The e-book promise

When the Amazon Kindle first came on the market. I was excited. I envisioned gaining more room in my house by getting rid of hard copy books and replacing with e-books. After some research I realized that it would probably be years since my dream was realized. Not only can you not convert existing books (investment of thousands of dollars) to e-books. But if you buy an e-reader you are pretty much locked in to the e-reader vendor for future content. Even when replacing or upgrading an existing e-reader, the content you have may not be transportable to the new device. Until publishers and writers can figure out how to properly protect their intellectual property while also helping their readers preserver their purchase investments along with choices and portability of devices, I will stick with the old hardcopy books for now. I just can't seem to grasp spending over $200 for an e-reader just to lock me in to a give retailer.