Reading is indispensable in our daily life. Unlike reading the traditional paper book, more people prefer a so-called "mobile reading" style along with the popularity of ebook readers. These small and portable electronic devices do facilitate our reading, but for some people who don't go out often and prefer reading on a bigger screen, reading on a PC seems to be a better choice. Here are some of the most popular eBook readers for PC, with their main features and shortcomings. You can choose the right one as per your personal need.
1. Adobe Digital Editions
Adobe Digital Editions is a lightweight e-book reader launched by Adobe. Unlike other e-book readers, ADE has strong library management. It provides a clear and comfortable display mode of which you can organize and order your e-books by title, author and publisher, and other options.
The software can open, read and manage EPUB and PDF files. You can also add comments by bookmarks, tags, and notes. Flash support means you can embed a document with rich audio and video content, which turns the boring textbook into a rich media experience.
Main features:
- 1. Powerful markup
- 2. Full-screen mode
- 3. Borrowing eBooks
- 4. File organization
- 5. High fidelity printing
- 6. Multilingual support
2. Calibre
Calibre is a comprehensive e-book library management program. By installing strong and various Calibre plugins you can do almost everything of e-book with Calibre. This strong open-source software may be best known for its format conversion. In fact, Calibre is also an excellent e-book reader. It has a built-in e-book viewer that can display all the major e-book formats.
The Calibre e-book viewer provides various functions and settings. Most of its function buttons are designed to be easily understood. You can quickly implement the functions you want even without extra settings. The Calibre support customized keys and themes switch and almost all appearance of the e-book can be changed or customized. You can even write your own CSS to beautify the e-book!
Main features:
- 1. Library management
- 2. E-book conversion
- 3. Syncing to e-book reader devices
- 4. Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
- 5. Comprehensive e-book viewer
- 6. Content server for online access to your book collection
3. Kindle for PC
Kindle for PC is the official ebook reader for Amazon Kindle books. For those who have a Kindle eReader or Kindle Fire device, it's very convenient to synchronize the reading progress to PC so that you can read your favorite e-books seamlessly. You can also organize your Kindle e-books into different customized collections.
As for the reading experience, the Kindle for PC is not as brilliant as Calibre. It just provides some general settings such as font size, background color, line width, brightness. Although with simple functions, it does have some design of humanization like you can add notes and highlights and look up words with its built-in dictionary which is very helpful in learning a foreign language.
One shortcoming of Kindle for PC which must be pointed out is that it doesn't support the EPUB file, a very popular e-book format at present. So if you have many e-books in the EPUB format, it's better to convert them into MOBI format as you can read them both on your Kindle device and Kindle for PC. Best EPUB to Mobi Converter--Convert EPUB to Kindle format.
Main features:
- 1. Sync to the furthest page
- 2. Look up words with dictionaries in different languages
- 3. Search in books
- 4. Organize collections
- 5. Personalize your e-books
4. Epubor Reader
Epubor Reader is the most beautifully designed ebook reader on this list. It's equipped with powerful functions although in a simple interface. It supports multiple ebook formats, including EPUB, MOBI, AZW, AZW3, PRC, TXT, etc. It provides a fully customizable reading experience and enables you to view, organize and manage all your ebooks in a single library.
Main Features:
- Has a beautifully designed and user-friendly interface.
- Supports multiple ebook formats including EPUB, MOBI, AZW, AZW3, PRC, TXT, HTMLZ, etc.
- Search in books.
- Library Management.
Comparison and Selection
So what makes a good ebook reader? Read more information from this table and get your own anwer.
Reader | Reader Name | Supported eBooks Format | Reasons to Select | Reasons to Avoid |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Adobe Digital Editions for PC | ACSM, EPUB, PDF | Must-have for online library ebooks readers | Can't read DRM protected eBooks |
2 | Calibre for PC | EPUB, LRF, HTML, LIT, MOBI, PDF, Topaz, Text, and SNB | Supports multiple formats; Helps edit eBooks metadata | Can't read DRM protected eBooks |
3 | Kindle for PC | Word, PDF, TXT, Images, AZW, Mobi, RTF, PRC, PSZ | Best choice for Kindle users; Includes text-to-speech function | Can't read DRM protected eBooks |
4 | Epubor Reader for Windows | EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, TXT, HTMLZ, etc. | Best EPUB reader for windows; User-friendly UI | Can't read DRM protected eBooks |
And as what this table shows, none of one eBook reader will support DRM protected eBooks, while most of eBooks we purchased from those popular ebooks stores are with drm limitation. Here comes Epubor All DR Removal tool, which helps DRM from Kindle/Kindle/Kobo/Nook/Google Play books.
Jonny Greenwood joined Epubor since 2011, loves everything about eBooks and eReaders. He seeks the methods to read eBooks more freely and wants to share all he has got with you.
Of course there are many other good ebook readers like the one you mentioned. Here we just list part of them.
1. No such readers that can help you read all formats books.
2. Just choose one reader you like most, then convert other formats books to this reader supported format.
3. You can use Epubor online converter service(free) to help you convert PDF to Mobi well.
http://onlineconverter.epubor.com/
Neither the online nor the desktop version converts pdf files. I own the desktop version and when I try to convert, all I get is a spinner saying "1 book" (for hours.)
The online version does not indicate how to download the book after conversion (if it actually was converted). I attempted this twice, and once got a time out message, the other time not.