Adobe Digital Editions - 1.7.1

It's glacially slow, it's ugly, and it's aggressively, hideously, and utterly un-Mac. It's an ill-conceived mediocrity - a Web 2.0 cloud fart inflicted upon your desktop.

No doubt it will become an industry standard through sheer force of monopoly.

I can recall when the PDF file first made its appearance and it looked like the true paperless world was at hand. No more! What good is software which is designed to restrict every sort of usage possible. You can't even copy and paste a line of text. This makes research with Digital Editions pointless. The program demands you go online every time you use it and re-download a new version. This is just a variant of MS-style spyware, When Adobe began this with CS2, and then took it all the way to the absurd with CS3 I didn't think they could promote a more invasive and noisome approach to limiting usage, but they've apparently outdone themselves.

I recently opted for purchasing an online PDF of the fabulous ancient esoteric scripture the Kolbrin "bible." The owners of the Kolbrin copyrights made sure you can do nothing more than read this book through Digital Editions. This is practically useless. Adobe Digital Editions enables this sort of fascist copyright policy.

Well, if this is the shape of the future, I think we'll see paper libraries coming back into vogue!

I haven't had many crashes (well only when trying to quit out), but Adobe's MANDATORY reinstalling process – which must be performed EVERY time I want to read this book, is so absurd that I can only hope that this program fails miserably in the area of democratization, which, after all, is what the world wide web was originally meant to achieve. In this regard Adobe Digital Editions is a giant step backwards. This should be called Dodo publishing software!

Perhaps their R&D department might stop trying to figure out how to squeeze every last penny out of their software solutions, and start figuring out how to give the paying user SOMETHING for their money.

I am one sorry customer.

This is probably the single worst app I've been forced to use. It has less functionality than the previous edition of Adobe reader. It constantly fails to open documents properly, When you can open an ebook there is no full screen view. The navigation buttons are unreliable, jerky, and too tiny to see easily. I get consistent headaches from the program because the text moves so jerkily and I am constantly moving up and down i the same page. I cannot imagine what Adobe think they are doing inflicting trash like this on ebook readers.

There is also one specific issue that drives me crazy. I'm left-handed. In Reader 7 I would set an ebook to full screen and use the space bar to page down. Now, the space bar often does not work and I have to reach across to the right side of the keyboard with my left hand to hit the pagedown button, or mouse to the right side of the screen to use possibly the smallest nav buttons ever inflicted on users. What was a seamless process is now frustrating and constantly interrupted. I'd revert to Reader 7 if I could, but the new security arrangements make that impossible.

Do not use this product if you can avoid it, particulalry if you are left-handed.

First, they built the original app so that if you so much as moved a folder, your digital editions were rendered useless and you had to go thru long, demeaning harangues with Adobe to get them back.
Then they uncoupled this from Adobe reader, and failed to issue a Mac version for months.
In the Flash versions so far, all my bought and paid for digital editions came up blank.
In this version, they now report actual errors in the PDF files themselves and I'm instructed to go get another copy of each book from the vendor.

Adobe's either going to fix this or reimburse me for the $60 worth of digital books I bought that are no longer readable.