If you haven't noticed, DRM sucks.

So as I mentioned in my last post about Ariel, it's available as an ebook.  I found it at a few different websites, but on all of them, the ebook is formatted for Microsoft Reader.

I own a Bebook ebook reader, which handles just about all possible non-DRMed formats, and MobiPocket if you really want to pay for your content.  Of course, it won't handle Microsoft Reader format natively.

I thought to myself that anything with Microsoft in the name must suck, and I was right.  First of all, even after I paid for the ebook (from Diesel Ebook Store), I couldn't download it, because it couldn't detect that I had Microsoft Reader installed.  There's very little chance that I would have it, since I'm running Ubuntu on this laptop.

So I had to go in the other room and boot up the WinXP desktop machine.  I still couldn't download the ebook, because Microsoft Reader doesn't come pre-installed.  I had to go download and install it, and then I still couldn't download the book because I hadn't yet activated Reader.  And then once I got it activated, I had to reboot! Finally, after I restarted XP, and then re-logged in to the ebook site, I could finally download the file.

At that point, all I've got is a file that I can read on the computer.  Luckily, free and opensource software came to the rescue for the rest of the process.  It took me all of five minutes to Google a way to convert .lit files, find and install ConvertLit GUI, and run it on the file. The result is a completely DRM-free plain .html file, that will display just fine on my Bebook.

For that amount of effort, the book better be good (but I'm pretty sure it will turn out to have been worth it).