Welcome to togoWare's ebook Links and Info!

Overview:

Hmm, where to start.. Well, first off, the term ebook has been used for many different things. When one talks about an ebook, he may mean a pdf file. When another person talks about ebooks, she may mean contents for PDAs. When a third person talks about an ebook, he may mean contents for stand-alone ebook devices (there are a number of such devices). So which is it? As the term ebook is used today, it means all of the above. Yes, it is very confusing when one talks to another about ebook like "Can you send me a copy of your The Firm ebook?" And when she receives it, she can't read it because their ebook readers are different. Well, this is what we have to live with because we have greedy companies wanting to push their own formats out so they can collect royalties. But hopefully, I can clear some of the confusions.

First, if you're looking at this page, it should be because you own the RCA REB1200. So I'll focus this entire page to what is compatible with it. The REB1200 can ONLY read contents in .RES format (or .imp if you have upgraded to firmware 3.3, more on this later). There are no sites that offer the .RES format content directly, and only a few offer them in .imp. But do not dispair, most, if not all, of the format they carry can be converted into .imp in 1-2 steps or .RES in 1-3 steps. Below are tables that summarize the content formats and the number of steps to get it to load into REB1200. Unless you have other reasons, it will be easiest if you purchase/download the format that takes the least number of steps to convert into the REB1200 format.

Before getting into the formats, I'll briefly mention about the firmware versions. The firmware is like the brain of the REB1200. It tells what the REB1200 can or can not read. Firmware 2.x can only read contents in .RES while firmware 3.3 can read both .RES and .imp formats (firmware 3.1 & 3.2 can not read personal contents). The benefit to this is that you no longer need to do an extra step of converting from .imp to .RES . To check your firmware version, open your ebook & press MENU | info | more. The viewer number is your firmware version. Upgrading to firmware 3.3 is free over the internet, (or $30 if you send it to Gemstar to do it for you). Description on how to do it is in the detailed firmware version page.

Tables of ebook Formats:

Formats that can be converted into .RES in 1 step:

.extension	Known as	converted into .RES with:
.imp	Softbook Edition	unimp.exe

Formats that can be converted into .imp in 1 step:

.extension	Known as	converted into .imp with:
.txt	Plain Unformated Text	Softbook Personal Publisher
.rtf	Riched Text Format	Softbook Personal Publisher, Gemstar eBook Publisher
.doc	Microsoft Word	Softbook Personal Publisher, Gemstar eBook Publisher
.htm, .html	Hypertext/web pages	Softbook Personal Publisher, Gemstar eBook Publisher
.ppt	Microsoft PowerPoint	Softbook Personal Publisher
.lit	Microsoft Reader ebook	clit, lit2sb
.rb	Rocket Edition ebook	RB2Project

Formats that can be converted into .imp in 2 steps:

.extension	Known as	converted into .txt, .rtf, or .html with:
.chm	Microsoft HTML Help	ChmDecompiler
.pdf	Adobe Acrobat Portable Document	3rd party pdf to text softwares
.pdb, .prc	MobiPocket/Palm Reader ebook	PRC2TXT

Unknown Formats:

.extension	Known as	Notes
.zip	compressed file	need to unzip it to find out what format it actually is

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Now that you know which software to use for different formats, let's venture into the next section -- more detailed info on such Conversion Softwares.

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