Misadventures with the Audible Manager/Player

Recently I started listening to RPG podcasts on the drive home from work (I'll be talking more about that another time; that will be a far more pleasant post than this one). For this, and other reasons, I'm planning on getting a new car stereo that can handle MP3s. However, that's presently lower on the "funding" priority list, so for now I've been using my Palm (Zire 72) with a cassette adapter. Works fine, though it's a somewhat of a hassle.

I'm using the Real player for the Palm, and it works fine for the most part. The biggest problem is that it doesn't remember where you were in a song/MP3 if you turn off the Palm or switch to another program. So if I'm halfway through a podcast when I get home I have to pause it, record the time, and then select that the next day. Not a huge deal, granted, but is it so hard for the player to remember where you stopped? I'm familiar with how PalmOS programming works, so it's not some special "Palm thing".

I went looking for a replacement, preferably a free one since this is temporary until I replace the stereo (I don't listen to MP3s on my Palm otherwise). I eventually found the Audible player, which did exactly what I wanted. Though I then discovered that Audible uses a proprietary format and won't play MP3s (not on my Zire, at least). I figured that they would have something to convert MP3s to their "AA" format since MP3 is a popular, known standard.

Apparently not. At least, not for the Palm.

Foolishly, I downloaded and installed their desktop manager, thinking that would convert MP3s to AA. Granted, I didn't verify this ahead of time. But the hassle to install, set up, and uninstall their software was maddening. If it'd just been "Oh, this doesn't do what I thought it would." it would have been no big deal and I'd have no ill-will towards Audible. However...

First I had to register an account with Audible, which included giving them a CC# for when I actually ordered things from them. I had no plans to do that, but you shouldn't have to do that until you do order something. Then, the software on the desktop and the Palm had to be "activated", so more of a hassle there. Finally, when I decided that it wasn't working for me I went to uninstall everything, but that didn't work because the installation process said the desktop Manager was still running. There was no indication of this - no program running, no icon in the system tray. It wasn't until I found the process in Task Manager - running with no indication that it was there.

My experience with Audible's software took more time and was more frustrating than how it may appear from the previous paragraph (which is more of a summary than a detailed account). Now, it's very likely that I could have avoided some of the headache I received if I'd read through their docs a little more carefully. But, really, all I wanted was a simple Palm MP3 player that would remember where you last left off on a track. It shouldn't have been that much of a pain - but it was, and it totally soured me on Audible.

There's a big difference between how most software is and how it should be. And this is a perfect example.