Ebooks

I have some dumb Calibre questions I was hoping someone could help me with. I find the mobileread Calibre thread pretty intimidating and too techy to go ask newbie questions, but it seems there's some pretty knowledgeable people here too, so maybe you can help.


First, among the books I've loaded into my Calibre library, there are some .doc files. Calibre is unable to convert these in any way. I assume I have to convert them manually, but what is the best format to convert them to before I add them back to Calibre? Do I have to delete the originals from Calibre entirely and then re-add them and redo all the metadata or is there a better way to just convert the existing files? Anyone know the reason Calibre doesn't do anything related to .doc files? I'd think with OpenOffice, they'd be able to do conversions at the least.

ETA: using the method below(http://ebooks.dreamwidth.org/29142.html?thread=196054#cmt196054) I was able to convert my .docs to epub, with the following caveats: some of the doc files had embedded images and those I converted to filtered html instead of rtf; one of the files had to be manually merged with its original because somehow the title got changed; I haven't looked at them on my ereader to see how they look, but in the Calibre viewer they look fine; I don't really care about file size so I wasn't paying any attention to that.

Second, I'm pretty sure I don't have Adobe ADE installed, just their pdf reader. I have a few secured pdfs I'd like to convert to a different format. I don't have any of the deDRM tools installed because I try to avoid buying DRM'd books, but it would also be nice to get books from the library. Is there any point in me adding the deDRM plugins if I don't want to install ADE or Kindle4PC or any of those type of programs? Is it possible to deDRM library books without installing ADE?


What other Calibre plugins do you use? What do they do and how easy are they to use? (I ask because there are a few plugins that look promising to me, but it seems the most recent edition of Calibre has quite a few bugs and you need to update to that to use them. I'm currently using 7.40)


Next, a lot of times Calibre can't find the metadata for my books using Googlebooks. It is available on Goodreads and I end up cutting and pasting. Is it worth it for me to sign up for an isbndb.com account so Calibre can check there for the metadata? Is it more or less complete than Googlebooks?


Lastly and not Calibre related, has anyone here used the PRS+ hack? I'd like the dictionary function, (I love it on my eBookwise) but if it screws other things up, I'd rather not bother. I'm just wondering if it's more trouble than it's worth or is it something you can't live without.


For the record I have a Sony 505 and an eBookwise.