Announcement from EZ Read/Astak Team

[Xanthe]

Good to know you're alive and kicking, RobertB.

Astak is a stupid company if they don't realize how much good will and product promotion you did. I didn't even know about Astak before I started posting here - and if I had, I probably would have bought one instead of my Aluratek. With a less well-known company like Astak, word-of-mouth is critical, since money isn't being spent in any market that I see to advertise it. To remove a prime mover in that area is dumb, dumb, dumb.

Check with a lawyer or the EEO - maybe you've got a basis for a lawsuit. If you do, take them to the cleaners. ;->

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by ifantig

I'm not sure if someone mentioned this already but there's no way the Astak e-reader section is closed for maintenance...NO WAY...NO HOW. If that was the case some sort of notification would be posted, instead of just flat-out pulling the e-reader links from their site. And if Jenifer or whoever insists otherwise they are simply lying.

I hinted at that when I took them to task for possible sloppy error trapping. A week is a long time, especially since most of the work can be done in parallel offline.

[ifantig]

If anyone needs the Astak firmware since it's been pulled from the site, it's still available at http://www.theezreader.com/html/support_firmware.asp. It looks like they pulled the firmware from their main site but overlooked this link (which I found in the MobileRead wiki). I am downloading all 3 copies now and will keep them on my server and probably upload them to angelfire or something like that so others can download.

It looks to me like Astak completely pulled out of the e-reader market, but their tactics are so irresponsible and deceptive towards their existing customers it defies any logic. I mean this is a big company that sells lots of other stuff...do they really think they can just erase their e-readers from their catalog and basically tell their existing customers to forget it and go away when it comes to support. Wow, this is a new low. I've seen companies discontinue products and post end of life support announcements, but I've never seen a company try to completely erase the past like it was a bad one-night-stand they wanted to forget. I can only imagine what their books look like

[eGeezer]

I would really like to give Jenifer the benefit of the doubt that she merely posted what she was told and wasn't aware of the details.

On the other hand, Astak doesn't seem to be all that large of a company and it appeared from prior comments that Jenifer and Robert would be working together for her to take over MR representation.

You would think it would be hard to miss the subtle difference between a "retiree" being wished well on their next endeavor as they walk out the door with a smile on their face and a spring in their step, and a person being frog-marched out the door by security guards with their face hitting the pavement while their feet are still in the air.

Sounds to me like Robert might be lucky they didn't have any new construction going on where they could hide the body...

[Joebill]

I think at this point I wouldn't buy an Astak reader even if Astak paid me to. Even if that payment was substantionally higher than the cost of the reader. And I am not talking chicken feed either.

Beyond bad form Astak.

edit:
Gee did I hold back.

[Joebill]

Aha. The readers are on ezreader.com, but as you all mention, not on the astak site anymore.

But, uhm, doesn't say Astak ereaders, it says Ez Readers, 2 sizes. 5" and 6".

Only shows 2: 6" EZ Reader Plus and the 5" EZ Reader Pocket Pro.

So, they dumped the guy who helped them grow. Very idiotic. I would beleive it of say a Fortune 500 company, but not a small company like Astak. They needed someone like Robert to survive.

edit: only two colors now: black or white.

My sisters wouldn't have wanted one if that was the only choice. The extra colors could not have possibly impacted the company that much, especially since they kept selling out of them.

[abadboy]

Good God,
He's gone .
He isn't coming back.
Life goes on.
It's a ereader thread, talk about the ereader.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by abadboy

Good God,
He's gone .
He isn't coming back.
Life goes on.
It's a ereader thread, talk about the ereader.

Ah, but he IS back..or weren't you paying attention? No, not back at Astak, but back on the board here, and in case you couldn't tell, the overwhelming majority of us are pretty darn happy about that. There are plenty of other threads in this forum where we have "talked about the ereader" as you put it. But don't rain on our parade because we're thrilled to have a treasured friend back among us. Also, if you still want to do business with a company who has proved itself to have no integrity toward either it's employees or it's customers, you are welcome to do so - but don't blame the rest of us for refusing to have anything whatsoever to do with them.

p.s. If you have any gripes with what I've said, I suggest you check both my number of posts and my karma points before typing.

[eGeezer]

Originally Posted by abadboy

Good God,
He's gone .
He isn't coming back.
Life goes on.
It's a ereader thread, talk about the ereader.

Ah, but you are wrong, Grasshopper.

It is certainly an ereader FORUM, but this thread is solely about Robert, having been initiated by the announcement of his "voluntary retirement", implying he was off on some tropical island sipping Pina Coladas.

I would suggest you go back to your dark little room with the other small minds and myopic planners at Astak and find some other way to distract us from being happy that Robert is back.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by abadboy

Good God,
He's gone .
He isn't coming back.
Life goes on.
It's a ereader thread, talk about the ereader.

[Freeshadow]

@abadboy
I'd second Joebill and eGeezer on that
it really seems as if the company wanted to step out/back from the branch and as such the first thing the "cut" was the most vivd vein connecting them to an engaged community of fans of said branch. This happened to be Robert.
It's actually clearly visible, that most of the talks about the hanlin deviceclass in general happened here - why was it so? what do you think?
when things went broken a lot of people spent more time playing firmware DJing, than actually reading. and it was clear to all hanlin users, that because of the fact that Robert always tried to kick the recieved feedback ASAP on some paths leading to the factory they all helped regardless if their devices' housing said EZreader, BeBook, or something else. All would benefit.

It makes a lot of a matter if it seems to you that the person on the other side shares your dream - in the case of a lot of bibliophiles, the dream of having our dearest earthly possessions - the books, always with us in reach as we are pleased to choose among them, until we have to undertake the trip where no one has a pocket to slip his books in - the last one.
Robert always seemd to believe, care and share this dream with us.
when someone's cordial, caretaking and engaged, friendship and loyalty is something natural.
to get just a customer, make a good offer.
to get a friend, you got to deserve it.

Whatever the company might think they have achieved - IMHO it was a pyrrhean victory since I do not believe, someone from here will ever again buy any of their products, regardless of wich kind, nor advice somebody else to do - based only on the behaviour in Roberts case.

a mouth-propaganda-marketing-disaster.

you say we should calm down - its jost about the reader:
well last time I logged in. It didn't say
"Assorted Reading Devices Overview"
it said Mobileread and this covers all: the devices, the readers, writers and publishers and all present and active here. Just look around.
this is a forum by tech-avare bibliophiles for tech-avare bibliophiles I think, so the human component is clearly included.

nuff said

[Joebill]

Originally Posted by abadboy

Good God,
He's gone .
He isn't coming back.
Life goes on.
It's a ereader thread, talk about the ereader.

Don't give up your day job.

ASTAK put their collective feet in their own mouth's and then bit down hard. The pain they cause is of there own doing.

ASTAK is the company responsible for how others see them. None of us could possibly market themselves so badly as ASTAK have done to themselves.

[ifantig]

Weird stuff is happening. Sorry if this is going off topic, but back to the firmware issue on the Astak site. I just realized that if you go to the ezreader site by typing ezreader.com as the URL, the support>>firmware link has no downloadable links (the firmware files have been removed and the links just say "undefined). However, if you put a www before ezreader.com, the support>>firmware links do indeed have the files available for download. Most sites are configured so that it doesn't matter if you put a www before the name or not, but in this case it looks like Astak has more than one version of their site online. It also looks like they removed the links from one site and not the other. Hope I am making sense.

[Joebill]

Sounds like a server configuration problem. It doesn't normally do that.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by jenifer.ezread

Can you please direct me to these multiple posts? Also as a note to everyone, please forward any emails you send to support to jenifera@ezread.com. That way, I can follow up with tech more efficiently.

Sent you an email Jenifer.