Mike,
the books do open in ADE on my PC. I also bought a book from
www.ebooks.com and I can read that on my PC but have the same crashing problem with it as the book I bought from waterstones. I guess this at least rules out waterstones?
I think my next step is I'll install ADE on my laptop and try transferring the books from there to see if that works?
I'm kind of in the same position as you - if I can't get it to work with DRM books it really limits what you can use it for.
Dave