Quote:
Originally Posted by sharp21
Im not sure what DRM is, im pretty new to this...
I dont really want to have to convert all kind of files to get it to work. I was thinking more along the lines of putting them onto an SD, insert & go!
JBenny i see you have the 800. Is it much improved over the 770? I like the whole roaming internet thing, but not sure if its hype or if it really picks up signals all over the place
S.
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I agree that DRM is a "Bad Thing". Think of DRM this way: You buy a paperback book. The publisher of that book says that you can only read that book while you are sitting in a particular chair in your home. If you sit in another chair, you can't read that book. Also, you can't loan that book to anyone else. Oh, and you can't sell your used book when you're done with it. Does this sound really stupid and unreasonable? That's DRM.
I prefer to buy ebooks from vendors that offer them without DRM. If I have to buy an ebook with DRM, I buy in the LIT format. The content of LIT ebooks can easily be extracted, so you can convert it to read on any device you have. It takes some effort to do this, but depending on what device you are reading on, the effort may be very minimal. My feeling is that I bought the ebook, I should be able to read it on any device I want to, not just how someone else thinks I should read it.
If you don't want to bother with converting from one format to another, you will have to buy a reader that supports a widely available ebook format. Not counting PDF (which sucks on anything less than a full-size screen), probably the two most widely available ebook formats are MobiPocket and Microsoft Reader (LIT). Unfortunately, in most cases, these formats have DRM. Some vendors sell these formats without DRM. As I said before, if you have to buy with DRM, the LIT ebook is the easiest to deal with for converting.
One possiblity is to buy a PDA with Windows Mobile on it. This way, you could read LIT ebooks natively. You could also install software to read MobiPocket or other formats. This would allow you to read just about any ebook out there. The drawback to a PDA is the smaller screen. Although lots of people (myself included) have read lots of ebooks on a PDA.
If I wanted to buy an ebook reader right now (or very soon), I would take a hard look at the CyBook that is due to be released this month. Although the new Sony 505 looks nice, Sony is still too restrictive on which formats they support. The CyBook already supports more formats than the Sony and promises to support even more. With the CyBook supporting MobiPocket ebooks, you will be able to buy just about any ebook available in that format (althouth with that nasty DRM).
I never had a Nokia N770, so I can only tell you what others have said about the differences. The N800 is faster, has more memory, takes larger SD cards and has a newer Linux OS on it. Some say that they liked the layout of the buttons on the N770 better. The N800 has no flip cover, like the N770 did. You can still buy N770's fairly cheap, if all you want to use it for is reading. If you get one, be aware that there was a certain batch of N770's that had a manufacturering defect that causes the LCD screen to fail. There is no way to know if you have one of the defective units until it fails. One thing about using either Nokia for reading is that the only reader software available is called FBReader, which reads several formats, but none with DRM. This means that if you buy an ebook with DRM, you will have to do something to convert/extract the contents before reading it on a Nokia.
One last thought: don't forget the vast amount of public domain ebooks that are out there at sites like Project Gutenberg. Most of the ebooks that folks are posting here for the Sony reader, in MobiPocket format, etc. came from Project Gutenberg. There are also several other places to get public domain ebooks from. None of these public domain ebooks have DRM. There are also a few sites that have free or low cost ebooks that are not public domain (Baen comes to mind). Unless you have to have the latest best seller, there are a lot of free ebooks out there to read.