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I was aware of electronic texts way back around 1988-1990, in particular the ones from Project Gutenberg and also the TidBITs weekly electronic newsletter, which started in 1990. Of course, pre-HTTP, access was mostly via bulletin boards and other forums, e.g. CIX. During the 1990s, I knew of at least one computer-based electronic magazines, and also some companies were issuing multimedia books on CD-ROM, e.g. Dorling Kindersley.
I didn't really get into reading electronic books until I came across Fictionwise in 2002 or so. And soon afterwards, I got a succession of Sony Clie hand-held PDAs, and read books from Fictionwise mostly in Mobipocket format. The two other popular formats with Microsoft LIT format, and the Palm PDB format.
Disillusion with DRM quickly set in, and I stoped buying DRMed fiction until the first Mobipocket DRM removal tools appeared in 2008.
But between 2002 and 2008, I moved from Sony Clies to one of the first eInk CyBooks from Bookeen. Since then I've had a variety of eInk based readers, as well as reading on iPod touch/iPhone.
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