[Gerard]

Microsoft Reader 'died' for a few reasons, any one of which was enough for most.

~ With more than a dozen or so LIT files in one's device, it took ages to open the program thanks to some sort of scanning into memory for the titles. That wore out my patience to the point where I just didn't use it, even though I had lots of books in LIT format which I wanted to read. Waiting half a minute or longer (got to be over a minute in the case of my collection of free and paid titles) when one wishes to do a few minutes of reading just doesn't make sense.

~ DRM controls meant that it was very difficult to just pick up where one left off with a new device. Many users get new devices every 6 months or so. Since activation via one's Hotmail account was mandated, and since there was for a long time a severe restriction on the number of activated devices allowed (I think it was 4, right?), it could be a long wait for a support email to get replied to and perhaps, if one was lucky, receive further activations.

~ Many of us predicted that Microsoft Reader, as with any proprietary format forced upon users, had a limited lifespan and was therefore a bad investment when building a library of ebooks. Guess what? It died! Less than a decade... heck, it really only lasted about 5 or 6 years before Microsoft dropped it from the OS core apps like a hot potato. I feel for the folks who purchased hundreds of ebooks in LIT format, as many will have lost access to that material if they had not the technical know-how to work around this abandonment.

There are ways of course to get the words and pictures out of a LIT file. Add a C in front of that extension and one gets the (somewhat awkward) name of a freeware DOS tool which unpacks all the HTML and other elements from a LIT file, enabling reading in a browser or any decent ebook reader (my preference for years now being µBook from gowerpoint dot com). While I still had a version of MS Reader activated on my PC I converted all my LIT books thanks to this tool, and then deleted all the LIT files which served no real purpose outside of making profits for Microsoft. I hope they learned a lesson from this... but no, not likely, especially if they're still working on that silly program. The ability to scribble on an ebook was about the most special element of that otherwise slow and buggy reader, and really, why would I need to scribble on my books? Install this on a new device? No thanks.