Calibre (64-bit)
Quicker than you can turn a page, e-books have gone from a novelty to a publishing mainstay and will soon be the dominant format (perhaps by the time you’re reading this). While many book-lovers use handheld e-book devices such as Amazon’s Kindle, others read e-books on their tablets or even their smartphones. All you need is a good e-book reader. We tried the 64-bit release of Calibre, the free, open-source reader and library manager. It’s a good e-book reader.
Calibre’s welcome wizard let us choose from a long list of interface languages. It also prompted us to set up our e-book library by creating a destination folder or browsing to existing e-books. By default, Calibre creates its library folder in your Documents library. Of course, you can change it later, but it’s not a bad idea to start with the right folder in the right location, since your e-book collection may grow rapidly when you see what’s available for free (or cheap). It’s also easy to establish your e-book library on a USB drive, memory card, or external drive. (You can lug your entire library around with you without giving yourself a hernia! Try that with hardbacks.) Next, we set up Calibre to be compatible with our specific e-book gadget. We could choose devices from a list of 15 different manufacturers, including Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble, as well as generic devices such as smartphones and tablets. The setup finished with links to demo videos and an online User Manual. Better yet, Calibre’s main interface opens with one free e-book already displayed: “The Calibre Quick-Start Guide.” A colorful interface with a familiar layout makes for easy navigation, aided and abetted by icons with easy-to-grasp labels such as Get Books and Fetch News, each with equally clear submenus.
We’ve got nothing but good things to say about Calibre, whether it’s the 32- or 64-bit version. Adding, converting, and removing books, editing metadata, and even sharing our favorite titles all proved to be as easy as a few clicks. If you don’t have a favorite e-book reader and library app yet, or even if you do, check out Calibre.
WHAT’S NEW IN VERSION 4.9.1
Viewer:
- Much improved search functionality. Now all matches are displayed when searching in a side bar with a few words of context. Also supports searching using regular expressions.
- Edit book: The Check book function has a new, improved CSS checker with support for CSS 3
- Edit book: Add an “Open with” action to the context menu of the files browser to easily open files with external programs.
- Viewer toolbar: Add button to easily change color schemes
Bug fixes:
- version 4.9.1 fixes a couple of regressions in 4.9.0 with Check Book reporting false positives and an error when using the source editing view in the comments editor
- Comments editor: Fix inserted blank paragraph being rendered as two lines.
- PDF Output: Fix conversion of files containing elements failing.
- Viewer: Fix failure to open some books that contain unparseable URLs.
- Viewer: Fix data displayed in side margins getting moved out of position when mouse hovers over side margin.
- Book details panel: When right clicking to save the cover, replace invalid characters in the suggested filename
- Fix harmless error popup when adding SSL key/certificate in server settings
- Dark mode: Fix colors in remove all formats except dialog
- Improved news sources:
- Liberty Times
Calibre(64-bit) is program to manage your eBook collection. It acts as an e-library and also allows for format conversion, news feeds to eBook conversion, as well as e-book reader sync features and an integrated e-book viewer. It features library management, format conversion (all major eBook formats), syncing to e-book reader devices, fetching news from the Web and converting it into eBook form, viewing many different e-book formats, and giving you access to your book collection over the internet using just a browser.