Ebook Readers

I bought Moon+ Reader a few months back and had found myself finishing up a book and wanting to "rearrange the furniture" so to speak so I googled and started looking at different readers just to see what was out there.  Side note: Moon+ is 50% off right now so if you're on the fence it's completely worth the $5 I paid, so grab it while it's $2.50.

Aldiko's Shelf

The one that caught my eye was Aldiko.

So I tried it out for the 2 or 3 bucks and was sorely disappointed.

To start with, it has a more...I don't know..."Kindle For Android" look to it.  But that's where any positive comparisons end, for me.  If that's even a positive, it's merely an aesthetic.

Maybe it's my device (ASUS Transformer Prime TF201-B1) or a collection of 442 books or the app itself but it took over twenty minutes to import my books. The screen timeout on my device is set to 10 minutes and, to keep the process from stopping, I had to tap the screen twice (the second time being at about 97% completion). So that was pretty annoying.  Moon+ had imported and organized my entire collection in, literally, under a minute.

While playing with Aldiko I noticed that it lacks a set of features I find to be the most important of all.

Mmmm...pretty.

The type of reading I do (WWII, The Crusades, high concept thriller writers like Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, Lee Child, Andy McNab, Douglas Preston, Baldacci, Rollins, Connelly, Mills etc etc...the Alpha Males of today's writing) contains a lot of references to historic figures, military, equipment, weaponry and dates.  Moon+ Reader comes with numerous dictionaries and the ability to highlight text in order to either look it up on Google or view, for example, the MH-53j Pave Low's Wikipedia entry - because I'm not nearly as smart as these guys.  I'm willing to lift my W***pedia embargo in this case. Moon+ allows you to google instead of going straight to the Liberal online "encyclopedia" as well, so that's good.  But uhm...back to the lecture at hand (SWIDT?)

Moon+ also allows you to create links on a word or passage.  This allows you  will bring you out to said wiki entry, website or definition.  You can also "mark-up" a page with notes.

This is really only two features I've listed.  Moon+ Reader is filled to the absolute brim with bells and whistles for those of us that like to push buttons.  But it also "just works" for those that aren't as technical.  You can really tell it's a labor of love for the author.

So unless I missed those features in Aldiko I think any reader that can't do those things completely under-utilize the technology afforded us/them and are no better than the standard paperback.

And there's nothing wrong with a good old paperback.