[curtw]

It dawned on me last night that B&N could have guaranteed themselves a huge and free bump in their customer base, simply by handling this transition professionally and competently. One might suspect that the offer to port the libraries over was an attempt to engender goodwill from these "free" customers, and I applaud this effort.

However, the way they've botched what should have been a rather simple technical challenge (which they had over a year to prepare for) makes it *extremely* unlikely that I'll ever purchase an e-book, let alone any reader hardware, from Barnes & Noble. Based on this fiasco, I have zero confidence in them as a caretaker for my electronic purchases.