[daffy4u]

I just tackle a few of your points.

Originally Posted by Harmon

That's a very interesting piece of information. Since I've gravitated to a Sony 505, I haven't thought much about the K2, other than the eReader itself. So I hadn't realized that there's no dedicated Amazon reading program for computers.

Checking over Amazon, it doesn't appear to me that you can buy a Kindle Book without owning a Kindle. That, too, is interesting. I assume that if you own a Kindle, you can download the book from Amazon via Whispernet, then attach the K2 to your computer and manually move the book on to your computer.

You are correct that you must have a Kindle registered to your Amazon account in order to buy Kindle books. You don't have to transfer a book from your Kindle to your computer. You can download it directly to your computer.

But why wouldn't Amazon let you download the book to your computer first - particularly since there are some parts of the country that Whispernet apparently doesn't reach? And taking into account that there actually are some people who prefer reading on the computer itself. The downloading part shouldn't be hard, since you can download mp3s and movies from Amazon.

For people who are not in a Whsipernet area, content can be downloaded to a computer and transferred to the Kindle Via USB. For people who prefer reading on the computer, there are other ebook sellers where they can purchase content to read on the appropriate desktop reader.

So...you have to assume that Amazon affirmatively does not want the Kindle books to reside on people's computers. What occurs to me is that maybe they are afraid that we Sony people will buy the K books, strip the DRM, and...um...read them or something equally nefarious.

Kindle owners can do the same thing.

This is kind of related to another question I've had on my mind, which is, why doesn't Amazon sell eBooks in multiple formats? Putting aside the Sony format, there are other DRM formats out there, aren't there? And for that matter, with all the books in the public domain that Amazon has Kindlized, why don't they sell those books in some open format as well? I'm sure some people would buy them just for the convenience. I know I'd pay a couple or three bucks for public domain books in order to avoid having to play around getting them into a readable format.

I have no answer on why Amazon does not sell ebooks in other formats. I do know that every format except .lrx can be converted for use on the Kindle. You should check out MobleRead's library as well as Feedbooks.com and Manybooks.net for FREE public domain books formatted for your particular reader.