Which DRMd format do you prefer to buy?

[BenG]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

See, I was gonna say..........

"You forgot the "I wouldn't buy a drm'd book if it hopped on my shoulders and sang "On the Good Ship Lollipop"!

Well, I might if it did all that.

I usually buy Amazon's azw, but only because I know how to remove the DRM from those.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I know most of us prefer books which do not have DRM.

Also voted other, for "no DRM".

I'll recommend ADEPT-encrypted PDF/ePub to others if they don't mind it.

[mollybo]

I voted "other" but should have voted mobi. I had a moment and forgot that Amazon uses mobi.

[GhostHawk]

No DRM here, if I ever did the first thing I'd do is find out how to remove it.

[tamzilla]

I always liked the eReader DRM better than mobipocket, just because it didn't have a device limit, but I like ePub over the eReader format so I picked BN ePub.

[Sweetpea]

Mobipocket. As that is the format all my readers can read. I wouldn't have to convert it, only de-DRM it.

[Pardoz]

I voted "other" - you missed one of my preferred (for ease of conversion) formats (MS Reader; also hands-down the best format for reading on a computer, rather than a portable device). I tend to gravitate towards MS Reader/epub (for ease of conversion/extraction of content) and Mobi (because I own a Kindle).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ficbot

So, with that in mind, which format do you choose?

I 'voted' for Mobipocket, because that's what I currently buy given the choice. This is because my main ebook reader is a Kindle, and so I then only need to strip the DRM, not also do a format conversion.

But unless you want Mobipocket as your output format, the best choice is ePub, either variety, because in general it will have higher quality formatting and illustrations.

I suspect that eventually I'll be converting my library over to ePub. Luckily Mobipocket->ePub should result in (near) perfect conversion, with no artifacts, since ePub formatting is a superset of Mobipocket formatting.

[roger the rabbit]

I'm in the Secure Adobe (Adept) ePub camp now, (used to buy .LIT), because of the ease & transparency of use.

[=X=]

I probably should have chosen Other since I'll buy any format as I'll go for the lowest price over format , but I chose option Mobipocket because that is the format that I buy the most followed by LIT(interestly not listed)

Also since I no longer have a SONY, replaced with a Kindle all my reading devices only support Mobipocket.

The eReader format is my last choice, and only considered if the book is simple text format--like a fiction book. I don't keep it as HTML I concert it back to a eReader format then use caliber to convert it.

[Musicman]

I prefer the ereader DRM since it is not tied to a device, and there is no device limit on its use...

[=X=]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But unless you want Mobipocket as your output format, the best choice is ePub, either variety, because in general it will have higher quality formatting and illustrations.

This is a false misconception many people have. Walcraft did a format comparison on all the formats which is one of the better formatted eBooks. His study showed all of the major formats looked the same with only one real loser and that was eReader.
This study coincided with my experience as well.

There is only one format that has the best fidelity, as you put it, and also the only format that is supported but most if not all ereaders and that is PDF.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by =X=

This is a false misconception many people have. Walcraft did a format comparison on all the formats which is one of the better formatted eBooks. His study showed all of the major formats looked the same with only one real loser and that was eReader.
This study coincided with my experience as well.

There is only one format that has the best fidelity, as you put it, and also the only format that is supported but most if not all ereaders and that is PDF.

It's quite possible that in most current ebooks that ePub formatting of the text is no better than in the Mobipocket version. But illustrations are almost always higher quality (more pixels, fewer compression artifacts) in ePub than in Mobipocket, since the Mobipocket images are almost always reduced to fit in 63KiB, while there's no such limit on ePub images.

And there's at least one ebook out there where the formatting in the ePub is a lot better than the Mobipocket version - one I publish, which has proper drop cap images in ePub, but only large cap images (on and above the first line) in Mobipocket, because drop caps aren't possible in Mobipocket.

[CyberSmoke53]

I voted eReader mainly because its "key" is not tied to a set # of devices and can be moved to more devices i own than the other formats.

I guess my second preferred in the future will be ePub if any of my reading devices other than my desktop / laptop computers support the reading of the files drm'd.

At this time I would have to perform an "extra" step or two to the drm'd epub to make it readable on any of my mobile devices.

[FlorenceArt]

I still buy Mobi secure ebooks, because it's the only format I have (laboriously) managed to de-drm so far. I'm sure I will have to switch to Adobe epub, since it's the most widely available format in France, but I hate it.

I don't like having to use a specific software to read my book or activate it, and I haven't been able for some reason to register my copy with Adobe, and I still haven't figured out how to liberate it. Mobipocket is much simpler: register your PID with the online shop, download, dump on reader, start reading. The Adobe workflow seems unnecessarily complicated to me. But as I said, I'll probably have to get used to it soon.