I hate trying to buy ebooks for Microsoft Reader.

I only do it when I want a particular book that isn’t offered in any other format – today, for instance, it was Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice/Royal Assasin bundle – and even then it’s almost not worth it.

After you purchase the book, the site contacts your computer to see if you have a registered copy of Reader installed. If you’re not using Internet Explorer, it tells you that you must install, upgrade, or register Reader in order to download the book you just paid for. Then you’re blithely pointed to MS’s site… to download an 8-11 MB file you don’t need. Wouldn’t it be better if the site just said, “Hey, you need to use IE for this ’cause that’s how MS is.”

If you’re lucky enough to figure out that you should try with IE instead of your beloved Firefox, it saves you an hour of downloading software you already have.

And if you’re me, you must have Reader open and running or IE can’t find it!

After the book is downloaded, you can’t find it to copy it to your PPC because Windows stashes it in an unbelievably obscure system subdirectory and Reader doesn’t have a built-in “transfer to PPC” option.

On top of all of that, Reader for PPC is a resource hog, takes forever to load, and only displays about half as many words per page as other readers. And God help you if your device decides to crash in the middle of a giant book!

Reader is inelegant, awkward, and I look forward to the day when all ebooks are offered in other formats.