Monday, July 15, 2002
My love/hate relationship with Audible
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THOUGHT" @ 12:00 PM
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!
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!
