Hi Jennifer,
Welcome. You are going to have to put in some time proving to everyone that you are indeed going to provide the same levels of service, understanding, and friendliness that Robert did before you earn back a level of trust back for Astak and EZ Read on this forum. Everything might be exactly as you stated it happened, but given how firings are often done these days having you annouce Robert's retirement instead of him makes it very suspicious for many of us who like Robert. I hope very much that at worst it was a mutual decision for Robert and Astak to part ways and that as he adjusts to the change he will at least come say good-bye. He has spoken well of you and the efforts you have made to the EZ Read website to have it become real competition for B&N and Amazon. But again, given the abruptness of the change it will take a while for to earn back what he had with us here. For all his faults like lots of exclamation points and broad statements, Robert worked very hard to support customers with products that people want to buy instead of settle for. That made me and I'm sure other people willing to overlook things and embrace his honest mistakes that showed he was real rather than the polished and impersonal press statements of other companies.
Jennifer, good luck to you in the coming weeks. I really hope you can make this transition work and stick it out with us.
Robert, I will miss your presence here very much. I had been waiting for Astak to have a device that really said "I'm it" to me and not really looking seriously at other devices. That was totally because of you. Now I won't play favorites and the hardware & firmware will have to prove itself against Pocketbook and other such competitors. No device locked to a vendor, like Amazon or B&N, will get my money though and that is thanks to the first posts you made back in April 2008 and my first clues that a device supported in the US would be available. Thank you for your service.
