Books bought (and a slight rant)

The other night I had worked a late shift, but I was too wound up afterwards to head to bed right away. So instead I dinked around online and decided to buy some books.

So I ended up with these all rather different books:

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (currently reading and oh it's good)
The Sword of Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks
Dexta by CJ Ryan (who doesn't seem to have a website)

Bought them all from ContentLink, which seems to only have books from Random House. but it carries many of them in Mobipocket format.

"Many" being the keyword here. One of them I wanted to buy was only in Adobe or MS Reader format. Seeing as Adobe from pubs that DRM can sometimes be formatted strangely, I went with MS reader. Or at least I tried to. Site kept telling me I had to activate my Reader copy. Okay, I thought I already had, but what the heck, I'll go through with it again.

But nooooooooooo. According to Microsoft, I've exceeded my six activations. In their words:
If you format your computer's hard drive or you add new hardware to your computer, it may appear to be a different computer to the Activation process. Therefore, it may count twice against this Activation limit.


Let me tell you, basing activations on that is total crap. I'm sorry, but I do not leave my computer stagnant for any length of time. Things need to change. New stuff comes out, need new space or want the latest CPU. Or I just feel like reformatting. So I can't read my ebooks because you think I'm not supposed to change my computer setup??

Oh, you can request to get an activation added to your quota, but have they answered me since I emailed them two days ago? No. Did they ever answer me when I had this problem awhile back? No. Yes, you have to EMAIL them to get more. So I can't buy my book. I don't mind using MSReader, but not when it's DRMed. Then it makes it into a useless piece of crap software that I want to smash into little pieces. Except that it's software and that would mess up my computer.

9 comments:

Angela James said...

I have found that I cannot order MS Reader books from sites like that through Firefox, I have to use Internet Explorer. Otherwise I will always get the message that I need to activate my copy. So I'm not sure if you're working in Firefox, but try downloading the book using IE if you are. Because the giant conglomeration of Microsoft doesn't want Firefox users to be able to get rid of IE completely, they make some things impossible to do outside of any browser but IE and it's quite irritating.

Anonymous said...

Darkly Dreaming Dexter is fantastic. Have you seen that Showtime has turned it into a series? It's called "Dexter" and stars -- I can never remember the actor's name, he played the younger brother, David, on "Six Feet Under." I'm hoping it's good.

Kerry said...

I've had that happen to me with MS Reader as well. Totally stupid system, especially with the regularity computers get rebuilt around here.

Sorry I can't remember how I got around it last time. I think maybe they actually answered my email.

Nicole said...

Thanks Angie. I never thought of it as a Firefox issue since usually when that's the case, they at least tell you. So hmph. Still peeved at Microsoft, but I might relent since the 2-in-1 Robin Hobb books for less than $5 is mighty tempting.

Kristie (J) said...

I don't understand a word you said about the mobipocket thing *g* but I see you got the Terry Brooks!! Both Ron and I loved them when we read them years ago. I'm now anxiously waiting to hear what you think of them too!

Mailyn said...

It's Microsoft. that should tell you something. LOL. Gawd they have to make everything so damn hard and uncompatible. They are the devil! LMAO.

Anonymous said...

Contentlink is the ebook arm of Random House. Ordinarily you can find those books at Powells.com as well in MS Lit form.

I have found that there are a couple ways around the activation problem. First, you need to make sure that you have back up html files of the MS lit books that you already own.

If you do, you can make up a new "passport" and have six new activations. The problem or challenge is that the books that you purchased and downloaded under your old passport will not be viewable, which is why you should run the ConvertLit program before you get a new passport.

Also, if you call 800-936-5700, you can ask to have your account escalated which means you will get a phone call within 72 hours. I hope that helps you out.

It is frustrating that we have to jump through so many hoops to get the books we want in the format we want, but I guess that is the price we currently have to pay. The one reason that I buy in MS LIt format v. the other formats is because I have the ability to preserve those books in a format that is not "activation" dependent.

Colleen Gleason said...

Ooooh, I remember reading the Sword of Shannara waayyy back when, when I was still reading Piers Anthony! Enjoy (if you ever get it)!

Nicole said...

Oh, I've read the Sword of Shannara trilogy (and most of the other books he's written) a long time ago. But I haven't read him lately, so I want to go bacck and read them all again.