Damn DRM!

I am a Vernor Vinge fan. One of my favorite books is his "A Fire Upon the Deep".

For a while I've been aware that there is an annotated edition of it on an obscure, totally impossible to get a copy of CD called The "Electric Science Fiction" 1993 Hugo/Nebula Award Anthology CD. The edition available on that CD claims to contain 500KB of annotations from the author. I, and many others, would very much like to see those annotations, but it seemed they disappeared, along with the CD itself.

I've been tracking this for years, and finally, I've hit paydirt. It is now available for purchase.

But.

It is only available in four closed formats: Palm Reader, Abode eReader, MS Reader, and Mobipocket Reader eBook. I no longer have a Palm (static electricity shock them to death in the winters), and have nothing that can run a Mobipocket Reader. And I flatly refuse to run either MS Reader or Adobe eReader, as both have completely unacceptable licensing provisions.

This is a first for me: Something that I want, really want (at least $20-worth of want, push me and I may go higher), but cannot buy due to DRM and licensing restrictions. I will not deed my computer over to Microsoft or Adobe just to read a book.