I am currently using the uBook reader (have been for 3-4 years now), but woul love to try something newer and maybe better.
I usually convert any book I want to read to TXT format, as uBook does a great job at rendering TXT.
Most of the readers I've encountered in a Google search (such as MobiReader) require you to download books from their store, but seeing as I'm getting all my books in free form (Guttenberg, Google, other ways ) these type of readers don't really fit me.
So, in your opinion which is the best eBook reader for the Windows Mobile platform?
I once used the Microsoft Reader. There are lots of books in that format also. However I stopped reading due to my small screen estate on the touch pro and my somehow failing eyes.
i use ereader
i use Ereader found here http://www.ereader.com/ereader/software/browse.htm. i like it a lot, it categorizes your books with a nice little interface. has options for font size and background, supports auto scroll. it looks very nice on the raphs beautiful screen. must convert the books to a format compatible for it, wasn't too hard to find a program by googling. check it out
I've used ereader a lot, but now use mobipocket-you can download almost all the books on gutenberg (or manybooks.net, which I use once in a while) in mobi format. You can also open up books in a few other formats with mobi (as long as there's no drm, I think). So I would recommend checking it out. I have never used ubook before, so I can't compare.
What's good about mobipocket? Well, it has a full-screen mode, that is really nice, especially on the fuze's small screen. More words per page = less page scrolling. That's the primary difference between it and ereader. With ereader, you can't get rid of the two menu bars, and they suck up space and also make the screen look kind of crappy. Let me tell you, set the background to black, with a light green or blue font, and mobi looks spectacular on the fuze. The screen totally blends in with the black borders of the device.
OTOH, ereader has the flash reading mode (can't remember the name) which is pretty cool from time to time. It will flash one, two or three words at a time at the top of the screen at an adjustable rate. So then the screen size doesn't matter at all. You just sit there and zone out and stare at one spot on the screen. It's a great option if, say, you are re-reading a chapter that you forgot a lot of stuff in, or if the book you're reading is boring, and you just want to blast through it. Ereader does a good job of pagination. Because of the ability to flip between a regular screen and the full screen mode with mobi, it doesn't paginate well at all (doesn't really even try). There's a progress bar that gives you an idea of how far along you are in the book, but the pages don't help. Mobi also has an annoying bug: when you first turn it on, if you scroll back beyond the page showing first, it hops back 10-20 pages. It's always a good idea to bookmark the first page read when you turn it on.
One other cool thing about mobi is that it allows you to add drawings and modify the text. I don't remember being able to do that with ereader. Sometimes you're bored, and adding an illustration is a nice diversion, or if the book sucks, you can change the text to liven things up. Hey, it's fun.
You can buy mobi books from booksonboard.com and fictionwise.com, too. They tend to have a better selection and prices than mobipocket.com. (You can get ereader books from those sites, too.)
Oh, yeah, I totally recommend getting GScroll if you're going to use mobipocket (not sure about the other ebook apps). It makes scrolling through pages much easier. You just scratch you finger lightly down the capacitative pad to move forward a page (or up to move back). It's much easier than pressing buttons. I tested out diamondscroll and dredscroll (think that's the name), and neither worked in this application for me.
I used a combination of Microsoft Reader and MobiReader.
I thought Microsoft reader wasn't supported by smartphones? although I haven't gotten around to testing it.
I use both ereader and mobipocket. In fact I have close to 2000 ebooks. If you KNOW where to look you can find tons of good books in mobi format.
+ 1 for microsoft reader for pocket pc. it works PERFECTLY with all my windows mobile devices, and there are huge libraries of .lit books. I've never bothered with mobi reader, mostly becuase ms reader does what i want it to. if the words are too small, it does give you the option to make em bigger or smaller.
mobirreader is what i have used in the past and was able to find and read full novels with it. seemed to work great on my Kaiser, have yet to try on my TP but i bet it would be fine.
Currently I use Microsoft Reader, Mobireader, Isilo, MicroOLAP CHM Reader and Repligo.
Repligo is a very nice reader but only can read .rgo format which is its own format. Normally I convert PDF to RGO for readibility.
For free ebook I download them from memoware.com or through some google.
V
Microsoft reader?
Tried it, and yeah, I can't seem to get microsoft reader to work on the raphael- If i run the instal from the device, it's not a valid application, If i run it on the pc it doesn't give an option to install to device.
i use this one http://haali.cs.msu.ru/pocketpc/
AlReader is the best
I'm using AlReader. I think it's the best ebook reader, here is a list of features:
AllReader+ supports TXT, HTML, RTF, FB2, PDB/PRC (PalmDOC, zTXT mode 1), DOC, DOCX, ODT, SXW, ABW, ZABW, CHM, and TCR formats.
The application allows you view the text in Regular or Full screen mode. You can also rotate the screen to 90, 180, 270 degrees.
With AllReader+ you can read books, make bookmarks, save quotes, configure profiles and settings and take advantage of many more options. You can even read your favorite books in the night by choosing Day&Night profile!
Features:
* Screen rotation to 90, 180, 270 degrees.
* Reading of text files with following formats: TXT, HTML, RTF, FB2, PDB/PRC (PalmDOC, zTXT mode 1), TCR.
* Profiles Day&Night. Each profile includes settings of text font, text and background color, settings of status line, etc.
* Work with hyperlinks.
* Regular and Full screen modes.
* Status line including time, battery, pages amount, percentage of read text.
* Support of original text styles and images.
* Feature-rich text optimization.
* Joystick buttons are reforming along with screen rotation.
* Regulation of interline interval and symbol spacing.
* Justification.
* Works with Dict, Lingvo and Slovoed dictionaries.
* 4 types of scrolling: Wave, Line, Smooth and Auto turn Pages;
* Background graphic support.
* Bookmarks with navigation along them.
* Search of any text line. Using in search line symbol “?” which is interpreted as any symbol.
* Proper English hyphenation.
* The search is case insensitive.
* Text crossing (by percentage and by pages).
* Quotations keeping.
* File saving as TXT or PDB in voluntary encoding.
* Permanent screen backlight is available.
7 days trial is available here: http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/W...t-Viewer/AllReader-plus-Pocket-PC-61803.shtml
it sounsa like you've installed the wrong version. make sure it's the one for PPC
faustianoverdrive said:
Tried it, and yeah, I can't seem to get microsoft reader to work on the raphael- If i run the instal from the device, it's not a valid application, If i run it on the pc it doesn't give an option to install to device.
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Mobipocket!!!
you don't have to buy them from their store you can get a word or pdf file and convert it to their format with their desktop manager.
Just tried Mobireader, and it's actually quite good.
I have just one problem with it. I usually turn pages by clicking on the screen, I hate using the hardware buttons for that. But if I accidentally click on the text (instead of the margins), it goes to the dictionary menu. Is there any way to disable this?
Thanks everyone for your replies!
alonroz said:
Just tried Mobireader, and it's actually quite good.
I have just one problem with it. I usually turn pages by clicking on the screen, I hate using the hardware buttons for that. But if I accidentally click on the text (instead of the margins), it goes to the dictionary menu. Is there any way to disable this?
Thanks everyone for your replies!
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Gscroll (mobilesrc.com) is totally the way to go; you just slide your finger down on the capacitative pad to move forward a page, and up to go back a page. It helps keep fingerprints off the screen, too.
Farmer Ted said:
Gscroll (mobilesrc.com) is totally the way to go; you just slide your finger down on the capacitative pad to move forward a page, and up to go back a page. It helps keep fingerprints off the screen, too.
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Checked it out, works brilliantly! Thanks!
Is there any apps for viewing your photos, that are like the iphones. HTCalbum is somewhat slow when you change pics sliding your finger. Also, in the older htcalbums, you could rotate. Anyways, if someone knows a program or can make one, that would be great. Thank you.
do a search for S2V bu A_C in fact i recomend all three of his apps if you want the iphone look
i love resco photo viewer pro.. i've been using it since i got the touch pro, and its great for pictures. the htc album program kinda sucks because its so laggy, and really doesn't have any options besides to view in their version of thumbnails (which is painfully slow), and to send or delete them. resco's program allows you to resize the images, adjust saturation/contrast/brightness/etc, and their thumbnail view is very fast. renaming is easy, as well as moving and copying. its probably the best program i've found to handle multiple pictures at once, because you can check them off and move them to wherever. its very windows feeling though, it doesn't have all the graphic effects of the iphone or anything, but its stable, and it works, and thats mainly what i use it for. part of my job is image resizing and editing off an sd card, and this is one of the programs i use daily, and its one of the main reasons why i don't have to carry a laptop with me anymore.
For strict viewing, adding to contact, email, sms, etc., you really can't go wrong with S2V. I use it on my Fuze more than ANY other app. I also use Resco's app, but it's not free or finger friendly. It is very feature rich however.
I highly recommend S2V. And if you like it, be sure to send A_C a few bucks. Works fantastically with S2U2 as well.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=358187
How is this thing for viewing medical journals and text books in pdf? When you side load the pdf is it easy to view and zoom in on the multi column pages of texts like the ipad? Or crappy like the original nook?
Thanks.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Here's a video of the NC viewing a PDF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEh0y0safQs&t=0m52s
Also, that's just the default NC app. With it rooted you could install any Android PDF reader.
Terrible for textbooks. I've been meaning to write a review of my experiences. I got the NC almost entirely for use with PDF textbooks, after being disappointed with the Kindle3.
PDF on the NC:
Uses the QuickOffice suite. I don't know if this is optimized for NC (I think it is), but you may be able to take a "test-drive" of the software on another android device.
Approx. 4 seconds to turn the page on a 160mb PDF.
You must swipe down to page turn, unlike .epub, where you tap left/right. This is often unresponsive, moving the page instead of turning the page.
Does not interpret page renumbering. If book preface is in roman numerals, with the relative numbered pages starting after the absolute numbering. (I.e. Page 1 starting at absolute page number 90), it only displays absolute numbering.
No bookmarking, highlighting, notation. Although it will display highlights made on the computer.
No search of scanned images with an OCR layer of text. I did not test native-created PDF.
Zooming could be better. There is a plus/minus zoom, and it has three or four levels, but nothing inbetween.
Doesn't save your place in the PDF. (Are you kidding me!? And because of the page numbering issue, you have to keep track of two different page number systems. And you cannot just text search for a page.)
I do not know how it handles DRM/password protected textbooks.
Root is starting to roll out for NC. But, I've done a casual inspection of other PDF viewing Android software, and I wasn't impressed.
As of right now, my impression is that the iPad is probably the best PDF tablet solution. Note, I hate Apple, and haven't used any PDF software, but I expect that it is well-done.
I think that the Kindle DX might be a solution (I loved everything about the Kindle3 except that the screen was too small for text-scanned PDFs, and the conversion process wasnt' very good.) However, I don't think I want to carry around the DX. They have demo units at Staples. In a case, the Kindle3 feels sturdy. The DX is so large and thin, it makes me nervous. Maybe I'd feel differently if it had a case. I suppose it might end up being about the size of a legal pad holder. Finally, I don't know how I feel about spending ~$400 on an e-ink tablet, which is limited in the applications it will support.
I'm also keeping my eye on Win7 tablets. Native Adobe Reader might be the best solution.
I'll answer any additional questions.
DroidReader has been seen a lot of activity lately and is quite usable. Follow the google groups mailing list to get the latest test packages.
code.google.com/p/droidreader
For two weeks now, I've been using my tab 8.9 at work for note taking. I've tried a bunch of apps and stylus and wanted to start a thread where we can share experiences.
I'm a lawyer and need to take a fair amount of notes and sometimes mark up documents. So far my favorite is Supernote 1.4 (the Asus app which I found online) for note taking. I generally like the app, but wish it could export notebooks in .doc format or rtf and wish it some greater formatting options. For now, I don't export notes very much and when I do, I combine notes into a single pdf using ConverttoPdF by tabletsoft (paid version). I really liked Evernote too because it has good formatting tools, but I don't want my notes automatically uploaded to the cloud. If Evernote added a feature to turn off automatic uploading, I would definitely try it again.
For writing, I use a Pogo sketch plus and the swype keyboard app. With a little practice, the keyboard is more pretty accurate and typed words are definitely easier to read than my handwriting. The pogo stylus is a little small, but the foam tip moves the smoother than the rubber tipped stylus I've tried. I only hand write when drawing a diagram or sometimes when providing comments to a pdf.
For pdfs, I use EZ pdf reader (from the market) and insert notes usually using a text box. Text box show up easily when I look through thumbnails of the document.
What apps/stylus have other people tried and liked?
I use Handrite free for writing notes unless I can find something better.
Its pretty decent at what it does though. You write however you like and it will shrink it down to a decent size, I do need to get a decent sketch app though.
Do you not find the tab 8.9 screen impossibly unresponsive? I've dabbled in using mine for notes but never got anything like an acceptable result - including that Asus app you mention.
The screen is unresponsive and I usually don't hand write or draw.
I find the screen plenty responsive to use the Swype keyboard. When hand writing or drawing I intentionally move slower than normal and use larger letters.
Jeremy
I can write text all day long about .5 to .75 inches high, printed, with no issues. I use the pogo sketch stylus and have used another cheap rubber tipped on with similar results. SuperNote makes it really easy to capture notes and I've found another called Quill that works pretty nice as well. Landscape gives you more room obviously. The 8.9 touch screen is just as responsive as the iPads (I've tested both) and so you get the same experience (with the same limitations eg. no palm rejection and you need to write kinda larger than you normally would on paper).
Since I have invested quite some effort searching for the best reader to use for scientific documents, I thought I would create this thread to tell other people what I found; maybe it will save someone some work:
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In mathematics, physics, parts of computer science and other scientific disciplines we use a typesetting system called TeX to make our documents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX It is a pretty powerful system that ensure beautiful typesetting, page layouts, logical structure, bibliographies etc. almost automatically. In addition, it is the only real way to make mathematical formulae, so in many subjects there is no alternative anyway.
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Using the NST with documents coming from this system is tricky: The re-flowing features of all PDF readers I know of will break these complex documents. Also, they destroy the aesthetics of the documents. So what we need is a reader that can display them in their original layout, but still in a usable way. The only workable solution I have found so far is "Mantano Reader" together with the "Smart Rotator" app.
In Mantano you can double tap on the text section of a TeX document and the reader will automatically fit this text section into the display. While all PDF readers can do this, it works much better here: If you now scroll up and down, you will stay "locked" horizontally, so you don't lose the column will scrolling.
Even when you go to the next page, the lock to the column remains. This even seems to work, when then column is not in the same place (e.g. because the PDF is a book, so it has different left and right margins on even and odd pages).
There is a feature to remove whitespace around the TeX document. Generally this works reasonably, although sometimes it bugs a little. I personally don't use it, as the double tap zoom already works well.
It supports the NST page nav buttons without any hacks.
The interface is quite ugly and disorganized; the file browser horrible. But you don't notice these things while actually reading, and I guess you can't have everything.
I combined this app with the "Smart Rotator" app from the market. This allows you to set screen orientations individually for all apps. I set Mantano to Landscape and all other apps to Portrait. In landscape mode the screen really is wide enough to read comfortably TeX documents on the NST, even without reflowing.
Mantano reader: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mantano.reader.android.trial
Smart rotator: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.xdevelop.rotator_t
rhhd said:
It supports the NST page nav buttons without any hacks.
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I'm always interested in this because B&N snarfed some unallocated keycodes to use for the four hard keys.
Are you saying that all four hard keys cause some sort of page up/page down?
It seems to me that if a software provider didn't know about the Nook then only the left two keys would do something.
Yes all four work as they should.
Thank you, it works fine
Imo, the only major drawback is when you use the NST buttons or you tap the screen, it goes to the following page (it would be better if it just scrolled down a little).
Ebookdroid (particularly with NoRefresh) and APV PDF Viewer (optimized for the nook) are also rather good
Yes I agree, that is a little annoying.
Also, it does not support multitouch.