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Originally Posted by Thasaidon

The problem is that (as kiwidude said) other people, who do not have a similar background, or interest in IT, just want to store, load and remove books from their ereader as easily as possible and can be overwhelmed by their first view of Calibre.

Originally Posted by Stampercam

I just think some people are going to struggle no matter what and my mum is one of them.

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

She's not a very IT person, or has a lot of knowledge about computers (she installed the new version for Sony software and PRS talking by phone with me for giving her instructions). I haven't to tell her anything, however, about calibre, she's using it on her own, so I think it depends on any user.

Originally Posted by fesja

Will calibre be for IT people or will it be for everyone? I don't accept the answer "lots of average users are using it now" because there is no decent alternative right now.

Originally Posted by theducks

We don't know the skill of the Average user, because most of them DO NOT post here at MR.

I also wanted to quote the post about the interfaces of K4PC, etc, but multi-quote across multiple pages is something I've had issues with. Anyway...

There is a vast distance between the simplicity (and minimal features) of K4PC et al, and calibre. That gap is one which has not yet been filled by another software solution. If someone were to embark on creating new software, I think the smart thing would be to try to fill that gap rather than try to compete with calibre's features.

I feel that to try to make calibre fill that gap, and to make it more accessible to some users, would not be an ideal solution. Fesja notes that there is no decent alternative at the moment, but that does not mean it's calibre's job to make up the difference. I'd love to see calibre take over the world, but not at the cost this would require.

Thasaidon notes that some folks "just want to store, load and remove books from their ereader" - calibre isn't actually needed for any of these things, so why would these individuals be using calibre to begin with?

As was noted by Stampercam and Terisa, some people are just going to have issues and others won't. (It's not a matter of "IT vs. everyone else" - I think that's too much of a generalization.) How do you separate folks who only have issues with calibre from those who simply don't get along with computers in general?

Finally, as theducks says, you won't find a valuable quantity of "average" user cases here. The sampling is too small and specific.

Any software application has room for improvement, but making it "for everyone" is a different animal. Yes, there are still things I have trouble with in calibre after a year, but when you pack that many powerful features into an application, things will be a bit complicated. My only real criticism about the UI is this - buttons that delete things should probably not be green.