Hi Gordon,
Yes, Adobe Digital Editions is free. It's the desktop version of their Ebook
reader with DRM support. The version Anne describes is a beta release that was
issued a few days ago. It's their first attempt at a version that support
screen readers. There's both a Windows version and a Mac version of this beta.
You have to apply for a digital authorization for your computer (basically,
sign into their site and register an email address and password to get and
Adobe ID so this can be associated with you). I haven't read through all the
information at the site, because basically all this information was provided in
links from my public library when I was trying to check on the accessibility of
downloadable eBooks a few months ago, and I went through the process then.
However, the same procedure should apply to using eBooks that you purchase with
ADE DRM.
You do need to use your authorized Adobe ID when you set up ADE on your
computer. I read through this in detail when I first set up the earlier
version, that was not accessible, so my memory of this is not fresh.
There are some limitations of the Preview, but they are in functionality, not
in expiration. The beta trial version does not support all the functions of
the stable version, such as annotations, printing, and the ability to load the
ebooks to USB-connected eReader hardware. This is because this is the initial
attempt, and not everything is working yet. Also, this version currently only
supports English, although the full version supports a number of other
languages.
Minimum Mac requirements are:
• Intel Core™ Duo or faster processor
• Mac OS X v10.6 or later
• 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
• 75MB of available hard-disk space
I don't know whether they tested this extensively in Lion, so that may be the
source of the additional crashing with VoiceOver that Anne observes. I've only
ever set this up for one machine, so there may be limits on the number of
different computers you can authorize.
There's an FAQ:
http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/faq/
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Jul 27, 2011, at 01:29, Gordon Smith wrote:
> Hi Esther & Anne
>
>
> Just a quick question; is this software free? Or is it time-expiring as in a
> beta or trial? Sorry, I've never used anything Adobe on Mac. I wish they
> would make DreamWeaver for Mac accessible.
>
> Gordon
>
> On 27 Jul 2011, at 12:23, Esther wrote:
>
> Hi Anne,
>
> Are you using the Adobe Digital Editions Preview under Lion? Because I
> haven't found this to be crashing VoiceOver frequently under Snow Leopard.
> Bookmarking works, and you can annotate the bookmarks with a label under than
> the default date/time marker. Searching also works. I did try this with a
> commercially purchased Adobe Digital Editions ePub book other than from Kobo,
> and it worked. It should also work with ePub file downloads from public
> libraries that use OverDrive.
>
> The previous stable versions of Adobe Digital Editions (1.7.2) only announced
> the button controls for minimize, close, and zoom, and the title bar, so this
> is a big improvement!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Esther
>
> On Jul 27, 2011, at 00:14, Anne Robertson wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I haven't got much time to test this today, but in the brief period I've
>> spent on it, it looks as though it's usable. It crashes VoiceOver fairly
>> frequently and Braille is a bit unreliable.
>>
>> However, it claims to handle not only Kobo books, but also Barnes and Noble.
>>
>> You can find out more about it from the Website at:
>> <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions1-8/>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Anne
>
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