brodman

Are there any orb.com users out there? Perhaps you can help me with a problem. I am using orb.com to play .mp3 files from my home computer to my X30. It works intermittently. When it is working it launches windows media player, that displays: "Ready", "Connecting" , "Playing", "Buffering", and the file plays.

When it is not working, Windows Meda Player comes up with the song name, displays "Ready", then goes on to the next song, without playing the song! This just continues song after song, displaying "Ready" and going on to the next song.

Orb.com is an awesome service when it works and very frustrating when it does not. I have not found any pattern that I can see of when it works and when it doesn't.

Thanks,

Bill

Caddychunk

That's interesting... if not a little weird. I've been using Orb for about a month and I've never had a problem. I'd love to see an answer to this.

Also, am I the only one that is a little paranoid of Orb? It is such a great service (one I'd pay for). How/why do they offer it for free? I'm not complaining at all, but are they doing something sneaky I don't know about?

I use Orb.com everyday. Thanks Orb.

OddbOd

It was problems like the one described above (which I never solved, sorry) and Orb's insistence on streaming everything over the Internet that convinced me to ditch it in favour of Netjuke/Jinzora.

Originally Posted by Caddychunk

How/why do they offer it for free?

Orb initially offered it as a paid subscription service but quickly realised that nobody was going to pay to view media that they already owned.

Edit: Jim Behrens from Orb already answered this question.

Quote:

We launched with a service fee, and the primary reason was that we had to determine quickly how complicated the product was for end users to install and use, how much of a support burden there would be, so we wanted to initially limit the number of people who’d sign on until we were sure that the cost per user would scale. Once we launched, we realized that it was easy, our support calls were very low, and our scaling costs per user in a free model told us that we could afford to go free, get to millions of users and not go out of business. Source: The Engadget Interview: Jim Behrens, CEO of Orb Networks

brodman

Problem solved! Through Orb support, it turned out that it was a firewall problem on the Windows XP machine that I am hosting Orb. Nothing to do with the Pocket PCs. Thanks all.

Caddychunk

Thanks for that response Oddbod. I think some other aximsite readers had the same question that I did. I feel better now. Orb is a great service.