Ebook Software

While buying a dedicated e-reader is an option for many people they want to read using their existing gadgets. The convergence of devices means that soon we will want everything on one device. No longer will you carry a phone, a book, a MP3 player and a camera you will want to carry one device that does it all.

Considering that this time I am taking a look at some of the software that you can download to your device for reading your favourite novels.

This review covers the iBook reader, Kindle and Kobo software.

In general use there is little difference you notice in simply reading the books.

iBooks

This starts with an attractive layout like a bookshelf so you can easily see the book covers to select the book that you want to read. If you have read them all simply select store and you will be taken through to the iBook Store where you can purchase new books that are downloaded straight to your phone or ipad over  a wireless connection.  However their book for under a fiver were seriously poor Pride and Prejudice anyone….sorry but most book readers give you the classics for free so why would you pay for them. The recent books seemed pricy in comparison to the high street one book they charged £13.99 for but this was already discounted in High Street stores and far cheaper.

Click on library to get back to the library of books that you already own.

Simply tap on a book with your finger to select and open it. It will remember the page that you are on and go to that when you open the application. If you want to change book then you simply click library. There is a contents button which is a handy way to get to a chapter of a study book. You can change the brightness using a simple slider. Fonts however are severely limited with a choice of just two sizes and only 5 font types. If you had poor vision and needed a bigger font then this is not the reader of choice for you.

Kobo

This displays the books more like looking at an internet site but again easy to find the book you want. You can arrange for your books to list by title, author or recently read. At the top are three handy tabs one for the book you are actually reading, one for your library and one to take you to their store to buy more books of course. They do seem to have some good titles at a fair price for example £3.98 for the Steig Larsson book.

From your library simply select the book you want

The Kobo application does have a noticeable error in that when you go to read the first book you think you are going mad for a moments as you move through to the next chapter and find that you are the beginning of the first chapter about 4 times before the book actually gets going.

The controls are hidden and to make them appear you simply touch the screen in the centre. At the top you can choose from table of contents, book overview and bookmarks. However if you go to bookmarks it seems to lose the page you were in on the book and the back button was of no help.

The controls at the bottom are brightness, font size and display settings.

In terms of fonts you have a choice of only four but the font size is much more flexible as you simply slide the scroll bar to get the size you want. Now brightness I have to give them points for simply as they have a night reading mode. This reverses the display so the background is black and the text white.  This is handy as often the brightness of this screen can mean that if you are reading last thing at night you are actually kept awake by the light from the screen. You find it is 3 am and you have read for four hours Oops for those of us with an early start. This therefore is a great idea but I wonder how many people find it!  There however is one key problem I have to draw to their attention. Night mode is all very well but when it blackens the page and all I can read is the headings and the actual book has disappeared into stealth mode then it really is beyond me to read it!!

Setting lets you choose if you have Kobo styling on or off. If you turn it off the page looks a bit like it is not formatted properly. Then you can select how the page changes whether it is a flip or curl or fade or nothing.   I have to say seamless and quick if the book is a page turner is probably key for me but for the artisitic type I can see why this would be attractive. Page curl is the most interesting of them. The fade I really don’t get…I checked several times in case I had blinked.. but no I really could not get that one.

Kindle

This calls the Library the Home page. The background is very much the amazon logo. There are wo display options for the books and you can sort by title author and recent. There is also the option to archive items which if you read a lot could be very helpful. The info button takes you through to settings which let you choose the reading mode, what other people are hi-lighting and gives you the ability to back up annotations so handy if this is a study text but are you allowed to take an e-reader with internet connection into the exam room?? There are some sales pitch support and terms of use also in info.

The usually link to the store is there but the load speed was stunningly slow in comparison and actually failed to load. This takes you to the internet browser rather than a direct link and this failed to load three times so you are not going to be buying much there!!!

You then end up in the internet browser and have to get back to the home screen to get back to the Library or home as I should call it in this application.

Once in the book there is a back arrow, a plus button that jumps you forward and a book cover that give you a choice to jump through the book.   The settings offer a choice of fonts, brightness and their equivalent to a night time mode.

However with the option to save annotations I would expect to be able to make them in this book but nothing I clicked seemed to give me this option so on my user acceptance testing that things should be obvious without reading a manual. So it appears you can only annotate on the Kindle and then the annotations are moved onto other formats you can read on.