Audible.com Disappointment

I listen to a lot of netcasts while driving and love my Sansa MP3 player. I have wanted to try Audible.com for a while to see what all the hype is about and got my chance today. They were offering a free Jules Verne audio book, so I said what the heck. I ran through their download manager setup and had the .aa file in my possession. It sounded great on the PC, but since I wanted to listen in my car I added my Sansa MP3 player (because it was supposed to be a supported) as an active device.

After many attempts (i.e. USB plugging, unplugging, and software restarts), the Audible manager couldn’t stay connected to my MP3 player (but my PC could) long enough to transfer the file over. I tried a second (generic) backup MP3 player I carry (not supported by Audible) and that didn’t work either. After some Googling I discovered that it is an extreme pain to circumnavigate the Audible DRM (to convert .aa files to MP3 manually/legally), so I gave up and deleted the Audible junk from my PC. I think I will try a competitor to see if they have a better structure/support for MP3 playback.