'I should be the Nook's ideal customer. But I'm not...I am locked in.'

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by Cyberman tM

Macs can't run Win software just like fish can't breathe air.

Well, you can partition part of a mac hdd, install Win 7 and boot right into it much like any other intel machine. But thats neither here nor there.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Extended warranties are a scam. Never buy one.

I buy my gadgets with my credit card and get an additional 1-year added to my warranty.

[EowynCarter]

This is also something to remember : things change.

Fist i got a gen 3 reading mobi. Mobi was the good choice then. then, sometimes later, something happened : sony ditch their format, the French publishers switch to ePub.

oups !!

Luckily, i had already de-DRM my mobi books, calibre did that the rest (almost) happily.

That's the main problem with lock-in, DRM... that's not an instant problem, but you can't foresee the future. And eventually, it will become one.
Kindle being the best for you in 2011 don't mean it will still be the best for you in 2013.

[Ken Maltby]

Now that Amazon is using Topaz so much, I have just marked them off my list as a place
to buy ebooks. So their decision to use a hard to break DRM means lost sales for them
and more sales for B&N. It is not like the authors and publishers gain anything by the
harder DRM only at Amazon, the same books are being sold at other outlets with easy to
break DRM.

My JBL, thanks to a current Adobe Reader Mobile implementation, can handle the B&N
DRM, but two minutes after downloading a purchase, I have dropped the .epub into
Calibre, where a third party plugin removes the DRM and Calibre converts the .epub to
an .epub with formatting to match my ereader. A few minutes more and I've updated
the SD card by running SyncToy to have the SD card match a folder on my hard drive.

Within 4 or 5 minutes of purchasing the 7th Elemental Masters "Unnatural Issue" I have
a DRM free and formatted for my JBL ebook in the correct folder of the SD card, ready
to go.

There is no reason to let yourself be "Locked-in" to any particular ebook vender,
especially Amazon.

Luck;
Ken

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by MsCG1

No, I don't think so. At least not in all cases. You're paying for insurance and peace of mind, and it's worth it to some people.

But it teaches people to be careless. Imagine telling children that if they are breaking their toys they will get new ones from the shop. What will that lead to?

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But it teaches people to be careless. Imagine telling children that if they are breaking their toys they will get new ones from the shop. What will that lead to?

Wouldn't you have to tell them that you will take part of their allowance
for each toy first, so that their toys will be covered? Then give them the option
to pay and you will replace their toy or not pay and the broken toy stays broken.

Maybe the brightest kids would opt not to pay but take better care of their toys.

Luck;
Ken

[boswd]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But it teaches people to be careless. Imagine telling children that if they are breaking their toys they will get new ones from the shop. What will that lead to?

I'm not a big fan of buying ext warranties on low ticket electronic items but I don't think it teaches people to be careless. To some people they just like to know if something does happen they will be taken care of.

I've had receiver's blow out on my home theater and I would be lying if I didn't say a few times, "Damn I kind of wished I bought the warranty".

[DiapDealer]

Now that Amazon is using Topaz so much, I have just marked them off my list as a place to buy ebooks.

Really?
I feel there's been a huge decline in the number of Topaz books compared to when they first conceived of the format. Maybe there's a particular type of ebook (that I don't read) where they use it a lot?

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Now that Amazon is using Topaz so much, I have just marked them off my list as a place to buy ebooks.

+1. I'm particularly annoyed that there doesn't seem to be an easy way to tell before purchase what format the file is. I've seen the "oh, if it has a file size listed, it's X", but that doesn't seem to be always reliable.

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But it teaches people to be careless. Imagine telling children that if they are breaking their toys they will get new ones from the shop. What will that lead to?

What.

I bought an extended warranty for my Nook Classic (came in handy when those side buttons cracked, let me tell you!) because I was afraid the Nook might suffer an accident like falling into the tub. But the idea that having the warranty made me careless is a big laugh. Do you know how much trouble it is to replace a broken device? You have to FIND the warranty (not always easy), DRIVE to the store (45 minutes away in my case), HAGGLE with the employees (fortunately, the B&N people were cool about the cracked buttons, but this is a legitimate fear), and possible be told to wait for your new model or get a refurbished one from some warranty loophole.

So, yeah, a big chuckle to the idea that having a warranty makes me deliberately drop large rocks on my devices for chuckles.

[MsCG1]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But it teaches people to be careless. Imagine telling children that if they are breaking their toys they will get new ones from the shop. What will that lead to?

No, it provides protection to people when they've spent their hard earned money on devices that, in all likelihood, will experience an accident of some sort.

I'm not talking about a stationary video gaming system or a big screen television that will sit in the same spot for years. Ereaders are portable devices. They are prone to the same accidents as mp3 players, cell phones, etc. There's more opportunity for them to end up ruined or broken.

I don't reward my children for carelessness, but I don't punish them for honest accidents either.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Really?
I feel there's been a huge decline in the number of Topaz books compared to when they first conceived of the format. Maybe there's a particular type of ebook (that I don't read) where they use it a lot?

Could be, that was how I saw it for a long time, but then they started
having it on the books I was interested in again. They seem to be using it
like a minefield where they only have mines in a few places but you don't
know where. So, now I have given up on them, for ebooks, it's just not
worth it to me. Maybe it creates a good side effect of the Agency Pricing?
All the retailers are selling those books at the same price, so what is the
advantage to buying from Amazon, especially with the possibility of stepping
on Topaz.

Perhaps Amazon knows that Topaz won't work to their advantage while the
books are being sold elsewhere. Could that be part of their push to sign up
authors on an exclusive basis? Maybe they are trying to make it so that you
can really only read that ebook on their device and only buy it from them?

As it is now, Amazon still sends me notices of ebooks that match my old
buying pattern with them. Then I just check Inkmesh and/or B&N for that
ebook and buy it someplace other than Amazon. Maybe they will notice it
some day and give up on Topaz, I doubt it but you never know.

Luck;
Ken

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But it teaches people to be careless. Imagine telling children that if they are breaking their toys they will get new ones from the shop. What will that lead to?

It's not always about carelessness. Some devices are just more prone to breakage than others. For instance, I'd probably buy an extended warranty for a desktop computer, because computers have lots of parts in them that can go bad. There's not too many "careless" things you can do with a computer to make a RAM chip go bad, and it's not that easy to cause a DVD drive to fail. These things might work without a problem for the expected life of the unit, but what if they don't? I had a problem with my monitor that showed up maybe 2 months after the warranty ended. Had I bought the extended warranty, it would've been covered.

Now, for something like a flash-based media player, I probably wouldn't bother. And truth be told, I didn't get the extended warranty for my Kindle, because I figured a case would be a better investment against damage. But it's not really accurate to say that extended warranties are always a waste of money.

[EowynCarter]

But it's not really accurate to say that extended warranties are always a waste of money.

Not always. It's a bit like playing loto.
But, extended warranty are sold because they makes money....

[MsCG1]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

It's not always about carelessness. Some devices are just more prone to breakage than others. For instance, I'd probably buy an extended warranty for a desktop computer, because computers have lots of parts in them that can go bad. There's not too many "careless" things you can do with a computer to make a RAM chip go bad, and it's not that easy to cause a DVD drive to fail. These things might work without a problem for the expected life of the unit, but what if they don't? I had a problem with my monitor that showed up maybe 2 months after the warranty ended. Had I bought the extended warranty, it would've been covered.

Now, for something like a flash-based media player, I probably wouldn't bother. And truth be told, I didn't get the extended warranty for my Kindle, because I figured a case would be a better investment against damage. But it's not really accurate to say that extended warranties are always a waste of money.

True. I got the warranty for my Nook because it was $250 at the time I bought it, and it was plagued with problems like cracked bezels and whatnot. It made sense to spend an extra $60 to buy two years of protection. But I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't cover spills, cracked screens, etc.

Now, of course I would not pay $60 to cover a device that you can get for well under $100.

[OtterBooks]

The hardware failure rate of laptops is overwhelmingly in the second year of ownership. Most companies offer a base 1 year warranty. It's one product where buying the extended warranty makes sense, especially when a bad laptop motherboard can cost $300 to replace. Plus extended warranties for them are often not very expensive.

Also bear in mind that many credit cards, like Amex (and some Visa cards I think), add their own warranty, often doubling the manufacturers (up to one year in the case of Amex).