So, did I mention that I'd bought an ebook reader the other day? A Kobo. I picked it over the Kindle because the Kindle, apparently taking a page from Apple, will only let you do what Amazon wants you to do - buy books from them. The Kobo, on the other hand, will let you check books out of your local library, or download books from other sources. In other words, you paid your money, so you own it, so you should be able to do whatever you want. The same reason I prefer PCs (Yes, I have an iPod Touch, but that was bought in a moment of weakness. The sound sucks, and, like every other Apple product, you have to do what they want you to do. If that's not congruent with what you'd like to do, tough.) But, back to the Kobo.

Great idea. So far, though, not so hot execution. First, out of the box you have to download set-up software to get rolling. Did that. Installed it. Launched it. It froze. No way to fix it, so I uninstalled it, downloaded a new copy, and installed that. It worked. Downloaded a couple of books from the library. First one - fine. Second one - froze again. Had to reset the reader, which blows away anything already downloaded. O.K., so, two books - no big deal. Read one. Turned out I liked using the thing. Small, light, holds lotsa books - what's not to like? Downloaded some free books from Kobo to my computer, then tried to synch them with the reader. Guess what? Froze. Total reset, again. After which, synched just fine. A day later, downloaded some more free books (all classics, of course). Tried to synch 'em. Froze. Reset. Detecting a pattern, maybe?

Finally, today, crazed optimist that I am, I decided to actually buy a book from the Kobo site, Julian Barnes's latest. It was ten bucks, so how could I lose? Well, turns out I couldn't even buy a book. "We're sorry, but your credit card provider is declining your purchase.". WTF? On ten bucks?!? You see, I pay off my credit card in full every month, early. I'm never anywhere near my credit limit. So, as you might imagine, I was a tad perplexed. Call the credit card company. "Nope, we haven't declined anything, Mr. Connor.". Well, phew!

So, there you go. My ereader, Kobo-style, experience so far. Nice to read on............if you can get it to work. If I don't hear anything back from their "Help" (not so far) desk by Tuesday, back it goes, and I keep accumulating paper. Paper doesn't crash.