07-15-2002, 08:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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My love/hate relationship with Audible
http://www.audible.com
Warning! This is a full blown rant. I absolutely love Audible content. I have been a customer of theirs since 1999 purchasing annual subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the occasional book or two. Great content - I would recommend it to anyone.
I absolutely hate Audible software and support. They have a lousy desktop interface that behaves like no other Windows software I've ever seen. They have a flaky Pocket PC player that insists on launching when Audible Manager on the desktop launches. They have the worlds second worst Digital Rights Management. Microsoft Reader's DRM5 is the worlds worst. Their 888 number is often busy, and even when you get through, you can be on hold for 2 hrs and never talk to anyone. They do not seem to read your emails. They look for key words and often cut and paste a "uninstall and reinstall" response, regardless of the problem, even if you have told them in the email you already tried that. This email ping-pong with their support department is slow, taking 24-48 hours between replies. <!>
To cut down on my frustration, I use MS Reader to listen to Audible. It is more reliable and friendly, even if it is missing some of the features of the Audible Player, which by the way, often don't work as advertised. Well, I used MS Reader until today.  Over the weekend I got a new laptop and set it up. As always I start with the XP Pro setup disk and repartition the drive. All was fine until I got to Audible.
Oh the horror. I had version 3.1.2 on my old laptop and it worked OK. 3.1.2 is no longer available though. Now it is 3.5. Before I go on you must understand something. The higher Audible gets with its version numbers, the worse the software gets. In 1999 I had Audible Manager (AM) 2.0 on the desktop and Audible Player (AP) 1.0 on my Philips Nino 500. Worked wonderfully. It has steadily gone downhill ever since. AM 2.5 was a mess, and AP 2.0 was a joke of the worst kind. I actually went back to AM 2.0 and AP 1.0 until I got my iPAQ. I had to upgrade to AM 2.5 for that to even work. At the time, MS Reader on the iPAQ had a horrible skip when playing content (fixed in a Jan/Feb 2001 ROM) that was worse than what AP 2.0 inflicted, so I endured, swearing every 3-4 weeks I was going to cancel my subscriptions.
Well, I could go on for days. Suffice it to say, I had found a calm place with AM 3.1.2 and MS Reader 2.0 on Pocket PC 2002 devices. Well, I am now forced to use AM 3.5 and it does not play well at all unless you have AP installed on your machine. It keeps trying to "upgrade" my iPAQ and inexplicably says it can't. My iPAQ is "busy." Busy fending off what it sees as a Denial of Service attack no doubt. So, in Audible Manager's frustration, it launches UpgradeCENotifier.exe and CENotifierPatch.exe in rapid succession. I guess it figures if it launches them fast enough, it will force this "upgrade" on my iPAQ. In the mean time though, AM is essentially moving about as fast the lady in front of you at Wal-Mart counts out exact change.
The fix? I was forced to install AP 3.5. Keep in mind, during all of this I had to activate and deactivate my device about 30 times. Now, I can't just let AP 3.5 be. I passionately dislike it. The bug where it hung if MS Reader was launched appears to be fixed, but the last thing I want to do is be on the interstate doing 70 and it locks up again. Soft resetting an iPAQ at speed is no fun, for me or my fellow commuters. And finding where you left off? Fuggetaboutit. Yet AM insists on popping up that ad, I mean Audible Player, every time I dock my device.
So, when I get more time tonight, I am going to try uninstalling it and seeing of the "upgrade" Gatlin gun comes back. Of course, that is another deactivation/reactivation. I have a feeling for the next three days I'll be listening to CD's rather than Audible as my activations run out and I have to send smoke signals to Wayne, NJ to get more activations added to my account.
I once recommended Audible to everyone I knew that showed interested when I talked about news I had heard on my morning commute and how I had heard it. I stopped doing that about 18 months ago, and given the experience I have had this past weekend, I see no reason to reverse that stance, which is frustrating because the content is soooooooooo good!
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07-15-2002, 08:29 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 157
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Ed,
It is my opinion that we should not support companies that have poor quality software. There are too many companies today shoveling out cr*p to customers. Take Thunderhawk for example. I installed the 1.0 program and it couldn't register me after 2 hours of fiddling with the registration process. I ended up debugging the problem myslef (usernames cannot accept spaces). The fact that I had to even fight the poorly written registration process turned me off to the application completely and I've not been back. If we continue to put up with this stuff the problems will not go away. If we vote with our dollars perhaps things will change. Stop using Audible and switch to Mazingo and listen to your content there instead.
__________________
Charles Pickrell
Sacramento Mobiole Computing SIG
A chapter of the NorCal Mobile Computing SIG
www.mobilecomputingsig.com |
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07-15-2002, 08:41 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Charles Pickrell
switch to Mazingo and listen to your content there instead.
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Why do you think I uninstalled Mazingo? :|
Unfortunately, Audible has a lock on some content. Just like PeanutPress does. Fortunately, Peanut Press has great software and support.
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07-15-2002, 09:06 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 121
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I really like audible. My only complaint is that they don't have enough unabridged books.... but they are getting more. In the past unabridged books were just a nightmare becaue of too many tapes or CDs.... now that you can put it in one file more publishers are doing it....
heyday
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07-15-2002, 09:21 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 2
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Another Option
Ed,
I have similar complaints with the audible software, however, since my latest home system wipe/reinstall, I have come up with a stable working configuration for my Jornada 560 series. I have the AP 3.0.1 version on my Jornada, which works reasonably well (no hangs, but an occasional lost bookmark). When I reinstalled the latest version of the manager software on my home computer, and then went to activate my Jornada, it gave me the too many activated devices error, and I briefly contemplated sending smoke signals to Audible. The one thing that kept me from going there was the fact that AP still worked on my Jornada with the files that were currently on my CF card, and were activated for the same account settings. This got me to thinking about whether I even needed the AM for transfering the files to my device, so I experimented with transferring the audible files from my home computer to the device via Activesync or a network file share with Netrunner. It worked flawlessly. I then uninstalled AM and reinstalled it selecting the no portable device option. It downloads audio programs from their website to my home computer, and that's it. No attempts to find my device, and sync, or any of the other AM headaches. I use AM ONLY to download the programs to my home computer, and then use other methodologies to transfer the programs to my device. Perhaps this could solve some of your problems with AM. Good luck.
I still find Audible to be the best solution for listening to audio programs on my daily 1 hour commute to work. I have to admit though, that Mazingo is catching-up fast.
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07-15-2002, 09:32 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 302
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Breaking from ranks here to say I love Audible's latest release 3.1.2 which also allows me to transfer mp3's and wma's (although this feature seems hidden until you have certain drivers installed). I have to admit I don't have my Jornada installed as an added device. We use Audible exlusively on our mp3 players (we have 3 now) and it works flawlessly. For that matter, so did the previous version. Perhaps their Pocket PC market is much smaller than their mp3 market?
Overall I love Audible because they have a bunch of weekly programs I like to catch on my own time. Although I usually agree we shouldn't support companies that have poor software and customer service (which, although a little slow, was always quite helpful to me), I don't want Audible to go away so I will continue to support them.
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07-15-2002, 10:09 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 113
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Good Audible.com support
I recently had two Audible.com issues that were both promptly resolved. One dealt with running out of activations. (One of my PDAs crashed, so I couldn't deactivate it.) Within a half hour of being on hold on the phone, the Audible technician simply reset all of my activations. This effectively started me from scratch.
Secondly, I had an issue with my Player software recognizing my CD player but not being able to write to it. I shot an e-mail before retiring the night and I had an attachment patch in my inbox the next morning that fixed it. I am pleased about the CD features they have incorporated in the Audible software.
On the flip side, I have had to resort to harrassing Microsoft for an activation. I mean at least Audible has a way of deactivating your hardware. With Microsoft, every time I reformat a PC or purchase a new PDA, I am at their mercy. No matter how much money you have invested in eBooks, they are not really yours in a sense. I have sent M$ weekly e-mails and never received a response. Finally, I gave up and just found which files the Reader program needed and copied them from another hardware source. It works! As long as I know which files to copy, and I actually have them, looks like I can bypass the online activation wizard. But, Audible.com should be recognized for giving the user more control.
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07-15-2002, 11:28 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 102
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I don't have much trouble with Audible. Then again, I don't use it much.
I try to keep up with the latest software, and that usually works.
They did go through a phase (I think with AP3) where the player would start and come to the front on every power-on or CF card insertion. Now that was irritating beyond the power to express, but they seem to have fixed it.
I just wish they'd get the rest of Terry Pratchett's books online 8)
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07-15-2002, 11:29 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 33
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Leave it to Ed to stir things up :P I agree mostly with his rant though.
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07-15-2002, 11:44 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 15
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So far things are going well for me and Audible.com, though I'm a new user. I have a 35 min train ride each morning to work and back again and audible sure helps pass the time.
Robert
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Linear Mode
