Buying

One of the latest technology gadgets out there is the Barnes and Noble new Nook. It's basically a no nonsense e-reader. I didn't think I would like the e-reader but it is growing on me.  To the people who say they don't want to read another computer screen. It's not like a computer screen at all. It has no glare issue works great outdoors even.

If you want to read in the dark, get a small book light, they have ones meant to clip right onto the device and works great with the right angle, no need to turn on the room light!

It is nice to own the hardcover versions of books too but they do take up lots of space and can clutter up the neatest of houses.

One thing I do is make backups of the books on my computer, and on top of that my computer does weekly backups to an external drive as well, so if the device crashes I can restore. Of course Barnes and Nobles keeps all of your downloads on their site as well so you could redownload if needed. I have also started to use an online backup service called BackBlaze, for a mere $5/month I get unlimited storage. The inital backup takes FOREVER, but once it's up there, only incremental changes to your files are store. 

Using Calibre I am able to convert books from other e-reader devices to the Nook .epub file if I wanted a book that B&N didn't have!!! I'm sure that's not something any of these companies want mentioned often, but it's out there...

All of this electronic reading keeps little dirty fingers off of my books, I can easily wipe the screen down if need be !