How does one deactivate a computer one no longer has access to ?

Question

Dear Gentlebeings,I have over the years installed Adobe Digital Editions on my Mac laptops and Mac desktops, I now seem to have reached some sort of limit with the result that I get the following error when attempting to activate my latest laptop for Adobe Digital Editions :-E_ACT_TOO_MANY_ACTIVATIONS ....I do not have access to my old laptops to deactivate them, since I formatted the hard disks before I sold them. Is there some way that I can go online somewhere to delete the activations of my old machines so that I can activate my new laptop. I am getting so tired of the limitations imposed by the DRM in Adobe Digital Editions I am getting to the point where I refuse to buy electronic publications if they are in Adobe Digital Editions format. Can someone from Adobe please tell me how to get around this silly and arbitrary limit, so that I can LEGALLY read the publications on 2 computers that I LEGALLY paid money for ?Yours in frustrationVincent Coetzee

aramis2222 · Answer

Adobe Digital Nightmare software seems to work on the principle that when you pay money for a book in actual fact you have sold your soul to the company store. Really, Adobe boys, this isn't rocket science! It's computer science and you are a computer company. No wonder Steve Jobs seems to avoid your software on his products.

Steve does it like this in iTunes:

Open an account.
Authorise up to 5 machines.
Buy music/audiobooks/video and enjoy.
When you want to change machines deauthorise one of them and authorise another.
If you have wiped the hard drive before deauthorising then go to your account with Apple and once a year you are allowed to deauthorise all your machines and start again.

ADN does it like this:

Open an account.
Authorise up to 6 machines.
Buy books and weep when they don't download/open.
Find your machine is deauthorised.
Reauthorise. Deauthorise. Do this until you get the too many activations message.
Contact your book seller. He tells you to contact your ereader maker. Your ereader maker tells you to contact ADN.
The nightmare begins. You contact Adobe and ask for advice. You wait.
You wait some more.
When you have waited some more you come on here and beg for help.
When that fails you resort to sarcasm.
Hey presto! Problem solved.

My guess is that there is no real business planning gone into this system of marketing ebooks. I suppose there comes a time when a customer votes with his wallet and goes elsewhere. My Sony Reader is not used for commercial ebooks. This is not through choice. Thankfully I only bought one cheap book as a test and it failed to transfer for all of the reasons people have outlined here. I have contacted WHSmiths in the UK, Sony and Adobe and no one has been able to fix the problem. I won't be spending any money with WHSmiths or Waterstones in the UK simply because they advertise goods that I cannot enjoy.

Using an ereader should not entail the occult art of examining the entrails of a chicken (or registry) to ascertain good omens!

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