MS Reader ebooks - copying & reinstalling program and books

[csterns]

It seems to me there was a lot of press months back about the MS upgrade to MS Reader and how it would not allow you to read your current books. And, if you switched devices or hard reset your device you could no longer read your books. Am I right?

The reason I ask this is that I have switched devices several times and installed MS Reader on several computers and have had access to all my books. Am I dodging a bullet here and now that I ask about this will MS strike me dead?

Why have I been so fortunate and avoided all the hassles?

[Steven Cedrone]

I may be asking for trouble from the g-d of .lit, but...

My experiences mirror your own. No problems whatsoever with reader and my .lit ebooks...

Knock on wood... :wink:

Steve

[Jorgen]

It is good to hear that you both have avoided trouble. However, countless other people have had problems as the many questions in forums like this and on Usenet has shown. Ebooks are consumer goods and should be as easy to use as a toaster.

Jorgen

[Kevin C. Tofel]

I had nothing but problems and numerous reactivations to contend with, so if MS Reader is working for you, from my point of view I'd say you're lucky. After all of the problems, saw Ed's posts about Palm Reader and went that route......nary a single problem and I think there are more books available....

KCT

[Steven Cedrone]

Well, don't get me wrong...

I like my .lit books and Reader - they are all free and public domain books. My only concern is to get through all of the free Microsoft books before something does happen to Reader... :wink:

All purchases of books go through Peanut Press, been using them for years and never had a problem with them. Best DRM implementation out there right now..

Steve

[csterns]

I too went the Palm route as a contingency back many months ago when this issue first surfaced so I have both programs. Then B&N announces they're closing their eBooks section and I made sure I had all my books downloaded, stored all I had on an external drive and parked them for a while.

Over the last several months I have switched to a HP2215 when it rolled out, purchased two Tablet PC's (purchased and then sold one and replaced it), reformatted my other laptop and installed MS Reader and activated it over and over onto all devices and copying the eBooks onto each machine without issue. In each instance I kept expecting to run into problems and having to repurchase the books.

What I was wondering is did MS Reader change due to all the flack or am I/We the chosen few? It's strange to have all these different devices accepting MS Reader and my eBooks without one of them gagging.

[ChristopherTD]

I have activated MS Reader on numerous devices without problem for several years.

With all these things few people are going to post a message saying, "My Reader is working - what should I do?". So problem reports skew people's impressions.

FWIW I find the Palm DRM scheme intrusive and annoying - I dislike having to unlock each book. Its typography is also inferior in my experience but that is a different topic of conversation...

[cyclist]

The problems have all been accessing DRM protected books. I've avoided these problems completely by only reading non-DRM books, on any reader, not just Microsoft. As a side effect this avoids the need to activate Microsoft Reader, so I don't have any hassles with Microsoft's activation web site either.

There's lots and lots of non-protected content available, some paid for and some legitimately free, so I'm in no danger of running out of things to read on my PPC. As things are at present if a book is only available with DRM I'd rather buy the hard copy. I will not pay for something I can't be sure that I can read again 20 years on.

[ChristopherTD]

I will not pay for something I can't be sure that I can read again 20 years on.

It is equally uncertain whether I will be able to read my ebooks in 20 years time or the paper books that I have now. I already had to get rid of lots of paperbacks because I had nowhere to store them, so for me that is a vote for ebooks!

You can't lend ebooks either, so there is no danger of losing them that way!

Nothing is certain!!

[Jorgen]

>FWIW I find the Palm DRM scheme intrusive and annoying - I dislike having to unlock each book.

Hear, hear! So I am not alone.

>It is equally uncertain whether I will be able to read my ebooks in 20 years time

I actually do have books more than 20 years old that I would like to keep. However, the problem with DRM ebooks is that you are forced to stay with certain PDA's and even then not sure that you can read them perhaps five/ten years from now.

I have read etexts since the mid-80ies on computers and read ebooks/etexts on PDA's since the early 90ies; I have seen an awful lots of machines disappear and have myself changed platform many times for one reason to another. Sharp may well have some very interesting machines coming up, so maybe one day ...

No, make all DRM disappear. The DRM discussion was around for Apple II and PC DOS software in the 80ies and DRM lost in the end. I hope Ebook-DRM likewise will lose and very soon.

Jorgen

[michie]

>FWIW I find the Palm DRM scheme intrusive and annoying - I dislike having to unlock each book.

Hear, hear! So I am not alone.


But you don't have to unlock each book -- just leave previously opened book on before opening a new book (i.e., don't close the current book, just go straight to "open"). It will use the same name and credit card number to open the new book. As a result, I only enter my name and card number once -- right after installation and never again. This is much less intrusive than MS Reader and Mobipocket. With MS Reader, I have to log-on and activate Reader with every installation. With Mobipocket, I'm unlucky enough to have a PID that changes with every hard reset -- so I have to register my PID and redownload all my ebooks. At least with Palm Reader, I can install it and unlock my ebooks without having to be online at all.

[Jorgen]

If you always use the same creditcard: true. However, in 1999-2000, I ended up using three different cards (supermarket lost a card during payment(!), re-issue never arrived) and PeanutPress after re-DRM'ing all the books screwed up my login and ended up ignoring my emails(!).

Jorgen

[michie]

That does seem like a problem -- however, it seems that it's really the customer service of PeanutPress that's the issue, not the DRM. If your login problems were resolved, it'd be easy to redownload everything to a single credit card number. Actually, for some reason, my ebooks use 2 card numbers right now -- but I keep one unlocked ebook of each on my SD card so that I don't have to re-enter the unlock info. Too lazy to redownload since having multiple card numbers doesn't really bother me.

[Jorgen]

>however, it seems that it's really the customer service of PeanutPress that's the issue, not the DRM

Very true! What they got out of it was that I have not bought a single book from them since 2000.

Still: to be able to read the books, I will have to maintain a PDA supported by the PDM reader. This is not a problem today but I could imagine I one day might buy for example a descendent to the Sharp Zaurus SL-C700.

Jorgen

[drop]

Peanutpress, now Palm Digital Media, allows you to reset the unlock key. I did it several months ago because I ditched my old credit card.

Activation is a bit inconvenient. However, the benefit of ebooks out weight the few seconds of activation.

I have no problem with any version of MS Reader.