i62 back and am angry with myself for not thinking of how I was holding it that evening. And am very sad that I can't find mention of anywhere to repair it, or any used one being sold anywhere. But if you think of one that you think I might like just as well as the i62, I'm willing to check it out.