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I highly recommend a Kobo reader in conjunction with Calibre e-book manager. It's not difficult to buy books off, say, Amazon and pull them into Calibre. A plugin strips off the Digital Restrictions Management and I can easily convert it to e-pub and load it on my reader. I have access to the myriad of free books. Once it's in Calibre, no one can take it away from me. And I know if I decide to ditch my Kobo for some other hardware, that Calibre will likely support it. It's my future-proof e-book library. I can also move my library to my phone - while I don't like to do a /lot/ of reading on my phone, it is nice to have books there in case I go somewhere without my reader.

I also do this, but with my Amazon Kindle. You can switch its wifi off or never enter a password to make sure Amazon doesn’t remove stuff from it.

You don't own anything in the digital world. Stop renting and look for real books nobody can remove.

This isn't quite true. People just need to insist on ownership. We are guilty of allowing commercial interests to lull us with making it easy at the cost of ownership.

Invest a little time, make an effort to learn a little, and exercise some self reliance. It is still possible to have all the benefits of digital books with very little of the drawbacks. Sure, it's great to hold, touch, and experience a real book. Some of my books will never be digital. But there is also something to be said to carrying around an entire library on reader. And an e-ink display is just hands down better than any phone or tablet.

I highly recommend a Kobo reader in conjunction with Calibre e-book manager. It's not difficult to buy books off, say, Amazon and pull them into Calibre. A plugin strips off the Digital Restrictions Management and I can easily convert it to e-pub and load it on my reader. I have access to the myriad of free books. Once it's in Calibre, no one can take it away from me. And I know if I decide to ditch my Kobo for some other hardware, that Calibre will likely support it. It's my future-proof e-book library. I can also move my library to my phone - while I don't like to do a /lot/ of reading on my phone, it is nice to have books there in case I go somewhere without my reader.

Yep. A lot of Amazon Kindle content is DRM-free also, but not all. My books are all DRM-free, but there's no obvious flag in the sales page details (you have to interpret what it means by unlimited devices, lending enabled, etc).

Calibre is a pretty good program for both converting ebooks between formats and managing your collection.

https://calibre-ebook.com/

How can you be on Slashdot (supposedly News For Nerds) and not instantly know the solution to that problem?

EPUB is also my preferred format for use with my Kobo e-reader. Much better than any other format.

As for the comment in TFA about editors, calibre can create EPUBs for a variety of different sources and allows editing them. sigil is an EPUB editor. Both are free and open source.

Both you and bitingduck need to catch up with recent developments. Calibre does editing and is basically the successor to Sigil, since development stalled on the latter awhile back. Calibre's editor incorporates most Sigil features and is actively developed.

http://manual.calibre-ebook.co...

In paragraph after paragraph he complains that the phone isn't integrated with Google's cloud. So what?

>but I have to log in manually every time to each Google service.

No you don't. Use a password manager. Duh. Keepass runs on Android.

>he doesn't see any epub readers in the appstore that he finds familiar

>used Calibre to put epub books on the sd card

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Calibre runs on Android!

http://calibre-ebook.com/new-i...

Lots has changed in calibre-land in the last year and a half.A beefed up e-book viewer. Support for Android phones and tablets. A new modern look for the calibre user interface. A portable version of calibre that you can carry around on a USB stick.

Fuck this guy.

It's a fucking 50 dollar computer. Remember OLPC and the effort to spread computers far and wide for the goal of 100 bux each? So it has some compromises because it's a 50 dollar computer. So did OLPC.

--
BMO

Use Calibre to convert from .epub (or whatever) to .azw and upload to Amazon. That's what I did when I needed to keep bookmarks synced between iOS and Android devices (before Google Play Books came along), and it'd also work with Kindle devices.

you can rip Amazon books out of your tablet using Calibre and a USB cable. http://calibre-ebook.com/

I like the convenience of ebooks as I don't have to worry about carrying around a dead-tree book and can instead just use my phone (or kindle etc) which is generally lighter. I recommend using Calibre to transfer e-books around if you don't mind breaking the Ts&Cs.

I'm aware that the DRM can be trivially removed, but if I'm going to have to break copyright law in order to actually use what I've purchased, I'm left wondering why I wouldn't just break copyright law *instead* of purchasing it in the first place?

I like the convenience of ebooks as I don't have to worry about carrying around a dead-tree book and can instead just use my phone (or kindle etc) which is generally lighter. I recommend using Calibre to transfer e-books around if you don't mind breaking the Ts&Cs.

WHAT? With the ebook you get a limited, revocable license to read the book but only in the format you purchased your license for.

Three words. Pirate Bay. Calibre.

I've noticed a huge increase in battery life by keeping my paperwhite in airplane mode. Use Calibre, to copy over books via USB and you don't even need to worry about what directory to put them in.

...can be decrypted if the provider goes belly-up or does an Amazon-style "1984" on them.

Don't wait, do it now. Download calibre and some plugin tools, and deDRM is just a drag'n'drop operation. There is no need to use it to manage your books if you don't want to, you can just use it as a "storage shed" for your uncrippled books.

Actually, I bypass the middleman and decrypt directly.

I know I'm the odd one out, but I never could get excited about Calibre. I have other tools, and they may not be drag-drop-drool simple, but they're easy enough and allow me to do just about anything I want to any format I want.

Incidentally, I just read that Adobe has dropped the "drop dead" deadline, although they're still pushing the new DRM scheme for the long term.

...can be decrypted if the provider goes belly-up or does an Amazon-style "1984" on them.

Don't wait, do it now. Download calibre and some plugin tools, and deDRM is just a drag'n'drop operation. There is no need to use it to manage your books if you don't want to, you can just use it as a "storage shed" for your uncrippled books.

Calibre is a god send piece of open source software. I don't really use it for stripping DRM, most documents I read don't have any DRM. But for converting between formats especially when the default formatting is crap for ebooks - fuck yes this is the shit.

Main website and for the sourceforge page in case you're are too lazy to Google search it yourself. Apparently this guy is hosting DeDRM the DRM stripping tool. I've never had to use it.

"Don't buy e-book readers that force you to be connected to the internet, or only read proprietary file formats, or buy from online store."

Buy anything you like and download Calibre.
http://calibre-ebook.com/

I own several kindles and I never connect to the web.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

LyX for reports and paper writing, with some raw LaTeX sprinkled in. I have a short python script that can merge multiple documents so I don't have extremely long bulks of content. And there is the python environment for LaTeX, which is awesome with sympy and matplotlib.
LibreOffice for quick documents perhaps with images for a quick WYSIWYG. There is no reason to do everything in text, for some (many?) things the feedback loop is just way too long.
reStructuredText for code documentation, anything that should be readable from command line, but also can be used to make pretty html websites. Sphinx helps. rst exports into plenty of formats via docutils (just expand for rst2* commands).
Converters to epub for stuff I want to read on my ebook reader (from Calibre).
For the text formats my usual editor is gedit. Simple and plain.

It doesn't matter much if you prefer Markdown or rst, that's like arguing which wiki has the best syntax. There are plenty of utilities that can cross-convert and export (pandoc is one of them).

You do realize that you can store Amazon (or whatever) e-books in an open format with all the advantages of digital goodness?

I just use Calibre and store the resultant file on my backup system. I'm betting that I'll be able to read a standard USB flash drive longer than some moldy paper.

I don't own a reader atm. Kindle still seem like the best option but the limited storage (unless you actually buy books from Amazon), vendor lock-in (they sell books in their own format and the most popular one you can't use on their readers) and finally the Sony reader had much snappier zoom and scroll

The device you choose really comes down to what look & feel you prefer. I opted for a Sony PRS-T1 (now superseded by the somewhat prettier PRS-T2) for a variety of reasons, at the top of which was the fact that it supports the widest range of formats.

However, in practice I now convert everything I can to ePub, which IMO is by far the most useful, since I have become fairly good at manipulating them with Sigil. I try to avoid PDF if possible, since you can't reflow text, so you're stuck with the format you've got. Whichever device you opt for, my suggestion is to use Calibre to manage content.

I have no counterpoint or argument to most of your post. I just wanted to mention that the Nexus 7 (2013 version) and Nexus 10 both make fantastic ereaders, if you don't mind a backlit device.

If you prefer non-backlit, my daughter has the Kindle Paperwhite and I put all the books on there for her. It doesn't accept ePub, true, but Calibre is your friend and can convert everything to AZW or mobi and then copy it to your Kindle for you.

Calibre: http://calibre-ebook.com/about

One thing I really wish they'd add to the kindle reader (they had it in the WebOS beta version, but that never left beta) is categories for books.

Check out calibre for library management and sideloading of e-books. It can do categories, and export them to the Kindle.

Just installed Calibre so I'll see how it works in regards to the number of files I have (380k+).

I think that might be quite taxing for calibre, in particular the import process *will* take a good many hours. I just tested importing 3930 books (novel length), it took about half an hour, so it seems that you look at at least two days of unsupervised imports. Then again, doing *anything* with 380k files is bound to take time :)

Look at partitioning your library into several libraries if you have logical ways of dividing your collection. calibre also supports something called virtual libraries which I haven't used myself, but it might speed up handling a very large library. As mentioned there are huge performance improvements in the last versions of calibre, but you will surely benefit from an SSD disk and a largish amount of ram in any case.

I hope you have reasonably good metadata, either in the files themselves or in your naming structure, or you will probably face insurmountable problems tidying up your collection afterwards (this is not particular to calibre - GIGO applies here as everywhere else). Reading metadata from path info will probably be faster, as calibre won't have to parse the file on import. Check out the "Control the adding of books" in the Add books dropdown menu, in particular the regular expressions for parsing paths and file names, in that case disable file parsing. Do a few test runs on small subsets to make sure that calibre catches at least author and title correctly. Do your imports in batches (you can use the tag on import feature to connect a book to a particular batch), verify that metadata is sensible as you go along. Some things, like correcting different variations of author names, can be done efficiently after import (if your library is at all usable).

I (and likely others) would very much like to hear about your experiences, feel free to make a thread on the calibre subforum of mobileread. Note that such a large library might seem suspicious to some users, as pirating is frowned upon. In any case, the devs are tuning the performance of the new and more efficient db code (one of the new features in the 1.0 release), and your library will be a good test subject :)

Why won't it automatically create a directory if it doesn't exist?

It did for me. (Linux version.)

When I click the button, it opens my web browser to the Calibre web site. Why doesn't it just update directly in the application itself?

You appear to be overlooking the fact that Calibre is a cross-platform application, and the fact that a sensible OS might refuse to let you casually overwrite an application like that.

Why does it have to be a converter, library manager and reader in one?

I think you have to look at the history of the application to answer that. I bought my reader device (a Sony PRS-T1) on the basis that it supports the widest range of formats, but now I generally try to only download ePubs. I usually prefer to use Sigil to edit ePubs, though Calibre copes surprisingly well with a wide variety of CSS input to get a generally acceptable result. (Or you can use it to dismantle ePubs into its components to edit with your default editor if you prefer.) Library management is where it excels for those of us who live outside the Amazon ecosystem.

The Reader function is mostly redundant, but it does provide a quick way of checking that books are formatted more or less correctly before you transfer them to your reader device.

I'm pretty fussy about formatting requirements (especially since so many ePubs are really horribly produced), so I usually do some pre-processing before I transfer a book to my reader. This is why having everything stored on my computer, and treating the reader as a (mostly) offline device makes sense to me. Everything is backed up, and I don't have to worry about vendors (looking at you, Amazon) snatching content back from me because they've changed their minds about their copyright agreements.

I owned the original Nook with the small lcd screen along the bottom and the newer simple touch nook. I'm a tall guy with larger hands and the original nook was a good fit for me but I like the simple touch for the weight of it. As far as compelling differences between the Kindle and Nook line up - I don't see a huge difference besides compatibility with different formats. It seems like the Nook has better open standard support. This can be alleviated by using a program like Calibre to convert the books http://calibre-ebook.com/ though. Also, I believe the touch screen Kindles do not have hardware buttons.

As of right now there is no reason for me to upgrade to anything newer since I can read any book I want now on my simple touch. I don't like using an LCD screen to do any marathon reading as it is harsh on the eyes so an LCD for me is out of the question. I read a lot of books - one series alone was 40 books long - try that with an LCD screen and my eyes would hate me.

Now, if they came out with a hybrid e-ink / LCD device I can get on board with that: Color E-ink for the E-ink screen so I can read books in b&w or other documents in color in the bright light or for long periods of time. Possibly have a glowlight as well?
LCD for when indoors / regular tablet functions

Give me that and I'll definitely buy that new device as long as it's implemented properly with sharpness and clarity for both functions. One of the complaints with the Nook w/glowlight was a slightly more washed out look to the screen in comparison to the regular simple touch. I bought one of the glowlights from Radioshack for $30 when it got clearanced out and gave it to my brother as it just didn't have the same sharpness. I think Amazon won with backlighting - looked like a superior technology with better viewing options.

and get rid of the ridiculous DRM that prevents me from actually owning the book, and then lets talk. In the meantime I'll stick to Project Gutenberg and DRM-free niche publishers.

Remove DRM, organize your library and all for free with Calibre

Ctrl-alt-C. Two keys less to press ;-)

Admittedly, it does take an extra step to set up first (right click on the Calculator icon, chose properties, set keyboard shortcut).

Also, Win+CAL+ENTER may not launch Calculator on all systems (it launches Calibre on mine, for instance), requiring a loss of focus or extra keypresses to select the correct option.

The most important part is that between calibre & ApprenticeAlfs de drm tools, every ebook purchased on Amazon can be de-DRMed in 10 seconds. I buy non-DRMed books whenever possible & remove the DRM on the rest.

I'd like to buy the DRMed stuff elsewhere like in the apple store to push competition in this amazon dominated marketplace but not being able to remove the junk brings be back to amazon.

I'd like to see all Linux projects standardize on Qt as a their Gui toolkit. I understand why everyone has their own but the war is won and Qt won it.

War..Won!? All I see is healthy competition, and personally I run a whole host of Applications that I don't care what toolkit they are in. Having a look around there are some absolutely stellar QT applications http://calibre-ebook.com/, k3b http://www.k3b.org/ (although not in development for a while), MP3 Diags http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/ and of course Clementine http://www.clementine-player.org/about. There are a few programs that can run either that I use Transmission http://www.transmissionbt.com/ and Avidemux http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/ . But the Bottom line is GTK+ seems as popular as ever, and still more popular than Qt.

What is most bizarre is this about this is LXDE is looking great, a Desktop we don't hear about often enough, and is looking like a desktop I would use...half this discussion is about lets be honest a license subtlety I don't care about.

If you buy only DRM free ebooks (let your wallet speak) you can convert those ebooks, manage, and use them on just about any ebook reader made to date. You can also convert other document formats (text, html,pdf, etc) to be compatible with your ebook reader of choice. Its free, open source, and fairly portable. http://calibre-ebook.com/

<Something something> communism <something something>FOSS

<more communism>

It seems like you haven't used proprietary software at all... I've seen a lot of QA issues like those mentioned in your rants in proprietary software, as well as OSS. On the other hand, I regularly use two very slick OSS projects both privately and at work: calibre and Sigil. Both are hands down the best option available in their category, proprietary or not. Nothing else even comes close. Both are maintained by extremely competent devs, have quick issue turnaround, and are relatively simple to run from source, as I have done to make (and contribute) a couple of fixes and improvements myself. In the case of calibre, millions of non-tech users are happily using it to catalogue their ebooks.

In your case, as it seems like OSS ate your dog, feel *very* free to look elsewhere. I've done so as well when I can't find anything that suits my requirements. There have been a few of your kind visiting the forums of those two projects. These people make incoherent, irrational demands, rant, won't listen to reason, and even refuse to explain what they mean so that people can help them. None of this is constructive for anyone. Although they're generally treated politely, we're frankly better off without them. Then you have people who bring rationally presented and relevant complaints to the table while behaving themselves, they usually walk away with a fixed issue, a workaround they're happy with, or a good explanation why a solution is not forthcoming (and yes, this can be "I'm not personally interested in implementing this feature, patches are welcome"). The project benefits from these people as well. Of course there are also bad and irrational maintainers out there, as well as projects so bad they're worthless, the barrier of entry isn't exactly high.

The point is: No, OSS devs aren't your employees. Neither are you their paying customer, and you have no right to make demands. No, not even if you donate $3. Take what they offer, or not. Nonetheless, if you can't see the indescribably huge value in a plethora of OSS projects, including Wikipedia, I feel sorry for you. There are millions of people with better people skills and/or technical knowledge than you who actually make OSS work for themselves, every day.

Getting off topic here, but this is why I don't download directly from the B&N store to my Nook. I buy online through my PC, download it there, then read it on my Nook. I also tend to buy books that are DRM free or use tools that will let me read my ebooks however I want. Calibre's plug-in architecture makes this possible.

I have a Kobo Glo with lots of legitimately purchased ebooks from Amazon and BN on it.

All it takes is the Calibre open source library manager and a couple third-party DRM-stripping plugins. Rarely, converting from AZW, you'll need a bit of CSS skill and a text editor to track down a conversion glitch.

Of course this entails an account at each vendor to buy the books. Downloading is handled by the Amazon and/or Adobe Digital Editions (BN/Kobo) apps used by those accounts. Just don't let the apps fondle your ereader -- that's what Calibre is for.

This technique probably works for Nooks as they're epub-native like Kobo. Not sure how easy or effective converting into AZW/Mobi/etc would be for Kindlers, but these same tools might well do it.

Feedbooks.com is a great place. Lots of freebies, and their freebies tend to be formatted better than the same public domain books on Amazon and Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is great - but they do skimp on some formatting and features. Also the Google Play Store has lots of freebies also - usually, but not always with the best formatting around. I have a Kindle, and unlike many of the public domain books from Amazon the Google Play Books are usually DRM free so I have no problem converting them to a Kindle compatible format using Calibre.

I've even taken to fixing some ebooks with crappy formatting on my own and converting online reference material to useful formats using Sigil.

I started out adding to you comment, I probably should have top leveled.

Second this! Use Calibre and you can bulk edit book metadata then automagically retrieve book covers and descriptions before sending it off to your reader. Reads tons of formats as well.
Not affiliated with them, just use it personally.

"This is my problem and it hit home recently when I upgraded my smartphone and discovered there's no Kindle ap for my new model phone ..."

Calibre fixes all your problems.
http://calibre-ebook.com/

There is no doubt that e-readers have made carrying large quantities of documentation around with you much, MUCH easier. What is tougher to do is manage your library. Fortunately, someone has already made tremendous strides to resolve that issue.

calibre provides a great way to organize your library of e-books and online periodicals in conjunction with the tablet or e-reader of your choice. The website has a highlights video which does a good job of covering what calibre is capable of.
At this point, calibre provides automatic download scheduling for almost 1,400 online magazines. More are added by users of calibre all the time. A sampling that might be of interest to academics include "Journal of Hospital Medicine", "Journal of Nephrology", "Microwaves and RF", "Scientific American", etc.

Once you've added a book (or collection of books) to your library, calibre provides plenty of tools to categorize it by subject, author, publisher, and just about anything else you care to name.

So, once you've got your papers and periodicals organized in calibre, pulling them into your e-reader is simply a matter of plugging into a USB port on your desktop or laptop. If you want to grab something when you're away from your desk, there's a Web front end that's pretty serviceable, too.

calibre is licensed under GPLv3 and is supported under MS Windows, OS/X, and Linux. There's even a portable version for loading on a USB stick to make your library truly portable. :-)

BTW, the Grand Tour video was created when the current version of calibre was 0.8.0. Kovid Goyal has been conscientously providing updates every Friday for as long as I've been using his app. The current version is 0.9.8. I think he went from 0.8.0 to 0.8.78 before making the leap to 0.9.0. :-)

As to which e-reader to use? There are a huge number of tablets and dedicated devices out there these days, although even the dedicated ones have all pretty much morphed into tablets. My personal favorite is the Nook Color but I've found that it's underpowered to handle large PDFs with a lot of graphics. However, calibre provides a pretty decent conversion utility for PDF to EPUB. The Nook does a much better job of managing memory for the EPUB format, so the large PDFs aren't even that big a deal for me.

There is no doubt that e-readers have made carrying large quantities of documentation around with you much, MUCH easier. What is tougher to do is manage your library. Fortunately, someone has already made tremendous strides to resolve that issue.

calibre provides a great way to organize your library of e-books and online periodicals in conjunction with the tablet or e-reader of your choice. The website has a highlights video which does a good job of covering what calibre is capable of.
At this point, calibre provides automatic download scheduling for almost 1,400 online magazines. More are added by users of calibre all the time. A sampling that might be of interest to academics include "Journal of Hospital Medicine", "Journal of Nephrology", "Microwaves and RF", "Scientific American", etc.

Once you've added a book (or collection of books) to your library, calibre provides plenty of tools to categorize it by subject, author, publisher, and just about anything else you care to name.

So, once you've got your papers and periodicals organized in calibre, pulling them into your e-reader is simply a matter of plugging into a USB port on your desktop or laptop. If you want to grab something when you're away from your desk, there's a Web front end that's pretty serviceable, too.

calibre is licensed under GPLv3 and is supported under MS Windows, OS/X, and Linux. There's even a portable version for loading on a USB stick to make your library truly portable. :-)

BTW, the Grand Tour video was created when the current version of calibre was 0.8.0. Kovid Goyal has been conscientously providing updates every Friday for as long as I've been using his app. The current version is 0.9.8. I think he went from 0.8.0 to 0.8.78 before making the leap to 0.9.0. :-)

As to which e-reader to use? There are a huge number of tablets and dedicated devices out there these days, although even the dedicated ones have all pretty much morphed into tablets. My personal favorite is the Nook Color but I've found that it's underpowered to handle large PDFs with a lot of graphics. However, calibre provides a pretty decent conversion utility for PDF to EPUB. The Nook does a much better job of managing memory for the EPUB format, so the large PDFs aren't even that big a deal for me.

I don't think I've paid for a book since I got my Kindle a year ago. Even if you could somehow exhaust the tens of thousands of books at Project Gutenberg, they now loan eBooks at your friendly neighborhood library. If the veterans are even a tiny bit technically inclined, they can run Calibre and convert almost anything into a Kindle-friendly ebook.

Not the OP, but I use these for my nook books.

Calibre

DRM Removal Tools for eBooks

I've tried buying "DRM free" ebooks from Amazon and could not figure out how to do it easily without a Kindle (you don't seem to ever got prompted to download a file; I assume it is all back-end device specific magic tied to your account...?)

There are desktop applications for Windows and Mac, e.g.:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/pc/download

Once this is installed and registered to your Amazon account, any purchased ebook files are automatically downloaded to a directory on your computer when the application is started, or you request a sync. From there (if DRM free) you can convert the files to some other format like epub, using a tool like Calibre:

http://calibre-ebook.com/

Even if the files do have DRM, there are unofficial Calibre plugins to disinfect them seamlessly, as this l33t h4x0r site describes:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from-kindle-e-books-and-others/

I felt the same way for the longest time until I discovered Calibre. I download all my books of the Kindle, convert them to a different format and keep local backups. If Amazon decides to delete the version they have in "the cloud" I simply copy the one from my cloud over! In the mean time it is quite nice to have hundreds of books on a single device the size of a paperback that fits in my back pocket.

So what's the solution?

Simple: digital content should convey the same ownership rights as print books and CDs. Why should, e.g., books written on vellum have different rights than those written on paper?

Next problem,

I simply take the ownership rights of the books I buy. (And, yes, I do buy them, because authors have to eat too).

There are methods of DRM removal that can be used on your dbooks, and ebook library managers (such as Calibre) that you can use to manage your collection on your local hard drive, and back up to CD-Rom. Combine these two tool sets and you have the ownership you want.

Similarly, for music, every digital music locker I am aware of allows download to your hard drive. Any drm protection on those files can also be stripped.

I bought it, I own it, and I intend to use it as I see fit. I don't copy it and give it to others. But my son will inherit my sifi collection, and he likes sifi.

Excellent summary and on-point my friend! Well said!

Now, just convince the MAFIAA that the other 99.999999% of people in the world aren't stealing all their products while you legitimately buy your collection.

Good luck.

So what's the solution?

Simple: digital content should convey the same ownership rights as print books and CDs. Why should, e.g., books written on vellum have different rights than those written on paper?

Next problem,

I simply take the ownership rights of the books I buy. (And, yes, I do buy them, because authors have to eat too).

There are methods of DRM removal that can be used on your dbooks, and ebook library managers (such as Calibre) that you can use to manage your collection on your local hard drive, and back up to CD-Rom. Combine these two tool sets and you have the ownership you want.

Similarly, for music, every digital music locker I am aware of allows download to your hard drive. Any drm protection on those files can also be stripped.

I bought it, I own it, and I intend to use it as I see fit. I don't copy it and give it to others. But my son will inherit my sifi collection, and he likes sifi.

I actually don't know how most people put media on their kindles, but I use calibre. http://calibre-ebook.com/

It converts from epub to mobi without any issues as far as I've seen. The main achilles heel is pdf's as far as I'm concerned... sure, the kindle gladly displays them, but you can't change font size or anything but have to rather zoom in on parts of static pages, which is very annoying. Of course this isn't a problem with kindles, but rather typical of the PDF format.

...but standing behind them and taking notes is a whole level up from there.

Which is pretty much why I rip the DRM out of any book I buy (for futureproofing) and only use my reader device offline, using Calibre to manage content.

Seconded. Amazon must be pretty confused by my reading habits -- with any book I buy from them I only ever view the cover page in KindlePC for about one second :)

...but standing behind them and taking notes is a whole level up from there.

Which is pretty much why I rip the DRM out of any book I buy (for futureproofing) and only use my reader device offline, using Calibre to manage content.

At this point I don't plan to buy any more e-books (unless they are DRM free) except in special circumstances where I use the book as a reference so much that portability (it weighs nothing extra and I can have it with me anytime I have my tablet) out weighs all the negatives of DRM.

You know that stripping the DRM out of any ebook you purchased is trivial, right? There are scripts out there to do that with minimum effort. In fact, these scripts are even available as 3rd party plugins to calibre, in which case the DRM stripping becomes transparent (you'll have to Google around though -- for obvious reasons they aren't officially supported). Add to this calibre's ability to freely convert DRM-free (and DRM-stripped) e-books from one format to basically any other format, and everything that was wrong with e-publishing has in practice been solved.

What I've been doing is creating my own ebooks from websites that have a lot of material that I need to read. I just can't read on a monitor if it's a large amount of text. This is what I do: either use a conversion website or Sigil.

Another good tool is calibre, which, among tons of other functions, such as being an e-library manager and providing the ability to automatically strip DRM out if you're so inclined (and manage to find the 3rd party plugins required), allows one to automatically download new blog entries and transfer them to an e-reader on a regular basis. As for individual long web pages, I really like Instapaper, configured to send the pages I queued to my Kindle once a week (it provides a daily option too).

I can read much faster and more comfortably on my Kindle than on the iPad. The quality fonts etc is very good on both but there is something to be said for reading on a display that is not backlit. Especially if you try to read out doors.

Nook owner chiming in to fully agree.

I recommend the cheapest E-reader you can by that has wifi for downloading. I prefer not to have any other capabilities built into the device, I have other toys for that.

Spending the big bucks for color and backlighting is just a waste of time, and money unless you are limited to owning a single device. I've tried reading on the tablet, just don't like it as much. Reading on the phone is a non-starter given my prescription. Darkened room is the only place I switch to the tablet. Even the, its with white text on a black background.

The entry level Kindle or Nook Simple reader has everything that you need to read with, and nothing you don't need. I had a first generation nook, still use it occasionally, but traded "down" to the much cheaper Simple reader and find it far more convenient (smaller, lighter, faster, fits in a jacket pocket). Same would be true of the Kindle.

I also use Calibre (free ebook management software) to side load ebooks from other on-line book stores onto the nook.