Below is an Adobe e-book horror story from one of the best-looking blogs I’ve ever seen–Dave Burke, Live from Vermont. I love a sentence he quoted from an Adobe FAQ: “eBooks are not currently supported on the Adobe Reader for PocketPC since it does not include the Adobe DRM system.” In other words, all e-books are supposd to be Adobe-DRMed, right?
Meanwhile I’ve run across another Adobe FAQ–this one suggesting that e-book fans try Abika.com and Gutenberg.org. Problem is that the present Abika.com site appears not to have a thing to do with e-books. As for Gutenberg.org, yes, you can limit searches to Adobe files, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find any. Only two works of Dickens show on up on that site in the Adobe format. Oh, how I love Adobe’s reader-friendly ways! – David Rothman
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eBooks not supported on the Adobe Reader for PocketPCs
I just paid $16.97 for the electronic version of Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology Into Everyday Life at Amazon. It was my first purchase of an Adobe Acrobat Reader ebook. I’ve been ordering Microsoft Reader ebooks up to now and have been very pleased, but as pleased as I’ve been with MS Reader I am equally disgusted with Adobe. They use a Digital Rights Management (DRM) Encryption through their “content servers” for purchased ebooks and lo and behold, they don’t support DRM security format on Pocket PC’s. It took me several merry-go-rounds in activations, reading Acrobat Help, re-installations of Reader on the desktop and PocketPC until I discovered this tidbit tucked away in Adobe’s Acrobat Reader 6.0 FAQ:
Q: Can I view eBooks on PocketPC?
A: eBooks are not currently supported on the Adobe Reader for PocketPC since it does not include the Adobe DRM system. We will evaluate Pocket PC support for a future release if there is enough demand from consumers.
This is one of those
