Replacing Stanza grocery list

[andrea345]

I had no idea Stanza was such a great app. This fiasco did make me get back to good housekeeping basics. I caught my Calibre library up and I think I've captured all the books I've purchased. I spent this weekend catching everything up & evaluating some of the free / trial apps. I had to organize my thoughts because there were so many things to think about, so here they are (fwtw). Anyways, I did make a purchasing decision, but it's at the end.

I know I looked for a good comparison thread and the one in here was very helpful, but then it got too hard to follow, so I'm starting a new one. Hopefully, this helps others as others email threads helped me, but it has been a long day / weekend.

Specs:
1) I'm an idiot. I have Windows 7 Home & I can't figure out how to connect to my Calibre server to pull books off, so forget about it. It's not an option for me. Getting content on the app should not be rocket science. I can do the iTunes drag 'n drop or open in email. I haven't even figured out the new "cloud" yet. It took me an hour to figure out my wi-fi sync.

2) I want all my books accessible on the app. I don't want to have to open up my machine to get a few books. I want all my books on my iPad all the time.

3) I buy both PDF & ePubs, Kindle only when forced to & Nook books b/c Amazon tic'd me off this past year. I started with the Sony eReader, so I also pick up lrf on occasion. But yes, I can convert using Calibre, but the fewer times the better (i.e., the more the app can support, the less work I have to do on my weekends!)

4) Because of Items 2 & 3 above, I live by author grouping b/c I have too many books. That's another reason why I'm avoiding converting my files to Kindle & loading them up there. Besides Amazon spooked me out about capturing reading info & stats.

5) I do a lot of night reading, so I always dim the nightmode b/c my eyes can't handle bright. As I get progressively more tired, I dim more. Light adjustability is important with the backlit iPad because of eyestrain.

6) Editable author names & titles, or at least keep the meta info from Calibre. This is why I abandoned maintaining my Calibre library in the first place, Stanza did the job.

7) Import from email. A couple of apps I looked at wouldn't even show up as a selection to accept a book from email. This is a bummer b/c that means I have to be physically tied to my PC to pull the book down.

8) Rotation - I usually use landscape, but there are occasions I like landscape. I loved having the rotation frozen in Stanza, but not for the whole iPad (lock rotation). Frankly, I rarely use portrait, so what's with these apps that force that - and in the iPad of all things?!

9) Adjustable text - I loved the pinch or pull. That's what makes the iPad "experience" the "iPad experience", but whatever, I'm fine as long as I can increase the font efficiently and in as few keystrokes as possible.

10) Sideways swipe for page turn - I don't like to read in a continuous stream (up & down) with my ebook reader. A computer screen is different than ebook reader. This is why so many of the PDF viewers don't work for me.

*** Let me reiterate - I group my books, otherwise it's a mess. Simple directory structure anyone? Sheesh. This is a basic concept in computing.


And now that I have spent all day today looking at these apps, here are my notes at what I looked at.


*********** "Free" / trial apps*****************

i2 Reader (I just broke down & bought it, trying for some semblance of "completeness") - See update at the bottom:
last update - June 15, 2011
$5 purchase price without a test ride - I'll do that as a last resort. I don't mind paying for something & will send in $$ for "freeware", but gimme a break. I'd like to see something other than a pretty presentation. Also, with all the buzz going on about the iOS5 upgrade & I haven't seen any recent activity going, I'm not sure this isn't just another abandoned app.

Update - I went purchased it after my disappointment in my converted .PDFs.

Megareader:
last update July 6, 2011 (but am seeing a huge amount of chatter about next update on the web)
My PC is a Windows 7 on a home network, so of course I can't figure out how to access the Calibre server, so of course I can't load any books into MegaReader. I'm an idiot and this app would take me more than a weekend to figure out. I don't get not even having the drag 'n drop, but whatever. Not gonna pay for the app if I can't even figure out how to get books there in more than 30 minutes of work.

txtr:
last updated - Sep 22, 2011
Only books in their cloud can be downloaded. You have to upload your books to their content server & then download to the iPad. I only used it before I found Blue Fire b/c it could manage the Adobe DRM'd books. It increases & decreases font size & has night mode, but no brightness control. Text size is adjustable using a pinch. Right stroke turns page (not scrolling, thank heavens). I might return to it for my DRM'd stuff b/c I can pinch the text size. The text size returns to "normal" at each page though, so you're continually pinching. I'm not sure if that would get annoying.

DL Reader:
Last update - Oct. 12, 2011
will increase font size. whoopee. Has the slider bar to show progress. wow. whatever. It will accept drop ins from iTunes and is one of the options for "Open In" from email.

uBooks:
Last update - August 24,2011
Does NOT come up as an option with email. Has night mode, font & font size adjustment, brightness, table of contents access, search function, a categorized bookshelf (this is unique - yes, it groups by author, etc.). I don't see a dictionary. Only likes ePub. My PDF files are not being read (this is after I already purchased, that I'm paying attention to the importance of this).

Ouiivo:
Last update - August 18, 2011
Does come up with email. Only their instruction book seems to rotate between landscape & portrait. My PDF scrolled (no side-2-side). Crashes. Lots of styling / font options, but I can't actually use them on the pdfs or ePubs I copied over b/c then the options down't show up. ePubs show up with the front pictures, but no text. I give up.

ShuBook:
Last update - October 14, 2011
Not an option to "Open IN" from email. There's like this whole add'l step under "custom" to import the iTunes Shubook Documents. Then, it seems to "take" the files from the File Sharing drop box of iTunes and leave what it doesn't like behind. ePubs, but not PDFs supported?? Does support chapter access. No bookmarks that I could see. It does have a Night Mode. It doesn't look like it's grouping my titles into categories like uBooks. It does have a Recent list. Looks to have a book delete option like Stanza, but I don't see an option for editing the title or the author. I don't see a dictionary.

Kobo:
Last update - August 27th, 2011
Sure looks purty, but can't delete books without going into iTunes. Seemed like it wanted to spew, uhm, excuse me "share", my reading info with the world. I'm not sure if I was able to turn everything off. Kind of freaked me out. No author grouping, but it did keep things alphabetized, but I've got other apps with exactly the same look. Played well with ePub, but PDF - no text size adjustment which can be a real problem with big fonts. Forget it.

Bluefire Reader -
Updated August 16, 2011
I've had this on as my DRM reader. It has the same "pretty" interface as Kindle or iBooks - no author grouping, so you have to scroll through pages (& even more b/c their icons are so large) pages of book cover plates. No adjustable text size, so if your preferred reading is in landscape mode, you end up with text so large you have to go back to portrait. It does have a night mode, orientation lock and a brightness dim though. I chose not to put the rest of my books on it b/c of the author grouping and the text adjustability. The landscape for uber-big font & portrait for "paged" size just doesn't work for me. Another funky thing about that portrait viewing - the page length will extend beyond the screen, but you can't side swipe to the next page without going back to the top of the screen. It can be very easy to forget & so it's a continual interruption of the read.


*********************** Purchased Apps ***********************

uBooks XL -
I've gone & bought the uBooks XL version, so am going to check it out - see if I've wasted 5 bucks, but their free version was easier to use than the other ones, with more features even with the ads.

Lesson Learned - my converted PDF files to ePubs - ugh. Lousy formatting & the uBooks XL version scrolls screen instead of swipes. I did have a note about "lousy looking text", but it didn't make any sense when I loaded up another file on a second round.

i2Reader -
One of my files causing it to crash. I also haven't been able to figure out how to delete in 10 minutes. That said, the same file converted from PDF to ePub which looks so lousy in uBooks, looks really good in i2Reader. And pages turn with a side swipe. There's night mode. I could use Drag 'n Drop. It has reading method choices (slides or taps), animation when reading, full screen or columnar views, something about the backlight.

That said, if I can't figure out how to delete a book... does that make me unreasonable? No, but the Help section had it right there, so once I got to the i2Reader help, it was easy to find and a quite sensible solution (swipe over the title left to right).

Launches from email. Reads PDF & ePub. This is looking like it'll be the one I'll be messing with.

*************Comparison Wikis or other comparison hyperlinks*******************
Comparison of iOS ebook reader software

[JSWolf]

You missed Bluefire Reader.

[andrea345]

Thank you very much. Added.

[gwynevans]

Originally Posted by andrea345

Bluefire Reader -
Updated August 16, 2011
I've had this on as my DRM reader. It has the same "pretty" interface as Kindle or iBooks - no author grouping, so you have to scroll through pages (& even more b/c their icons are so large) pages of book cover plates. No adjustable text size, so if your preferred reading is in landscape mode, you end up with text so large you have to go back to portrait. It does have a night mode, orientation lock and a brightness dim though. I chose not to put the rest of my books on it b/c of the author grouping and the text adjustability. The landscape for uber-big font & portrait for "paged" size just doesn't work for me. Another funky thing about that portrait viewing - the page length will extend beyond the screen, but you can't side swipe to the next page without going back to the top of the screen. It can be very easy to forget & so it's a continual interruption of the read.

That's a bit odd - for a start, it does have adjustable text (settings, then Text size larger/smaller), while I don't see any issues with page lengths extending past the bottom of the screen. Are you by any chance reading a PDF, rather than an ePub?

The one eReader app I'm using that you've not mentioned is Blio, but also I'm using FileBrowser to load the books onto whatever reader I use, as that means that I can get the books onto the iPad with it, then use "Open with..." to send it to a reader app.

[andrea345]

You are probably right, gwynevans. Many of the authors I collect have some files in PDF format & others in ePub, so am checking out functionality for both file types on one app. I'd hate to have my authors scattered across 5 apps, it was nuts enough when I gave it & went to the Nook app & made it 4.

But to your point, I wasn't clear & need to just sit down this weekend & putting together the matrix I started. I found I lost track by the end of Sunday night. I'll also add matrix requirements if you have suggestions to add to my own.

Thank you for mentioning Blio. I've just downloaded it and will add it to the list.

Filebrowser - interesting app. Thanks for mentioning!

[Philantrop]

Originally Posted by andrea345

need to just sit down this weekend & putting together the matrix I started. I found I lost track by the end of Sunday night. I'll also add matrix requirements if you have suggestions to add to my own

Maybe you'd consider adding your matrix' contents here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...eader_software

I think you've made some good points there and it would be nice to get them included in the comparison so they can benefit everyone.

[Debby]

FYI: For megareader the trick to getting books on it is via a catalog. It should only take you a few minutes. Here is the link from the Calibre forum.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=118556

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by Debby

FYI: For megareader the trick to getting books on it is via a catalog. It should only take you a few minutes. Here is the link from the Calibre forum.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=118556

Good trick. However I am in the same boat as the OP. Hundreds of books, I want them on the device, so I dont want a list that's hundreds of entries long. I want them categorised in groups a la stanza. Also (just because I am in that kind of a mood) I want to be able to edit the title, author and cover art in the app as well. I reckon if the Stanza dudes could do it, so can somebody else.

"You don't know what you've got until its gone"

[andrea345]

Originally Posted by Philantrop

Maybe you'd consider adding your matrix' contents here?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...eader_software

I would, but I've never submitted to a Wiki before so I'm unsure of how to do it. It made me sigh the other day when I thought about it after finding the Wiki. My brain beat against my skull in an attempt to escape. It's probably quite simple, I just need to sit down & figure it out. Thanks for the compliment!

Debby, thanks for the link. I'll go check it out.