Can we put these new eBooks on our PDAs?

I found a product that might work...it's worth a shot.

http://www.pocketgear.com/en_US/html/display_product.jsp?categoryId=cat4490052&srcPage=category&id=prod6661017&sf=48190044

I don't have any adobe products installed any longer, but if someone wants to try it, they have a trial option. Good luck, and let us all know if it works!

At least you had a print option ;-)) - the book I want to read when I'm on the move is 460 pages long and there is a restriction on printing only 30 pages on any one day. Not Adobe's fault that the restriction is there ... but entirely adobe's fault that I'd even consider printing.

Come on Adobe - wise up - get this sorted ASAP.

Thank GOD I'm not the only one pulling my hair out on this one. I've sworn off adobe now, deleted every adobe product off of my computers and palm, and physically PRINTED the @*!$ e-book that I bought specifically to be an "E" book!

sigh

So what's the better way to put an ebook on my palm...anyone?

....Good analysis ESC, this must be about the most frustrating product release ever. You'd have thought that Adobe would be wise enough not to pull the existing functionality from Acrobat until Digital Editions was up to the task.

I've separately raised the question as to when mobile devices will be supported and got a blanking response along the lines of "we're not telling you because it is against our policy to do so" (One wonders if Adobe have a Customer Treatment Policy which deems this kind of response to be entirely satisfactory). We could be waiting 6 days, 6 months, 6 years or maybe even 6 lifetimes. Nobody knows.

Be warned about the tantalising "downgrade to an earlier version of Acrobat" route - I tried and the older version of Acrobat wouldn't recognise my mobile device. Different hardware config than yours though so you might be lucky.

Mr. Wolfe, I'm confused about the portability feature. Today, the 18th, I went to the news/updates page you suggested:

http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions

And it says "Transfer copy-protected publications from your PC to other computers or devices." I also stumbled upon a page here:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402749&sliceId=1

where it says:

"In Digital Editions 1.0, you can only open or read eBooks using Adobe Digital Editions on the computer from which you purchased the eBooks.

Reason
Digital Editions 1.0 does not support portable content. When you purchase an eBook, the eBook is locked to the computer and user.

Solution
Adobe recommends that all users update to Digital Editions 1.5.

Adobe Digital Editions 1.5 converts items to a license associated with a named account, which enables digital content to be backed up, copied, and read on other machines."

So, as of today is the portability feature working, and if not, why is it being promoted as a reason for upgrading to 1.5?

I'm a librarian, and we offer Adobe e-books through the Overdrive service. I'm just about to buy a Palm device and found a book about using the Palm OS in the Overdrive catalog. It's only in Adobe format. It looks like if I wanted to read the book about Palm ON my Palm, I'd have to jump through all sorts of hoops including possibly downgrading my Adobe Reader to v. 6 from v. 8. How can I be expected to encourage our library customers to try Ebooks when I'm running into these problems myself, and can't even be sure which software to guide them to?

I'd like to make a request for a Flash Lite 3 version. Having Flash eBooks on my Sony Mylo would be the Bee's Knees.

Peter,

As a policy we cannot discuss future releases. So at this moment we really can't answer your question about devices and time. Sorry..

Regards,

Bentley Wolfe
Senior Support Engineer, Flash/Flash Player/Digital Editions
Adobe

...being a sensible lad I kept a copy of the installer for Acrobat 7 (and earlier versions too). I uninstalled 8, installed 7, followed the procedures I found on the forum but my device failed to get recognised (windows Mobile 6) so that was a complete waste of time too.

Adobe - Please give some indication of the potential timescale for device support. Mobile devices & ebooks = good mix. Mobile devices & no eBooks = very bad mix.

Steve, My thanks also for your reply. However, my patience didn't outlast your response time. I re-purchased the book in MobiPocket and have since transferred it to my PDA in Palm OS. I didn't see any future in investing in Adobe format books until this whole controversy over DE functionality is sorted out by Adobe. I too am like others who lost the ability to reimport my older Adobe Reader editions into DE without loss of comment text and highlighting I used in Adobe Reader (and transfers to PDAs).

You might add some commentary on your site about Adobe DE does not support transfer to mobil devices. It is the number one reason I have for purchasing e-books, to take them with me on my PDA. Its a shame that the exclusion is not more obvious on Ebooks.com.

Stephen, thanks for your response. It's good to know you're here and listening to what we're saying.

Personally, I LOVE ebooks. I'm always telling my friends how much better they are than "real" books. People usually say they don't like to read on a computer screen. I tell them putting their book on their PDA is as close to a book as you can get. You can even curl up with it in bed! (and read it with the lights off)!

The biggest advantage is being able to highlight and make comments that are searchable. However, that doesn't appear to be the case anymore in ADE. I found out (thanks to someone here) that I can take notes but I can't see that I can search on them.

Also, the books I bought in Adobe 7 format (hundreds of dollars worth), are now completely unusable. Someone here suggested that I uninstall ADE and re-install Adobe 7. I have just one question... why can't I run Adobe 7, Adobe 8 and ADE AT THE SAME TIME!?

Why in the world with such different features would Adobe make an upgrade (Adobe 8 ) that completely removes access to the previous version that has an entirely different feature set!?

I really don't understand what's going on at Adobe. It's like the whole Reader division was taken over by ZOMBIES! People sleep walking through life.

It appears the only way I can have access to my books is to have two separate computers. One running Adobe 7 and the other Adobe 8. So I can access part of my library from one computer and the other part from the other! WHO CAME UP WITH THIS IDIOTIC IDEA!?