Palm Reader Gets A Facelift

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com">http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com</a><br /><br />Palm Digital Media has released a new version of their 2002 Pocket PC Magazine Award winning program. There are two versions of Palm Reader, the free version and the $14.95 Pro version. The Pro version gets you a basic dictionary, justified fonts, auto-scrolling and a few other goodies.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2003/20030813-palmreaderpro.gif" /><br /><br />As you can see from the screen shot above, the new version includes several enhancements, some of which apply to the free version. As far as I know, none of these enhancements have been incorporated into the versions for HPCs and old Palm-sized PCs, but <i>all</i> Pocket PCs benefit.<br /><br />• Inline images that scale well to the Pocket PC format. Previously, displaying images was optimized for 160X160 screens or multiples of 160. Now they look great on your 320X240 screen. You can tap on the image to zoom in as well.<br />• Theme support. If you dislike the drab white background, there are a number of textures you can use under the text. You can also choose the text color, link color (for footnotes), background color and highlight color if desired. I've not played with it yet, but I understand theme backgrounds, or the canvas, are just .png files so if you have a decent graphics program, you should be able to create your own canvas.<br />• Background pagination when you open a new ebook. This allows you to begin reading immediately. Even 4,000+ page ebooks paginate in under a minute on my iPAQ 2215.<br />• Better library screen allows you to see more information about an ebook before opening it.<br />• Finally, ebooks on the SD card are not closed when the device powers off! Woo hoo!<br />• Word look ups in the dictionary are much faster. The old version of Palm Reader Pro crawled when looking up a word. Now it takes just a second or two.<br />• Lots of other little tweaks and new preference settings.<br /><br />Palm Reader has been my favorite ebook reader for several years now and the new features make it that much better.

[Sparky]

Nice update. All issues with Pocket PC 2003 fixed. Only needed to do a soft reset to get the scroll wheel and the D-pad to control pagination.

Much faster at formatting books than before.

Not sure if I'll ever use the "themes", but it's a nice addition.

[KAMware]

This is definately my favorite PPC program. If it was not for Peanut Press, now reluctantly Palm Digital Media, and their reader I would not be reading as much as I do today.

I just downloaded the newest FREE reader (1.3.0) and it is a really great improvement. I had 3 books in main memory and opened them all with the new program. I then moved them to my SD card and went back to the reader where it opened them up as if they never moved! Really nice. Now I can leave them all on the SD card.

If you do not have this program get it!

:D

[jsjxyz]

Becareful, if you UPGRADE, ALL your bookmarks will be GONE, and you need to enter the credit card verification again. Keep your card handy before you install the new program.

[Ed Hansberry]

Becareful, if you UPGRADE, ALL your bookmarks will be GONE, and you need to enter the credit card verification again. Keep your card handy before you install the new program.
Good advice, but it doesn't always hold true. Apparently of there are some corrupted annotations, your book will be rebuilt. I had a few that this happened with but others were just fine.

[PatrickD]

I lost all my bookmarks, but only had to enter my credit card number for one book. BTW I don't use annotations so I don't know if thats the problem. Other than that it is a nice upgrade. I am also glad they included the enhancements in the free version :D

[racerx]

It may be a good idea before installing the upgrade to go into each book and note the page number you last read. It might not be exactly the same with the new version, but it'll save you a lot of time trying to find where you were if the annotations file needs to be rebuilt.

[Uh_Andy]

For me, the free uBook from www.gowerpoint.com beats all other PPC readers. It reads HTML, TXT, RTF, PDB and PRC (not secure) ebook files. It can read directly from inside ZIP files, and supports BMP, GIF and JPG images.

[ucfgrad93]

http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com



• Finally, ebooks on the SD card are not closed when the device powers off! Woo hoo!


Praise the lord! This was always a huge issue for me! It was such a pain that the books would close and you'd get that NO BOOKS OPEN screen!

[damager]

I like the look of that reader too, but you are SERIOUSLY restrricted in what you can read with it - if you want to read anything recent or not already in the public domain, forget it.

[T-Will]

Does it do full screen yet?

[dean_shan]

I'm glad they fixed the image support. I love that program and have been using it for a long time now. Not sure if I'd use the "Theme" feature or not. I'm definitly downloading and installing this when I get home.

[PatrickD]

Does it do full screen yet?

It always has the taskbar at the top and a toolbar at the bottom.

[ucfgrad93]

I like the look of that reader too, but you are SERIOUSLY restrricted in what you can read with it - if you want to read anything recent or not already in the public domain, forget it.

I don't find that to be the case at all. Palm Digital Media has several mainstream and recent authors. Take a look at there website and you will see.

[T-Will]

I really don't understand why they don't add a full screen option...retarded... :roll:

[Rob Borek]

I like the look of that reader too, but you are SERIOUSLY restrricted in what you can read with it - if you want to read anything recent or not already in the public domain, forget it.

I don't find that to be the case at all. Palm Digital Media has several mainstream and recent authors. Take a look at there website and you will see.

Yep... I read "Masters of Doom" (a book about the rise of id Sofware and it's two major founders - John Carmack and John Romero) when I was on vacation. It's a recent book.

[Ed Hansberry]

I really don't understand why they don't add a full screen option...retarded... :roll:
So not understanding why makes them retarded? Uhm.... ok.

I do understand why, can't discuss it, but the reason is valid. Suffice it to say, they are working on it but there is no timeline for its implementation.

[Foo Fighter]

Becareful, if you UPGRADE, ALL your bookmarks will be GONE, and you need to enter the credit card verification again. Keep your card handy before you install the new program.

Yes, I just found that out the HARD way. :(

[PatrickD]

I really don't understand why they don't add a full screen option...retarded... :roll:

Well it would be a nice feature to have, but to me it is not that big a deal. It wouldn't really give you that many more lines. When I had a palm I certainly wished I could get rid of the graffiti area like the sonys.

[damager]

My comment above is regarding ubook, NOT Palm Reader.

[T-Will]

I really don't understand why they don't add a full screen option...retarded... :roll:
So not understanding why makes them retarded? Uhm.... ok.

I do understand why, can't discuss it, but the reason is valid. Suffice it to say, they are working on it but there is no timeline for its implementation.

Since I don't understand I guess that makes me retarded... ;)

Actually, I'm saying that it seems to me like it's common sense that you would want to maximize the space used on the screen, especially an eBook program which should try to mimick a real book. Real books are able to have many more words per page than a Pocket PC, but why wouldn't you want to squeeze as many words on the screen as possible?

I'm guessing having a full screen option would add another 2 lines or so (depending on the size of the font being used). But I guess if that's not a big deal to people then oh well... :roll:

[emmfan]

Just installed the latest version and it definitely re-paginates and even navigates from page to page significantly faster than previous versions, particularly with larger books. Before, with large books, whenever I got further into the book, paging back and forth would have an increasing delay, but the new version seems to solve that. :lol:

[captgoodhope]

Is anyone else having trouble with the pro version? It looks like they took out the up and down arrows to page through the dictionary definitions. And the tap-the-screen function to page up and down doesn't appear to be working too well.

[marlof]

Is anyone else having trouble with the pro version? It looks like they took out the up and down arrows to page through the dictionary definitions. And the tap-the-screen function to page up and down doesn't appear to be working too well.

Did you select the Clicking on Page turns Pages feature in the preferences? For me, that works, just as using the D-Pad or pressing the enter key on my 2210 for scrolling through multiple page dictionary entries.

[Certified Optimist]

Great!!! :multi:

My favourite e-book reader just got better!


P.S. ...they've got the Hitchikers Guide (all 4 books) on special offer... buy 1 get 2nd at half price... Yes, I've read them all... but... couldn't help myself... Had to buy them...

[Janak Parekh]

P.S. ...they've got the Hitchikers Guide (all 4 books) on special offer... buy 1 get 2nd at half price... Yes, I've read them all... but... couldn't help myself... Had to buy them...
Whoa!!! 8O Tempting... must resist... :mrgreen:

(They don't have Mostly Harmless?)

--janak

[Certified Optimist]

(They don't have Mostly Harmless?)

--janak

Nope... Only:
# The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
# The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
# Life, the Universe and Everything
# So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

[Janak Parekh]

Nope... Only:
# The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
# The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
# Life, the Universe and Everything
# So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Yup, I saw it. Still very tempted, as I have the last two but not the first three (read them in libraries when I was a kid). Trying to resist... ;)

--janak

[Certified Optimist]

[quote=Yup, I saw it. Still very tempted, as I have the last two but not the first three (read them in libraries when I was a kid). Trying to resist... ;)--janak

"Resistance is futile" :robot:

I read all the books as a kid (the first one about 4 times), and have them all back home. But I haven't read them in the original languages and since I am now living abroad it seemed "sensible" to buy them... (...that's just starting my list of excuses...)

Actually, really looking forward to reading them again.

And... few fun related sites are:
http://www.floor42.com/
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci211501,00.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life