[LMB] Audible?

[Hendon, Alison]

I am an Audible user.  After you buy a book,  you download it to your
computer.  It also "lives" in your account at audible.com (in case your
files crash or disappear at home,  you can re-download it.)  You can
listen to the book on your computer - streaming - from either your
downloaded file or the file at Audible's website (in your library.)  You
can download the book from your computer (using the Audible interface)
onto a device.  At the moment I believe you can have up to 5 different
devices with one account.  The device needs to be supported by Audible,
there's a list at their website.  The DRM is transparent - when you
download the book onto the device, a DRM file downloads with it.

That said, I've had problems with having different types of files on my
audio player (a Creative Zen nano.)  I've tried having an Audible book,
a regular book (ripped from CDs for instance), and a book from the
public library (which uses overdrive.com for downloadable audio and has
its own DRM) and I've frozen the player to the point where I had to
reload the software that made it operate.

Now I use different devices for different books and that works better..

Alison M. Hendon
Youth Selection Team Leader
Brooklyn Public Library
a.hendon at brooklynpubliclibrary.org
(718) 230-2744
-----Original Message-----
From: lois-bujold-bounces at lists.herald.co.uk
[mailto:lois-bujold-bounces at lists.herald.co.uk] On Behalf Of Martin Gill
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 4:18 AM
To: Discussion of the works of Lois McMaster Bujold.
Subject: [LMB] Audible?

I was wondering if any listees use Audible.

I've walked around their site a bit, and the one thing I haven't
figured out is just how the audio is delivered.

Mostly the thing I'm against is DRM. I want to be able to play my
books still in 10 years time when audible is gone and dusted and their
software is totally unable to run anymore.

I also want to be able to play it where I want. On my computer
Windows/Linux, On my mp3 player (no matter the brand) on my HiFi as
mp3 CD, or even as burnt audio cd.

Can any listees tell me just how many of my options I'd lose if I were
to sign up with audible?

Additionally, and regardless of the above, just how impressed (or not)
are listees with audible's service?

--Martin
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