I have listened to audiobooks in the past and have happy memories of Garrison Keillor enlivening the long drive to Goondiwindi one year, with lurid tales of the misdeeds of Lutheran ministers or Norwegian bachelor farmers from Lake Wobegon. ( I've just found there are weekly Lake Wobegon podcasts, so I've subscribed to those too.) Long ago I bought two LP's (that dates me) of Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot reading their own poetry, and both of those LPs ended up in the attic because I have nothing I can play them on now.
The Gutenberg "Human Voice" collection has some gems, like the Conan Doyle stories. The computer voice is not nearly so appealing but if I were visually impaired what a bonus it would be to have a list of over 2,000 titles to choose from, and I'm sure you would get used to the voice just for the pleasure of having a wonderful book made available to you. Having said that, both podcasts and (especially) audio books make you appreciate the skills of the speakers and actors; it's a gift to be able to speak or read a part so well.
I also liked the idea of "sample chapters" being available so that you can try out a book before you buy or borrow it: inevitably, it's a lot more effort to download a whole book rather than just borrow it, so why not see if you really like it first?
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I agree that you may as well buy/borrow a book rather than download it. Much more carbon efficient. A friend of mine told me to download God's Debris by Scott Adams (pen of the Dilbert comic strip) as it was only available online. I did, and it's been sitting in a file on my desktop for two years waiting to be read. I've oly just discovered that it's also available in hard copy format, which makes it more enticing (and a lot easier) to read.
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