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Hi Gang,
Here is the update I promised.
I was able to get through the 10 hour book I had loaded. I did find out rather quickly that bumping the scroll dial causes the software to go into an unstoppable fast forward or rewind search. This occurred while listening in my vehicle. This also causes you to lose your position in the book. I had to pull over to the side of the road and manually find where I had left off.
After I was done listening to that book I went to load a new one. That’s where the fun started. I found out that deleting a book with audible manager does not delete the file on the Axim. I looked at the audible folder with Resco file explorer and the file I thought was deleted with audible manager was still there. I also discovered that no matter what I do I cannot load more than one book without the Audible player locking up.
The Audible player will load itself more than once into memory and causes conflicts.
Large file transfers (72MB format 3 Audible files) abort for no reason. Soft reset corrects this condition.
The title bar and start button “grey out” on occasion when running Audible player. There is no way to exit the program and a soft reset has to be initiated.
Lessons learned:
1. Audible Player 3.5 is NOT fully compatible with PPC2003
2. Only load one book at a time.
3. Soft reset before and after file transfer of book to Axim.
4. Don’t touch the scroll dial.
Final thoughts.
In addition to the Audible player problems I’m not real impressed with Windows Media Player either. More specifically with the general performance of the pocket PC dealing with audio. I’m sure that in order for Dell to keep the price of the Axim down they used the cheapest digital to analog converters and audio amplifier circuitry. There is a constant noise generated in my earphones that drives me nuts. There is also some clicking while I was playing some high quality MP3 music files I made from ripping a CD. I guess I might be asking too much from my $400 Axim. I was hoping for an all in one solution for my handheld computing and audio needs but it falls short in the audio department. I think I’ll cancel my Audible subscription until they release a player that works properly without all the issues I named above or I treat myself to an Ipod. It may not sound like it but I’m totally satisfied with my Axim. I am not real crazy about Microsoft’s involvement in its development however. Ever since “Reboot 95” Microsoft has a lot of bloat and too many unresolved issues. But that’s a subject for whole other thread.
-Tom
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