thanks to everyone for responding, i'm glad i wasn't just asking the same old same old question, you gotta love the discussion!
Dr. Drib, from my slowly growing understanding of the way things work, and with some experience with related material in the past, my guess is that as soon as you de-register, you will no longer be able to open any of the books. I'm wondering if the way around this might be alluded to in Natch's warning.
If you call customer support, and ask to de-register a device that is not online, or not capable of being on line, I'd think that what ever books that are currently loaded on that particular reader/computer would be readable indefinitely. Obviously that would be of limited usefulness, as you would not be able to load any further purchases from the Connect Store ever, but that's my theory. Does that seem like it makes sense?
Overall, though I am not a fan of DRM, it does seem as though Sony is being fairly reasonable with this approach. Now I just have to wait until Saturday, travel for 12 hours, swing by the office, pick up my readers, and get started!
