Audibly playing LIT ebooks?

[terrypin]

It's not something I expect to use a lot, but I do rather like that
facility on the desktop version of MS Reader that will let me *play* a
book audibly rather than read it. Is there any inexpensive/free
program available that will let me do the same on my PPC please?

Newcomer to PPC, using iPAQ 2210 (PPC 2003).

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

[easylife]

Even if Microsoft offered Verbosity for Pocket PCs you would go crazy after listening to it for 5 minutes. :lol: The voice is seriously that annoying. :wink: On the other hand, you can purchase audiobooks from audible.com (http://www.audible.com/) :way to go:

[terrypin]

Even if Microsoft offered Verbosity for Pocket PCs you would go crazy after listening to it for 5 minutes. :lol: The voice is seriously that annoying. :wink: On the other hand, you can purchase audiobooks from audible.com (http://www.audible.com/) :way to go:

Agreed, but I was thinking of longish documents I'd converted from TXT, DOC or HTM myself into LIT, for catching up while in car.

Started to look at audible.com, but found software installation confusing and prices highish. Then saw lot of bad press along similar lines in one or more discussion groups. Are you an enthusiastic user?

Newcomer to PPC, using iPAQ 2210 (PPC 2003).

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

[rpommier]

I bought my wife and audible.com subscription for her birthday last year and she really enjoyed it. I even bought a book to play on my Ipaq and it worked well until I tried listening to it again on my Ipaq 2210.

I cannot get MS Reader to play the books in WM2003 and audible.com doesn't have a clue that WM2003 exists.

I've swore off all companies who's products don't work with the new OS. There's no way Linksys, audible.com, Think Outside couldn't have known about the new OS and had drivers availble upon release. If not then some kind of acknowledgement of a problem...

[seidler]

Look at www.fonix.com. Compared to this, MS Reader is excellent high quality TTS. But Fonix works on PocketPC. I don't understand why MS don't port their TTS to the PocketPC, the power needed is really low (<10% on a P3 800) so it should work...

But anyway, I rather listen to some music while reading when I'm on the bus to work ;)

Stefan

[Jon Westfall]

Audible can be a pain to install and setup, but once done it is a nice service. If the install give you problems, just shut down as many tasks as you can on your PC - the software seems to conflict with everything.

JOn.

[djl]

I have been an Audible subscriber almost from the start. I locked in to a great rate for two books, so it's worth my while to stay with the service. As far as Aubible and the PPC go, it's a mixed bag. I have Audible's software running on WM2003 and everything works fine. That said, Audible certainly can improve the user interface: It's not horrible, but it should be updated. At least it allows you to store books on storage cards, with the program in main memory. When it first became available for the PPC this was not possible. . . . One thing to be aware of: Audible allows you to "license" or "activate" 5 devices, including the desktop PC. This gives you plenty of portable devices to put you books on -- a PPC, an Audible-specific device such as a Rio mp3 player, or an iPOD. Over time, you can easily activate and de-activate 5 devices; on the sixth, it won't activate properly and you need to call Audible to reset all your devices. That can be a pain. . . . Overall, I have really liked all the books I've gotten from Audible, and over the years that has been considerable.

[chasmanor]

I have a 2215 and Audible didn't work very well. I talked with the folks at Audible.com and they suggested putting it on a card. I installed Audible on a 250mb SD Card, along with three books. I had earlier installed Microsoft Reader 2003 on the CF Card in order to bypass the Reader installed in RAM. It works wonderfully. I can listen to a book on Audible and read along on Microsoft Reader.

[Tye]

Fonix doesn't work with PPC2003. I asked them if they plan to support and the reply was that they didn't know yet. Said they would contact me when/if they did but haven't heard anything from them. This was back when PPC2003 was first launched.

I used to use it all the time with my old Toshiba. I would hook it up to my car stereo and catch up on all sorts of reading. Yes, the voice is mechanical but you get used to it and the stories still come out. I would copy a long document to the clipboard and iSpeak would start reading.

There is some software from a French company(?) Elan(?). They don't mention compatibility with PPC2003 but if you manually install the CAB file it will work. I didn't like the voices in this software at all and it's a bit buggy, maybe because of the OS. Also, I think it's kind of expensive for what you get.