A Great E-Book Reader for your PC !
E-books have gone mainstream and is rapidly becoming the dominate format. Many book-lovers use handheld e-book devices such as the Kindle, or perhaps an iPad, or one of many others, maybe even their smartphone. Sometimes it is convenient to have a great e-book reader on your PC. Welcome Calibre, the free, open-source reader and library manager.
Installation of the Calibre E-Book Reader is straightforward with no surprises, and no bloatware! It has a welcome wizard, and will prompt you to choose the location of your E-Book library. You can select a removable storage device such as a USB Stick or external drive. In this way, you can move your library from one of your computers to another.
You will be given an option to set up Calibre to be compatible with our specific e-book gadget, but simply choose generic if you are using a PC. During the installation there is a help video or you can choose to view the full documentation. Once the installation is complete, the Calibre’s main interface opens with one free e-book already displayed: “The Calibre Quick-Start Guide.”
The operation of Calibre is very intuitive, with no extra help needed. A colorful interface with a familiar layout makes for easy navigation with icons and labels. It can rescale to all font sizes, ensuring the output e-book is readable no matter what font sizes the input document uses. It can automatically detect/create book structure, like chapters and Table of Contents. It can insert the book metadata into a “Book Jacket” at the start of the book.
Adding, converting, and removing books, editing metadata, and sharing your favorite titles are all very easy and can be accomplished with just a few clicks.
I find no reason to look anywhere else when you need an E-Book reader!
Calibre has a multitude of features divided into the following main categories:
- Library Management
- E-book conversion
- Syncing to e-book reader devices
- Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
- Comprehensive e-book viewer
- Content server for online access to your book collection
- E-book editor for the major e-book formats
You can schedule or manually download news from the web and converting it into e-book form. There are a myriad of supported news sources (1,580 as of this writing) in every conceivable language. The resulting e-books include the full versions of the articles, not just the summaries. Supported news sites for English number over 400 and include:
- Barron’s
- Boston Globe
- Business Insider
- Business Week
- The New York Times
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Economist
- Time
- The Guardian
- ESPN
- and many, many more…