Totally confused Newbie here. Please help me out. Are these simply 2 different programs designed to do the same thing? Are there advantages of one over the other?

Libprs500 does a lot more than convertLit. Libprs500 is (at least) all of the following:

A librarian program for managing your eBooks, with support for multiple formats for the same book (e.g. .pdf and .lrf)
A program for converting eBooks from other formats to Sony's format for the Sony Reader
A program for moving books from your computer to your Sony Reader
A program for converting from Sony's binary format (.lrf) to Sony's "human readable" format (.lrs). Note that human readable doesn't mean "what you'd like to read" but rather "a 1-to-1 match with what's really there in the binary version, suitable for debugging problems."
A program for downloading new from online sources (such as the Wall Street Journal or NYT) for reading off-line on the Sony Reader.
(Soon) a program for converting from Sony's binary format (.lrf) back to HTML so you can use the books on other devices. This part isn't finished yet.



When converting from Microsoft Lit format to Sony's format, libprs500 actually makes use of convertLit under the floor.

Xenophon

P.S. I'm sure that someone will kindly correct any mistakes I've made in the above explanation.

ConvertLit is a program that lets you convert from the DRM'ed MS Reader format into non-DRM'ed MS Reader format HTML or from MS Reader format to HTML & images, while libprs500 is a ebook-management app, one aspect of which involves conversions from various formats of ebook to Sony (LRF) format.

I believe that libprs500 itself uses an embedded version of ConvertLit for part of it's conversion of non-DRM'ed MS Reader eBook to Sony eBook.

I believe that libprs500 itself uses an embedded version of ConvertLit for part of it's conversion of non-DRM'ed MS Reader eBook to Sony eBook.

I think that is an important point, Libprs500 does not crack DRM'd Lit files, but does make use of convertLit for transferring non-DRM'ed LIT files to LRF.

I am looking forward to the ability to Libprs500's ability to convert LRF to HTML. That will make me feel better about any problems of Sony discontinuing the PRS line and stopping support.

I do not want my minidisc nightmare to relive itself.