Netlibrary

Ah, Netlibrary. How do I love thee? Let me...no, wait, it won't actually take me long to count the ways.

The Good:

You can download new audiobooks and listen to them.

The Bad:

Well, first of all, Netlibrary decided that it would be best to have just one file, no matter how long the book was. So, if you have a 25 hour book, it'll be a single file that's--yep, 25 hours long! Yeah! This means that you have your hands full trying to keep track of where you are as you stop and start. And that, as we know, is super fun. It's hard to download a single file that large without losing file integrity, especially if the download goes slowly (as it often does).

Second, Netlibrary elected to use the .wma format, with DRM encryption. This means that you can't use their files with ITunes, IPods, I-Anything. You can't use them on the Mac, or Linux, or...

What they're saying is that you have to use Windows, with Windows Media Player, and a small group of portable players that are compatible with .wma/DRM. It should be noted, however, that this doesn't include the Zune (how's that for irony?).

Finally, you can't do anything convenient with the audiobooks when you get them. No putting them on a CD-Rom, nothing like that. I understand that they're trying to protect copyright, but man, this is a real drag. I used this service when it first became available, but really, it could be much, much slicker.

Last Christmas ('06), I bought a DVD set of 600 audiobooks for $100 from Freeaudiobooks.com. The money is for the packaging, but the package gives you all the old school audiobooks you can imagine. Or, you could check out a Playaway, or an audiobook on CDs, or you could gouge your eyes out. All of these options are more straightforward than Netlibrary.com.

All apologies for my rant. I've wanted to do that for a long, long time.