Windows-Specific Ereader Software?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Gormagon

One can also use Sumatra for epub, mobi, cbr, cbz and txt files. There's really no need for calibre on Windows if you have Sumatra installed (and sort your ebooks in folders).

I would invite you to compare locating a book in my library of ~16,000 epubs using calibre's search to trying to locate the same book in a directory structure.

I tried building directory structures over a decade ago before I started using calibre. calibre made library maintenance, searching for books and pretty much any other library related tasks so much easier than trying to maintain a directory structure where locating an author in an anthology with ~20 authors was easily doable. Heck, the amount of characters for the author names alone exceeded the filepath/filename length limit of Windows. You could always try enabling the long path capability but that opens it's own can of worms with the number of programs that do not work with that capabilities.

BTW, just how easy is it to generate a catalog of the ebooks in your directory structure?

And for what it may be worth, I use both the calibre ebook viewer and Thorium to read epubs on my computers. Thorium is a lot more feature complete when it comes to reading ePub3 ebooks which is extremely handy when you are looking at issues with a fixed layout children's ePub3 ebook intended for the Apple store.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Gormagon

Since I'm not a fan of Calibre and more of a folder guy I would just go with folders and Sumatra on a Windows device, if I use it mainly for e-book reading.

The content of the folders can easily be checked and copied with Winmerge. Actually I use Winmerge to check and copy the music content of microSD cards for my DAPs (Digital Audio Players), so I would just do the same with epubs, pdfs, cbr, cbz etc.

Whereas my use case involves correcting metadata and covers before sending the ebooks to my ereaders. I also have a sideline in working on ebooks for people who are looking at publishing them for which I find calibre and Sigil to be valuable tools.