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Best Free Electronic Book Reader
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In a Hurry?
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 Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide |
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Introduction
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There is a very thin line between an eBook-reader and a PDF-reader. While the PDF-reader just needs to read PDFs, an eBook-reader is expected to optimize the process of reading an eBook on your computer. Desired characteristics are the ability to:
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Discussion
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Choosing one best reader among the multitude available is both a tough task and also an insensible one. Once upon a time, the humble .txt format used to be the only form of data. Today, there are nearly unlimited formats. While in an ideal world one would prefer all of this data to be in an open format, the same cannot be expected in the real world. Our books are tied down in either .pdf or .lit or .pdb. So, one has to exercise discretion in selecting the best reader. Among the various software discussed here, most aim to only present your book in an almost paperback-like format. Only a few try to organize them and add value to the same. Since the main purpose is to read books and not just text, preference is given to those that add value rather than just display your book in a fancy format.
The reader includes an auto-column layout for an optimal reading experience, with options for page size, full width display, 2 or 3 column display with customizable font types, sizes and background colors. It supports .lit,.html,.txt and .pdf files. Mobipocket also claims to sync with all your mobile devices such as a smartphone, Blackberry or PDA. The main disadvantage is that it stores all of your books in a proprietary .prc version. What this means is that for every book you read, you need to import it into Mobipocket. |
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You can also set up Calibre to fetch news from websites and RSS feeds and convert it into a compatible format, so you can load up your eBook-reader with information from your favorite sites. There's even a built-in web server so you can access your eBook collection remotely. It even has a cover-flow browsing feature for your books. However, it tries to sort all your books in its own preferred folder structure, so if you're a person who uses your own folder-hierarchy use this carefully. |
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With this application, you can shop eBook titles including New York Times Bestsellers, search inside your collection of eBooks and can even borrow books from your library but a library card is required. It too offers a two-page layout. While it has all the polish and gloss of a Sony product it lacks some key features like a full screen interface. |
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Other eBook Reader Suggestions: Tom's eTextReader reads rtf, html and txt files. Useful features are opening files directly from zip archives and a downloading tool for Project Gutenberg files. But the entire software is a little bit outdated. It lacks support for some commonly used formats. You can check this out at http://www.fellnersoft.at/eTR.htm. yBook, is a beautiful piece of software whose main aim is to provide a 'paper book' experience on the computer screen. It even allows you to choose what color your pages are and provides a default two-page layout (which can be changed). It opens .txt, .pdb, .rtf and .htm files. This also has a Project Gutenberg downloader. If you want a simple reader that gives you a book like relaxed read then this is it. You can check this out at http://www.spacejock.com/yBook.html.
To be reviewed: |
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Editor
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This software category is in need of an editor. If you would like to give something back to the freeware community by taking it over, check out this page for more details. You can then contact us from that page or by clicking here |
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Tags
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ebooks, reader, comparison, best free e-book reader, top free ebook reader |
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Just took a look at yBook. It's now at version 2 and can handle ePub.
http://www.spacejock.com/yBook.html
Here is a list of current features:
Runs on any Windows PC (Win95 or later)
Display your book on side-by-side or single pages.
Resize the pages, adjust the margins, set text and paper colour.
Text, html and RTF reader
PDB and PRC reader
ePub reader
Search for words or phrases
Automatic bookmarks
Text sizes from tiny to HUGE
No zooming, panning or scrolling
Direct download of all Gutenberg titles, with index.
Internationalised menus - Spanish, German, etc
Completely free to use: No registration, no adware, no spyware.
It's a kind request. Whenever you suggest a software, please post a link to its site. I have inserted the link this time in the comment.
Also, if you notice, yBook has been suggested just a comment below.
A bit late but........ Not only is this the best allround software of its type I've found, but:
1. It's free!
2. Very Well-written
3. The author's Site (He writes SF and programs) has extra goodies there.
http://www.spacejock.com/yBook.html
A great place for aspiring Authors, too.
Thanks Himagain, it certainly looks interesting. I will review it shortly.
Recently I have spent several days playing with different readers (for W7) and my recommendation would be like this:
- Universal all-in-one solution (for most formats): Calibre (Portable)
- "Single" format solutions: Adobe Digital Editions or Foxit Reader Classmate Edition for epub / Mobipocket Reader for mobi
- Lightweight and highly customizable (thus elegant) epub solution: EPUBReader for Firefox
Hi,
Calibre 64 bit version is also available now. I am currently downloading it.
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_windows64
It certainly seems like MobiPocket is defunct. Tried it tonight. The site is there, but you cannot download the reader software, or buy books. Nothing available for purchase is a pretty sure sign of a dead product/site.
Looking forward to an update of this 'Best of topic'.
Regards,
Travicane
Yes MobiPocket was killed by Amazon in late 2011/early 2012.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/11/02/rip-mobipocket-2000-2011/
Unfortunately, this page does not have an editor at present, so an update in the near future is not likely.
Unless you would like to take it over :)
Also the MObiReader Forum seems to have a huge amount of pharmaceutical Spam - so it is likely no longer supported.
Microsoft officially killed the Reader program at the end of August '12, so avoid the .LIT format if you run into it. (it's a proprietary CHM Help format with DRM)
I like to manage my own files and don't want programs that use proprietary formats. That knocks your top contenders off the block.
I used the simple and unobtrusive CoolReader for a time. It supports a wide range of formats. But as needs and formats I was running into grew, I needed something more sophisticated.
From a comment on this site, I discovered the great STDU. (SciTech Doc Utility)
http://www.stdutility.com/stduviewer.html
(free for non-commercial use)
It can export text and images and do limited conversions but if your main need is something to open all these eBook formats, DJVU, and a bunch of other image and Doc formats, it's great. You set the default file associations during setup (or can change them later).
FYI: Today I tried downloading "Mobi Pocket Reader Desktop" but I got "The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable." whenever I clicked in the download links.
Thanks for the notification. This is likely a temporary server issue on their part. In the meantime, I checked the Softpedia link and that works fine.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/E-Book/Mobipocket-Reader.shtml
This is a junk link. Don't click on it.It automatically installs other junk on your computer. And if your AV stops it, then it wont even install Mobi Reader.
We have to assume that this is just another troll comment because no details of the supposed "other junk" have been given.
Quite naturally, any AV will prevent access to a file if it views this as a potential threat, but many of these are false positives, based primarily on heuristic or "reputation" detections. It is necessary to read the help file for your chosen AV in order to understand how these are generated and what they mean.
Using the freeware WinPatrol will prevent unwanted addons from, being installed (by user choice).
I uploaded the installer file to VirusTotal today, and as you can see it is perfectly clean.
https://www.virustotal.com/file/278ce378e971006c330f3a05ffcd2719c7561ffa...
It looks like Amazon have disabled all the MobiPocket software links with the same message. Go Amazon!
Yes, it seems abandoned. Just looked at their forum and found a message (also a lot of spam)from WILLOBIE stating:
"Yes, Mobipocket is dead. It's website is just a shell and after trying to download the desktop for hours, I finally learned from an Amazon techie that Amazon had dropped it (but left the empty website in place). I did find it on Softpedia (http://handheld.softpedia.com/dyn-postdownload.php?p=6442&t=4&i=1) and it works fine on Win 7 (with or without a cover), but it can't find my Palm OS reader. The "add a device" function apparently needs to link with the Mobi website (remember, it's just a shell) and can't install the conduit."
I use FBReader and AlReader2 to read most books. Google alreader2, the site's mostly in russian, but there's an english download link. Alreader is a gem of a reader.
I just tried FBReader, learned it doesn't handle .pdf files. Major fail for my purposes. My only requirements are a reader which supports both Windows 7 and Android platforms,reads epub, pdf and doc formats, and allows text resizing. Still looking.
Adobe Digital Editions was the main useful EPUB file reader I have found so far.
However Adobe wants to download and install this program for you !
I dont like websites or companies downloading and installing their programs - there is a stand alone installer download also available on the Adobe website with a bit of hunting.
Coolreader didnt faithfully show the documents intended layout - much like reading a Word document using Wordpad.
A great many companies now use this download feeder-type of software to "make the downloading process friendlier", but it really doesn't. Granted, that's my opinion, but what I find is that no matter how small a file the feeder file is, it nearly doubles the download and install time for everything. Not fun, but more and more a "necessary" evil.
Quite happy with the Kindle app.
Many people are, and that simply reinforces it's popularity in this particular realm.
CoolReader is by far the best ebook reader I've tried after having tried several in December 2011. In fact, I donated $10 to help support the development. (I try to support a few free programs around Christmas time each year).
Check it out at:
http://coolreader.org/e-index.htm
on SourceForge it can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/crengine/
You won't go wrong. I highly recommend it and feel that it should be one of the top programs mentioned above. It is under active development. Version 3 has over 1,000,000 downloads and roughly 100,000 in the week I downloaded it.
Calibre has a portable version, too.
Reading EPUB documents on a Windows PC would be useful. Wish the top recommendation could do this basic function. YBook does not do this, even thugh it states so on the homepage
Also - whats the point of downloading some of these other programs that read .txt, or .pdf.
Calibre is a wonderful piece of software. The only problem is that it can't convert dual-paged, or multi-column, PDF to EPUB. EPUB is much easier to read on mobile phone, because the reader remembers the current position, unlike PDF readers.
Mobipocket does NOT read lit files.
ybook has this defect: so far as I can see, one cannot select a portion of text and copy it. (One can copy a page to the clipboard).
thanks.
Wife uses Amazon kindle for desktop when on the laptop ,download from Amazon.You dont have to use the Kindle machine.