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View Full Version : New audio book service from amazon


RVRoadie
12-19-2009, 09:52 AM
I recently purchased a new Garmin GPS through amazon. During checkout I was presented with the following special offer. Get a $100 instant credit on the GPS if I subscribed to audible.com (http://www.audible.com) for 1 year at $14.95 per month. That basically gets you one audio book per month, in addition to being able to purchase others.

I decided to give it a try. I have never used audio books before, so I don't really know what they should cost. The audio book prices tend to be higher than the same hardcover books on amazon. For my first book, I selected Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichten. It is very well narrated and takes a little over 9 hours to listen to. It is set up so you can listen to a sample of any book before you buy.

The book downloads to iTunes (I use a Mac), then transfers to both my iPhone and iTouch. To download to my new Garmin, I had to use their software that runs on Windows (also running on my Mac). That worked well and easily transferred the audio book to the Garmin. They seem to support a very large number of different devices that you can use to listen to audio books. GPS, phones, PDAs, etc.

I was surprised how well it works on the Garmin. You can use the navigation features while you are listening to a book. I did run the audio through the car stereo auxiliary jack. That is much better audio quality than the internal audio speaker.

So far I have listened in the car on the Garmin, on the treadmill using the iPhone and before going to sleep on the iTouch mounted in a clock radio.

If you like audio books, it is worth a look.