Dear Adobe

bCaveat emptor!

I bought my ebook online. I thought, "How convenient they're offering to give me a .pdf in addition to sending me the book." So I downloaded the book. I waited for the physical book to arrive in the mail. It didn't. I looked at the receipt again. Big mistake. There is NO physical copy of the book coming!! And I paid I guess $2 less for this digital file! What a rip!

What is with this idea? I have to read it on my computer. I don't have a laptop. I can't give it to my friend to read... assign my students to read from it... I tried printing it out and it says I can't have but 30 pages. So how does it know how many pages I print? Will the FBI arrest me if I manage to print more? I'll pay the extra for the print for sure. I won't bite on this bait online from now on. This is just no way as flexible as a printed book. Call me a luddite, but this is just nuts.

Now my question is, can I loan my ebook to someone else? How do I do that? Can I put it on reference for my students to read?

I never knowingly downloaded the Digital Editions software. It was downloaded and installed to my computer automatically when I checked a couple of eBooks out of the library. I could not figure out why, all of a sudden, I could not open the library books up in my Adobe Acrobat 7.0 software. I wasted quite a lot of time searching the internet and trying to figure it out. Eventually, I realized what had happened.

I AM SO GLAD THIS HAPPENED WITH A LIBRARY BOOK THAT WAS LOANED TO ME AND NOT A BOOK I BOUGHT or else I'd be totally peeved like so many other folks here. Once I figured out what had happened, I was sure to uninstall the Digital Editions software from my computer, change the setting in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 to NOT look for critical updates, and reset the file association for PDF files to Adobe Acrobat 7.0. I am now able to read PDF books again on my Pocket PC.

Since I did not have a choice, I read the books I'd checked out on my computer through the Digital Editions software and really hated the software. Cosmetically, it's really pretty, but it is so limited - I can't believe this software is LIVE and not being designated as Beta software.

I've only just started building my digital library and don't have much invested in eBooks yet. Now, I'll sit tight and wait to see how this whole thing pans out. Until the full functionality of being able to read books on multiple devices (pocket pcs, in particular), I will not invest any money in PDF books, and I won't even think about updating any of my Adobe software.

I simply downloaded this program to view a loaned ebook for my university degree. I've never heard of it before, and I can see why.

After 5 minuets of using it, finally finding what I want using the pathetic scroll wheel function, went to bookmark it and the program froze. Now when I open the program, all I get is a black screen and I cant load the book!

Ironically, the book i was trying to view was on user ergonomics!

I see a lot of reports on how people are trying to make ebooks more popular, but you have no chance if you make ridiculous software to support it.

I really expected more from Adobe.

I also just purchased an ebook online and what a stupid mistake i made, i will never buy another ebook again and Adobe's software, particularly this dumb Digital Editions Rubbish.

What good is it for portability when you cannot even transfer that ebook you purchased to another computer of yours especially your laptop?. I happened to have 6 pcs and one laptop in my home.

Please for sanity's sake fix this problem once and for all. We are NOT proud of your software anymore.

Extremely Disappointed User

Say it AGAIN Jesse!

I am very disappointed with Abobe Digital Editions. I was told that I was buying an ebook in pdf format and planned to use the pdf on my Mac, PC, and Linux machine. I was upset to find that the ebook opened only with DE. The search feature barely works, when I attempt to search for something I don't get a list of results, I have to go one-by-one to the next occurrence, when I do the highlighted term will often not even be displayed, I have to scroll around the current page.
Also, I can understand a publisher not wanting one to be able to copy a large portion of text out of their books, but there should be some reasonable threshold(10 words, 1 sentence, 100 characters)set so that I could actually use the file.

And if you're going to force us to use some crap software to view our ebooks, why not add a feature like hilighting that will persist beyond program loads.

This product is crap. I'm going to try and get a refund for my ebook.

Dear Ric of Adobe Products:

No, it doesn't work. I had it on my computer for several months before I had a need for it and it does not work. People download applications all the time thinking its the latest cool thing which will be there when they need it, like when they purchase an ebook.

After spending more than two hours today with the Adobe folks (I own Adobe Professional 8 for Mac, Adobe Professional 7 for Mac, and Adobe Standard 6 for Windows), being cut off, transfered around to no less than seven customer service reps and finally being told by the last rep that I should have informed the previous reps that I wanted to read an ebook I use occasionally for reference and that I previously could read for more than one year (when in fact I had told everyone) I FIND YOUR COMMENT CONDESCENDING.

Moreover, even though I was able to log into my account online, I was told that it did not exist, that my Adobe software was not registered (I was looking at the registered products on my computer screen as I was talking with Adobe) I was assigned yet another ID number to go with the thousands of ID numbers I must use on a daily basis as an attorney.

I WILL DO WHATEVER I CAN TO AVOID ADOBE PRODUCTS IN THE FUTURE JUST AS I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO AVOID ANY NEW PURCHASES OF MICROSOFT. In the meantime, I am going to go back to Amazon's rating page and update my reviews of Adobe ebooks and Adobe products.

Hi Ric. Thanks for your answer. I'm glad to hear it works for most people: I must have been unlucky with my first book in A.D.E. I do hope too that I will be able to transfer the reading licence to any other machine in a new version.

We are working on it. And it is no comfort to those who run into its limitations, but we have now had almost 500,000 downloads and the vast majority of people are happy with the product.