It will undoubtedly hurt adoption, and that IS annoying but the standards situation will figure itself out sooner or later. Maybe one format will win out, as in the blu-ray/hddvd war. Maybe the market will support a few different formats. Who knows. With as much as our culture interacts with screens on a daily basis though, there's just no way that books won't make the transition. It'll happen.

Oh, from a consumer's point of view though, it's really not that irritating. The average busy consumer might not do it, but converting between formats is easy enough for even the most technologically simple person. There are some really good conversion tools out there. For example, I use a freeware tool called Calibre. I click add, I select the book, I click convert, and in a minute or two, it works on my Sony. It really is that easy; I didn't simplify the process.

I'll readily admit that ebook readers / ebooks aren't yet ready for mass consumption, but the products out there are mature enough to make it easy for anyone willing to try.