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Originally Posted by sand_hero
... can anyone tell me what format ebooks come in?
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The answer is that they come in about a dozen formats that are currently in active use (i.e. you can currently buy stuff in those formats), and probably several times that of formats that are no longer in active use.
Unfortunately, there is nothing that can convert from any format to all formats, in fact many of the formats are 'dead-ends' in that you can't get the content back out of them once you've got it in.
This is what we mean when we refer to the "Tower of e-Babel" -- it's arguably the largest remaining technical obstacle to e-books moving into the mainstream.
So the short answer to what you're asking for is that the only thing that would approach those functions would be a laptop/tablet/UMPC with
several reading software apps to cover the various e-book formats. Of course, if the laptop/tablet/UMPC were what you were looking for, you'd probably have stopped looking by now.
The good news is that you don't need something that can convert [i]everything[i] to
anything, you only need tools to convert what you
can get to what you
can use. What you need will, of course be fixed by what reading device you go to, and once you decide that, you can narrow down your field of formats to acquire books in based on available tools. Others here have suggested that .LIT format is a good choice to buy books in, because the content can almost always be extracted for conversion to another format. For me, the important thing is can I get the content into RTF format, because I can pretty much get into whatever format I like from an RTF.
If you want a 7~9" screen, the iLiad is the only current choice for e-ink, but I believe there are a number of older devices that are in that size range (I claim only a passing acquaintance with the older stuff, however). There are, of course, a few others that are due out before long that will broaden the selection of available devices.
I know it's not the answer you want to hear, but it's the only answer that's correct at the moment.