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Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors
By jumping through hoops, I mean having to reconfigure the firmware and strip the DRM of my ebooks and then reformat it so I don't just lose it in an incompatibility maze when the device eventually breaks, which is really a lot more work than I should have to do just to have full ownership of my own stuff that I bought with my own money.
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You're going to have to strip DRM no matter what format you use, if you want to buy commercial eBooks. All the big publishers use DRM. Have you come across the program "Calibre"? It's a superb, free, library management and format conversion tool that's supported in its own forum right here at MR. There are a set of plug-in tools available for Calibre for DRM removal. Install them, and DRM removal is a case of "drag and drop" of the book onto Calibre. Works with PC, Mac, Linux, everything.
That reminds me: you're out of luck if you run Linux and you want to buy commercial ePub books. In order to use ePub books, you have to load them to your reader via an Adobe program called "ADE" (Adobe Digital Editions). This is available for Mac and Windows only. Not Linux.
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How exactly does the ePub format work? I think I've read that there are stores that sell ePub format that has no DRM. Is it sort of like what .mp3 is at this point, in the sense that it's just the universal file and you can save things as ePub files?
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Both ePub and Mobi are available DRM-free, and there are free tools for creating both formats (eg Calibre). It's easy to convert any document to either ePub or Mobi format, or to convert from ePub to Mobi, or vice versa.
BUT, as I say, you won't find many mainstream DRM-free books. Like it or loath it, DRM is what you have to live with. What most of us do is buy our books, and immediately remove the DRM for personal use. Takes moment to do and is painless.
Hope that helps.