I'm back from my mini-vacation - it was a nice trip.
My Astak EZ Reader Pocket Pro arrived via FedX on Saturday, 2 days before I left. I was so surprised that it was delivered on a Saturday!
It came with a lovely leather case, USB cable and AC adapter, ear buds, manual, wrist strap, and an SD card with 300 free books on it. Wow!
After charging it and reading the manual, I transferred some stories and mp3 music files from my laptop via the USB. No problem there.
I took it with me on my trip and used it every chance I got. It wasn't too hard to figure out how to navigate.
It displayed my pdf, doc, and rtf files really well. It has 3 settings to adjust size of the text. The fiction I'm currently reading is in html and even on the largest zoom, the print is kind of small, but I'm managing. The mp3s played fine though the earbuds. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded. Haven't figured out yet if it's possible to listen to music and read at the same time. Have to play with it some more.
I love the way that when you turn it off and come back later, it pulls up the page you left off on. It's very comfortable and light to hold in one hand.
Comes in 6 colors - I got the purple one!
For anyone who needs the text to speech feature, this is not the e-reader for you. The pronunciation is SO bad that it is impossible to understand - comes out as total gibberish. So, that feature is useless - the only real negative I've found, so far. I will see how long the battery lasts between charges.
Overall I really like my EZ Reader. It supports so many formats and I keep all my files on my laptop's hard drive anyway, so I don't feel a need for wireless downloading. Check it out here:
http://www.theezreader.com/html/index.htm