Initial Decision

[Phogg]

I began getting ebooks in the late nineties and reading them on my home computer.

In two thousand and eight I bought a little Gigabyte tablet to read on, but my wife didn't want anything that heavy or which generated so much heat. She picked out a Sony PRS-505 instead.

When it finally sunk in for me that you can read outdoors where I prefer to spend much of my time on e-ink screens I bought an Aztak Pocket Pro.

[Pulpmeister]

I got a Kindle simply because once, on a flight from Heathrow to Schiphol with my brother, as soon as we were airborne he pulled out his Kindle and started reading. I thought, wow! I usually bought some paperback or another for long flights, dozed on short ones; this looked good to me. Back home in Oz, I bought one in an electronics shop here and mainly used it for PD books, some of which I made myself including some obscure Edgar Wallace which I posted in the e-book Library here. I have never registered it with Amazon. I still buy tree-books from time to time. I have two active Kindles, but prefer the newer one without the keyboard, with lighting. You can read during power blackouts, as we had here a while back when lightning hit some pole-top transformers.

When I told a sister about this, she got one. Solved a long running niggle with her spouse; she likes to read in bed, he can't get to sleep with the light on...

In my family, Kindle has spread by contact, like a disease.

[ZodWallop]

I watched the release of the first couple of Kindles and Nooks, but was ambivalent about them until the Nook ST with Glowlight. For some reason, the lighted screen made it feel like the e-reader had finally arrived.

I still think the Nook ST with Glowlight is one of the best readers ever released. Unique, comfortable design, page turn buttons, SD card and a lighted screen.

[Hemmi]

I started reading ebook on my laptop using ADE. Bought them from a variety of places and, at first, downloaded in PDF format because it was easy to read on a computer. Switched to downloading EPUBs shortly thereafter.

I bought my first ereader in 2009 because I had a gift card I could use and Target stocked Sonys. I got a pocket edition and loved that thing! Moved on to the 650 and used that for many, many years. A couple of years ago, the 650 wasn't holding a charge for as long as it used to so I started looking for a new reader. Got a Nook Color and then an HD when they went on clearance sale. Had a Kobo Touch for a while but touch screens and I don't get along well.

I've now got quite a collection of Sonys which are my absolute favorites. Never wanted a Kindle and wouldn't have one now if it hadn't literally been given to me.

[bgalbrecht]

I first started reading ebooks from the Baen free library on my Palm PDA using plucker formatted books, and eventually started buying ebooks from Fictionwise and elsewhere. By the time the Kindle and Nook came out, I had accumulated enough books that they wouldn't all fit on a Kindle, but I could side load them all on a Nook, so I went the Nook route.

Eventually, I thought I'd like to have a frontlighted ereader, but by then B&N had dropped the microSD card slot on their reader, so I switched to a Kobo Glo HD, which doesn't have an external card slot, but the internal memory is a microSD card that can easily be replaced with a larger capacity card. Since Kobo attempts to maintain customer loyalty with their price matching, unless something is sold exclusively at Amazon, I usually get every book I'm interested in at the Amazon sale price or cheaper.

I don't check out the Amazon ereaders very often, but I'm pretty sure they still have a much smaller capacity than what I'd like to maintain on my ereader. I'm still not sure what I'll do when my Kobo Glo HD kicks the bucket, since the latest Kobos don't appear to have either internal card slot either.

[Ksane]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I don't check out the Amazon ereaders very often, but I'm pretty sure they still have a much smaller capacity than what I'd like to maintain on my ereader. I'm still not sure what I'll do when my Kobo Glo HD kicks the bucket, since the latest Kobos don't appear to have either internal card slot either.

Then you could get the new Kindle Oasis with 32 gb :-)
I'm an Ereader hoarder. But when I'm done touching and feeling & messing with the most recent used Ereader I'd just gotten off Ebay & Im ready to actually kick back for a 5 hr read fest....I grab my Kindle. I've surrendered to Amazon, they just make reading & book buying soooo easy.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Ksane

Then you could get the new Kindle Oasis with 32 gb :-)
I'm an Ereader hoarder. But when I'm done touching and feeling & messing with the most recent used Ereader I'd just gotten off Ebay & Im ready to actually kick back for a 5 hr read fest....I grab my Kindle. I've surrendered to Amazon, they just make reading & book buying soooo easy.

My Kobo Glo HD is 64GB, and I'm hoping the next generation top of the line ereaders will be 64 GB also. I really like the Kobo Glo HD size, too.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I don't check out the Amazon ereaders very often, but I'm pretty sure they still have a much smaller capacity than what I'd like to maintain on my ereader. I'm still not sure what I'll do when my Kobo Glo HD kicks the bucket, since the latest Kobos don't appear to have either internal card slot either.

You can go for the Manga editions of Amazon's Oasis or Kobo's Aura One ereaders with 32GB of internal storage without having to worry about opening the case and voiding your warranty. Waterproofing a bonus with either.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Gotadimple

Sunsurfer,
Library integration - meaning downloading from a public library? Very easy, you need to use Overdrive to read your library's catalog. Then when you select you specify Amazon kindle and it posts the book directly to your reader through Amazon. Any librarian at your local library can show you how to use it with your device.

Yes, and thanks for the advice. If I go the library route I’m interested in subscribing to one of those large libraries that allow anyone to join.

[pwalker8]

I started reading ebooks well before there were dedicated ebook readers. I bought a sony PRS-500 for a number of reasons. It was the first widely available, specific ebook reader (came out in September 2006). There was a local Sony store, so I was able to walk in, and try it before buying. The software really stunk, but Goyal released libprs500, the predecessor to Calibre, fairly quickly. That made side loading easy. I bought a kindle in late 2007 to get access to the Amazon ebook store. It wasn't that long before the first DRM tools came out and I could do all my reading on the PRS-500 (and later PRS-505).

[disconnected]

It’s the device, absolutely.

This answer is partly based on my history with ebooks. I’ve always read a lot but I came to ebooks quite by accident. I got my first Pocket PC in 2000 – a Compaq iPAQ 3630. I don’t think I’d ever even heard of ebooks then but the IPAQ package included a few coupons for free ebooks in Microsoft Lit format. It took me a while to actually get around to reading them (I couldn’t imagine wanting to read on something that smallI) but as soon as I tried them I was hooked.

Along with MSLit books I bought books from PeanutPress/PalmReader/ereader, Mobipocket, the late, great fictionwise, and a few publisher websites. Like Harry I bought lots of Agatha Christie from fictionwise, first the Miss Marples and Poirots and later, during the firesale, almost everything else.

I wished that more books, both current and backlist, were available as ebooks, and I wished that I didn’t need so many different apps and DRM systems to keep track of, but it was a small inconvenience. I was building up a sizable library. Ebooks didn’t take up any physical space, so moving to a new city didn’t require giving away half of them. I could keep my whole library forever…...

Well, that was a rude awakening. I don’t know how I could have been quite so short-sighted. I couldn’t imagine going back to print books. I thought about just cutting my losses, giving up on my thousand or so books and starting over, this time with a large company that would stay in business (although it didn’t help me that Microsoft was still in business). Maybe Borders would be a good choice; I liked their stores.

Thank goodness for Calibre and Alf. And the Mobileread forum. I was able to rescue almost every one of my books.

But the fact that I’d bought a few Mobipocket format ebooks from Amazon before they changed to their new format and they’d refused to convert them (I did email them about it) made me think less of them. At least Barnes and Noble had done their best; most of my Fictionwise books were carried over to my Barnes and Noble account (I realize that was USA only).

I now download and strip DRM as soon as I buy any book, and I like being able to shop at multiple places – partly because I don’t want Amazon to become the only one left if I can help it.

Because I buy ebooks from multiple places and sideload everything from Calibre, adding series info, and sometimes new covers and descriptions, I don’t care anything about the convenient Amazon cloud. That being the case, I choose by device (based on hardware and software and fuzzy emotional response but not on ecosystem). I know Amazon’s customer service has the best reputation but since I’ve never needed to return a Kobo or Nook I don’t worry too much about it.

Preserving my books is my number one goal in stripping DRM but explaining my response to the poll (at length) has also reminded me how great it is that now I CAN choose my ereaders solely by device.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by disconnected

I wished that more books, both current and backlist, were available as ebooks, and I wished that I didn’t need so many different apps and DRM systems to keep track of, but it was a small inconvenience. I was building up a sizable library. Ebooks didn’t take up any physical space, so moving to a new city didn’t require giving away half of them. I could keep my whole library forever…...

Well, that was a rude awakening. I don’t know how I could have been quite so short-sighted. I couldn’t imagine going back to print books. I thought about just cutting my losses, giving up on my thousand or so books and starting over, this time with a large company that would stay in business (although it didn’t help me that Microsoft was still in business). Maybe Borders would be a good choice; I liked their stores.

Thank goodness for Calibre and Alf. And the Mobileread forum. I was able to rescue almost every one of my books.

We had the "CLit" ("Convert LIT") program years before Alf, of course. It would expand a LIT book to OEBPS source, from where it could be rebuilt in Mobi format with MobiPocket Creator.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by disconnected

Maybe Borders would be a good choice; I liked their stores.

Heh. The overwhelming bulk of my early ebook library came from Borders because they had by far the best search function of any ebook store. At least they all ended up in my Kobo library, unlike my Sony purchases.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We had the "CLit" ("Convert LIT") program years before Alf, of course. It would expand a LIT book to OEBPS source, from where it could be rebuilt in Mobi format with MobiPocket Creator.

Yep, I used that to convert the one Lit book that I bought way back when and read on an early windows tablet. That windows tablet was my reading device (and a palm pilot clone for on the road) were my reading devices until I got the Sony PRS-500.

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We had the "CLit" ("Convert LIT") program years before Alf, of course. It would expand a LIT book to OEBPS source, from where it could be rebuilt in Mobi format with MobiPocket Creator.

Oh, you're right. I'd forgotten about that. I only had about fifty LIT books so they weren't as big a worry as my others.

In the end I was lucky to save them at all. I realized I needed some sort of key or file from an old desktop right before my husband took it somewhere to be wiped or destroyed.