Ebook users -- Calibre new version

[jimbo45]

Hi there
if you are an Ebook user then I absolutely recommend CALIBRE -- great for converting ebooks to all sorts of different formats (e.g Kindle --> epub and vice versa) so you can have epub format books on KINDLE or KINDLE books on SONY or NOOK e-readers etc. A plugin also removes any DRM from Amazon Kindle stuff too. (download the plugin separately).

Here's the links

Calibre Latest version (updated a few days ago)

calibre - Download for Windows

Kindle De-DRM

How to Remove DRM From Kindle eBooks in 4 Easy Steps | The eBook Reader Blog

(There are other tutorials on the web video if you prefer -- but I'm old fashioned -- I prefer TEXT and descriptions -- I'm not very good at following video's on You Tube etc -- maybe that's just me but when I'm studying on a computer I find it much easier to follow TEXT / Power point etc rather than a Video which is always difficult to navigate if you want to review different points --unfortunately the trend these days is to sling everything on You Tube --for a lot of people this is NOT the best way of learning actually).

Enjoy reading !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

 

[boohbah]

i hear you on the video tutorials jimbo,
ive learned that a text tut is much simpler to nip back to when following the guide.

claibre is also brilliant for managing your library. i use it to scroll through books ,read the blurb, find the book file location and then copy it into the nook. very simple.

 

[kado897]

I use Calibre also. It's a great program for keeping my 1000+ books, magazines and manuals organised.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I'm also a calibre fan. Calibre does much more than just convert books or serve as a vehicle for DRM stripping tools. It also organizes your e-books, searches them by a variety of customizable topics (searches can be saved), loads them onto e-book readers, has its own built in e-book viewer, etc.

The MobileRead forums has a forum dedicated to calibre where one can get more information about calibre and help on how to use it. It is frequented by Mr. Goyal himself as well many co-developers and knowledgeable users.

For legal reasons, Mr. Goyal and MobileRead cannot discuss stripping DRM (removing DRM is either illegal or in a legal gray area due to ambiguous and/or conflicting laws, depending on the country one lives in). However, there is an excellent article on it here. Be sure to read the readers' post following the article to avoid downloading confusion. Hopefully, it is needless to say that stripping DRM should only be done to allow reading e-books on the reader of one's choice and to allow backing up one's e-books and not for obviously illegal purposes such as file sharing and other obvious copyright violations.

A common confusion that often arises with new users to calibre is the way it "organizes' e-book files. Calibre is not a file manager, it is a book manager. It copies your e-books into its own folder/filename hierarchy (note that one's original files are untouched should one be nervous about one's files being damaged) instead of allowing people to manage their own, then all access to one's books is to be done though calibre. Calibre is more than versatile enough that one will never need to access their e-books directly again yet many newcomers have trouble wrapping their minds around that concept and stubbornly cling to the desire to use their own folder/filename structure. Calibre organizes e-books through the use of tags, which can allow far more organizational flexibility than a folder/filename hierarchy will ever be able to accomplish. I trust calibre implicitly to manage my books and never even look inside calibre's folders because there is no need to do so (in fact, changing things in calibre's folders will cause one to lose books in calibre).




Trivia note: Per Kovid Goyal, the developer and owner of calibre, calibre is spelled with a lower case "c" and is pronounced the same as caliber.

 

[kado897]

The one offputting thing about calibre is the frequency of program updates. This is normally weekly, every Friday. It does mean the issues tend to be fixed quickly however.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The one offputting thing about calibre is the frequency of program updates. This is normally weekly, every Friday. It does mean the issues tend to be fixed quickly however.

You don't have to update every week. If the version you have is working fine for you and you don't need or want any new features, don't upgrade. I haven't updated in over a year. And it takes only a second to dump the one and only popup notification you get whenever a new update comes out.

 

[kado897]

That's true but you can miss out on significant improvements that way. I probably take the update once a month.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

All you have to do is click on the option to see what the updates contain, then decide if you want the update or not. For the past year, I've seen only bug fixes that didn't affect me, new magazine/news downloaders I'll never use, and new features I didn't need. YMMV.