Well, this review only applies to those who consider reading books fashionable. Since this is ‘e-age’ a great number of books have been converted to electronic or rather digital format. Variety of books are available in PDF format which I think is very unacceptable because few PDF viewers allow reflowing of text and even after that, many times the format looks very improper and fake. I am a reader as well and I also read a lot of e-books. Previously, I read books downloaded from internet in PDF format. Reading PDF e-books was acceptable on my laptop but reading them on mobile devices was very hard thing to do because the Adobe PDF Viewer on my mobile did not had ‘reflow’ capabilities. So, I started my hunt for more PDF readers which can allow reflowing the text. During this search, I found Mobipocket Reader and it was just what I had expected. It had all the features that I had desired to be on an e-book reader. Lets take a closer look on this:
Mobipocket reader has its own format of e-books with ‘.mobi’ as its extension. It also supports ‘.prc’ extension as well. The great thing about this e-book reader is that this baby can convert popular e-book formats like PDF, Office Document, HTML, Text, CHM and EPUB files to its native ‘.mobi’ format.
The e-book library also comes with lot of display options. The screenshot at the beginning of this post demonstrates ‘Bookshelf’ display style. This is my favorite style because it makes you feel as if you are in your own library. Other display modes are as follows:
The software keeps track of what you’ve read recently and how much you’ve read. Once you read an e-book, next time, the software will resume the reading from where you left it.
If while reading e-book you suddenly encounter a word which you don’t know, then just click on it and a context menu will provide you with options like:
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Lookup:
Searches for information about that word over the internet. -
Copy:
Copies the selected word or text. -
Highlight:
Highlights the selected word just as you would do in your real book. -
Add note:
Allows you to make a note of something. -
Modify:
This is very confusing feature and is same as ‘Add note’. -
Add link:
Allows you to add a link within the e-book which will trigger on clicking this word.
For reading e-books, the software has many viewing styles like full width, 2 page display, 3 page display. The software can also auto layout the page depending your screen size.
There lots of customization options available like changing the e-book font, color, background color, setting margins, adjusting the line space etc. These options allow you to personalize the software to ease of use. Upon my observation, the software uses xml based content and thus providing wide range of customization options. If you have PDF e-books with you, then you can immediately convert into its native format by importing it to Mobipocket Reader. It you want the native format directly, then you will have to search for it but I don’t think that finding any book in ‘.mobi’ format will be hard because Mobipocket has its own online e-book library from which you can search and buy e-books online. There are a wide range of e-books available online. Otherwise, if you are like me interested in reading books written by old great writers like Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, O’ Henry, then you should definitely go on http://www.manybooks.net for getting e-books for free. These are original free e-books available on manybooks.net. Manybooks.net allows you to download e-books in many formats including ‘.mobi’ and ‘.prc’.
Mobipocket also features an online eNews store which presents you with news in electronic format. Many popular magazines are available on eNews store. Some are free while for some you’ll have to pay certain amount. If you prefer other e-book stores other than default Mobipocket store, then the software also allows you to select an alternative one.
I am now addicted to Mobipocket reader and so I regularly use it to read my favorite books. Mobipocket Reader is also available on mobile devices and so the software allows syncing of e-books between mobile and PC which is great.
I recommend Mobipocket Reader to you. You can download it from www.mobipocket.com for PC and mobile as well. This software is available for Linux and Mac as well.
