James Adcock wrote:
i expect that i will be able to load .epubs onto the thing quite easily, simply by going through the itunes store...
Do me a favor and see what you can do with it using wifi and without feeding Apple your credit card number, nor signing up for one of the “Company Store” accounts: aka iTunes, iBooks, nor the App Store. In my experience it is a “boat anchor” as far as reading books are concerned until one feeds Apple one’s credit card number
You need iTunes at least once. So you need a Windows PC or Mac at least once. You can get an AppStore account without disclosing your credit card. (I did it.) I guess you can also use a fake identity to do that. There are how-to's on the net. Google for them. The gist is to try and download a free application before registering for the AppStore. Then you can download Stanza (for free) and inside Stanza you can download epubs (even from arbitrary urls if you want to).
Also, see if you can figure out any way to load epub books from the PG site directly, via wifi,
Get Stanza, then add m.gutenberg.org as book source. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org