Breaking DRM

[maurices5000]

I'm not interested in stealing books but i don't want to be tied to a particular company. I love Amazon. I buy almost all my books from them. But I'm not sure about the Kindle and the Sony seems to give me more options.

I've not tried the Sony but heard i can find one at Best Buy.

Here are two questions:

- Does breaking the DRM always work? Is it always a good quality?

- Can you break the DRM on the Kindle and use it on a Sony?

I want to give Sony a try since it seems to have more features.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks!

[SeaBookGuy]

- Almost always

- yes

suggestion: google the term "Apprentice Alf"

What options do you feel the Sony has for you over the Kindle?

[maurices5000]

I'm upset, i just wrote a pretty decent post and it was thrown away when i press the submit button.

I'm not familar with the Sony. I plan to check it out over the weekend possibly at Best Buy. Hopefully they have one on display that i can try.

What I'm not interested in just READING passively wiht my eReader. My goal is to study and to be able to refer back to things i've read on the fly. I often engage in debates on apologetics issues and it would be nice to be able to do a search on the books I've read, find the notes I've written and retrieve them on the fly. So I'd like to be able to search across books. I'd also like it to be easy to create notes.

I tried the Kindle at Target yesterday for just about 30 to 45 minutes. They didn't have any for purchasing. I don't care about WiFi. I'm perfectly happy with downloading books and loading them via a cable. I hate Kindle's navigation arrows. They seem clumbersome. But I've only used it for a few minutes perhaps having it for a month would change my mind. Taking notes wiht the Kindle was not easy. I also did not find it easy to view my notes.

I've not tried the Sony but here are somethings i think at least sounds good.

1) It has a touch screen. I assume it make navigation a lot easier and a lot more intuitive.

2) It allows more digital formats. If i wanted to upload a MS Word Doc, I can. I can't think of any reason i would but at least the option is there.

3) I don't use the Library very much but if i can download a book without going and see if i like it before I buy it then why not use it.

4) I won't be tied to just one store or product. This may not be a big issue if DRM breaking remains good.

5) Expansion slots for memory. Kindle claims you can load 3,500 books so i don't really see this as an issue. I don't know how many books Sony can story without the Memory cards.

6) I'm concerned about both dying when the battery becomes too weak.


Kindle is better in the following ways

1) It has longer battery life

2) It seems to have a much larger eBook selection. This may not be a big issue if i can break the DRM.

3) Kindle's price seems more reasonable especially when you consider the sizes available.

4) Kindle is bigger at almost every level and is cheaper.


What i really want is good navigation, the ability to take notes with easy, the ability to quote and reference materials in my own documents (such as emails or research papers), the ability to pull up information on the fly when i need to search across books for a quote that i like. For the most part, everything else is just extra.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

- Almost always

- yes

suggestion: google the term "Apprentice Alf"

What options do you feel the Sony has for you over the Kindle?

Well, I've not had an ePub that the DRM could not be removed except for ones from Apple. But then, I'll never pay apple for an eBook.

Stripping the DRM from AZW eBooks is trivial.

[wallcraft]

So far as I know, the Kindle 3 and DX are the only E Ink Reader devices that search across your entire library. So this might be the "killer feature" for you. It does this by pre-indexing every new ebook you copy to the device. Note that only the metadata from PDFs is included in the "all content" search. You can search within a open PDF ebook, assuming it is text (as opposed to images).

All your notes are stored in a plain text file, and also on Amazon's servers. The manual says that you can add to your notes from a PC by copying the notes text file over to the PC via USB, editing it, and copying it back. This sounds a little dangerous to me, but it does get around the difficultly in typing in long notes on the Kindle.

[adbosch]

I know the topic is a bit controversial on forums, so could someone send me an email with a 'how to' (for dummies) on drm removal? Thanks.

[maurices5000]

Thanks for this information WallCraft! I really like the Sony features except the size and price but if i can't search across books that's a killer. But the touch and highlight seems amazing. I'll have ot look into this a little more.

Do you know if there is a limit to the note size?

Originally Posted by wallcraft

So far as I know, the Kindle 3 and DX are the only E Ink Reader devices that search across your entire library. So this might be the "killer feature" for you. It does this by pre-indexing every new ebook you copy to the device. Note that only the metadata from PDFs is included in the "all content" search. You can search within a open PDF ebook, assuming it is text (as opposed to images).

All your notes are stored in a plain text file, and also on Amazon's servers. The manual says that you can add to your notes from a PC by copying the notes text file over to the PC via USB, editing it, and copying it back. This sounds a little dangerous to me, but it does get around the difficultly in typing in long notes on the Kindle.

[starrlamia]

DRM stripping is easy, just google instructions.
I buy from Amazon and strip DRM to use on my sony, the only problem I have encountered is that some of the books are not mobi, they are topaz and I havent found a way to strip DRM from that yet. They have been really good about returns though and I just return any with Topaz, I have asked them to start listing format on the buy page so you know before purchasing.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by maurices5000

... What i really want is good navigation, the ability to take notes with easy, the ability to quote and reference materials in my own documents (such as emails or research papers), the ability to pull up information on the fly when i need to search across books for a quote that i like. For the most part, everything else is just extra.

Sounds to me like you need a computer. I like my Sony reader very much, but the few times I've tried to do anything like highlighting or writing notes (just for experiment) have not given me much incentive to make a habit of it. I am not at all certain that note taking would be any better on the Kindle, just saying that it's not something I find easy on my Sony ... but that's not why I bought it. Seriously though, if taking notes is important to you then I wonder if you may be better looking toward an ipad or kno or something - or even one of those ultra-portable notebook PCs or something.

[sbtx99]

Originally Posted by starrlamia

DRM stripping is easy, just google instructions.
I buy from Amazon and strip DRM to use on my sony, the only problem I have encountered is that some of the books are not mobi, they are topaz and I havent found a way to strip DRM from that yet. They have been really good about returns though and I just return any with Topaz, I have asked them to start listing format on the buy page so you know before purchasing.

Most kindle books include both file size and number of pages under the product details. Someone pointed out on another thread that the ones that only display the number of pages (no file size) are usually topaz. When I checked I found it true for the few that I had downloaded that were topaz.

[sbtx99]

Having both, I find that I prefer the navigation on the Sony over the kindle. Using the 5-way to navigate menus and dictionary lookup is a bit of a pain compared to the touchscreen. I don't use either for note taking but would think the Sony would be better due to more options (highlighting, underlining, etc.).

For just reading I find it to be a draw. I like the fonts on the kindle better but prefer the page turns on the touchscreen.

What I like the best about the kindle is the ease of getting content onto the device and syncing across devices. Something that wasn't as important back when I was only reading on one device, but now it's the most important feature for me since I also read on my mobile devices.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by sbtx99

Most kindle books include both file size and number of pages under the product details. Someone pointed out on another thread that the ones that only display the number of pages (no file size) are usually topaz. When I checked I found it true for the few that I had downloaded that were topaz.

The latest tools also work on Topaz files. The Calibre plug-in produces a zip file of the HTML and images,. The stand-alone versions produce the HTML zip and also a book of SVG page images in another zip file.

The HTML zip can be converted by Calibre to other formats, but includes any OCR errors. The SVG images are essentially images of the original book pages, and can be used to correct the OCR (manually!) if you want to spend the time.

[sbtx99]

(Deleted double post)

[sbtx99]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The latest tools also work on Topaz files. The Calibre plug-in produces a zip file of the HTML and images,. The stand-alone versions produce the HTML zip and also a book of SVG page images in another zip file.

The HTML zip can be converted by Calibre to other formats, but includes any OCR errors. The SVG images are essentially images of the original book pages, and can be used to correct the OCR (manually!) if you want to spend the time.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Luckily, the only ones I've gotten that were topaz were a couple of freebies. Not worth the effort. For the most part, I prefer to avoid the ones that are topaz.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by maurices5000

- Does breaking the DRM always work? Is it always a good quality?

- Can you break the DRM on the Kindle and use it on a Sony?

I'm feeling in a nit-picky mood, so I'll mention that none of the current ebook DRM removal tools actually break the ebook drm. They all require the decryption key to be able to decode the ebook.

Of course, one way or another, the person buying a drmed ebook must be given the decryption key, so that's not usually a problem.