this time my :| is about computers

[kaberett]

Specifically, about Kobo.

I buy ebooks from them when (1) they're not available on hive.co.uk, and/or (2) they're sold without DRM on Kobo but not on hive.co.uk (which inexplicably insists on DRMing everything, including from publishers who request that their books be sold without DRM).

I am also running Adobe Digital Editions in Wine because I Cannot Be Having with booting up into a Windows partition for the specific purpose of downloading an ebook.

... I have now spent rather longer trying to troubleshoot what is going on here than it would have taken me to boot into Windows, several times over, and I'm not sure I'm actually any closer to a solution but I am, perhaps, more convinced that a solution isn't actually possible, at least not for me to implement.

-- backing up. I am still using sebenikela's Get ADE Working Under Wine guide. In a fit of grim fatalism, I even updated my version of ADE, such that I am now running 4.5.11, even. And, nevertheless, whenever I try to load an ACSM from, specifically, Kobo, I get the error message

Connection Error Detected

Digital Editions could not connect to the fulfillment server. Please make sure you are connected to the Internet.

I have, subsequent to a bunch of poking around at things, established that ADE perfectly well can still download DRMed ebooks from other sources (the Adobe sample books page; ... hive.co.uk) and, therefore, the problem is presumably specifically With Kobo, which is further supported by its total inability to redownload any of the other DRMed books I've ever bought from Kobo.

On the one hand, I did buy about seven other books at the same time and it is not like my to-be-read pile is particularly small anyway, but on the other I am mildly annoyed that I currently own a copy of The Vela and no actual way to tolerably read it.

(Because, yes, I also tried Kobo-for-Android, and that... does not count.)

Computers! Why are they! With any luck Kobo will get their shit together at some point I suppose!

Comments

[tei]

I don't remember what the exact issue was, but I do remember that the one time I bought an book from kobo I spent a day trying to get it on my ereader and then gave up and pirated it.

[kaberett]

That is deeply frustrating! It has worked for me in the past without any problems whatsoever, and it is entirely opaque to me what has changed. :|

[shanaqui]

I am really pretty glad I got my Boox Poke2, it has really cleared up a lot of these headaches for me. Sympathies. ♥

[kaberett]

<3

[highlyeccentric]

I have bought exactly one ADE book from kobo, never got it to work, and now check VERY CAREFULLY to make sure i buy no more

[kaberett]

Historically it has worked really well for me! AND YET. NOW. SOMETHING HAS CHANGED and I am Irritated.

[sporky_rat]

Strangely I haven't had any issues with Kobo....

[kaberett]

This is my first one. :|

[silveradept]

I know that our primary vendor for ebooks ditched ADE some time ago, so I don't know what's changed that would cause the problems, but I sympathize with the intense frustration that must produce, to have something that was working no longer do so.