| Software Author: |
Team One Software |
| Title: |
Team One's Reader v. 3.0 |
| Cost: |
$25 for Professional and $15 for Standard |
| Reviewed By: |
Matthew
Miller |
| Storage: |
1.5Mb download and 800kb on your Pocket PC |
| Rating: |
 |
As you may know after reading some of my other reviews, I commute to and from work on a bus
and can spend anywhere from 2-3 hours per day on them. I like to pass the time by reading ebooks
and that is one major reason I left the Palm devices. I couldn't read the monochrome screens in
the lighting on the bus and the high resolution color on the Pocket PC was the answer. I used
the Palm Reader from Peanut Press on my Palm devices and it is
my personal favorite for reading on a PDA. I have tried others such as Mobipocket and the Microsoft Reader, but kept
going back to the Palm Reader. However, I recently received an email from a Chinese company that
makes a reader for the Pocket PC and it was on its third revision. I never even heard about this
reader application before and after using it for a week, I am very impressed. Team One's Reader version 3 allows you to read 20
text formats, including MHT, CHM, PDF, ZIP, PDB, PRC, JSP, CGI, PHP, ASP, XEB, XML, SHTML, SHTM,
HTML, HTM, H, CPP, C, and TXT.
I don't know of any other reader that can read this many formats. I was not able to read the
Mobipocket, .LIT Microsoft Reader or Palm Reader secured books, but I was able to read all the
books I bought from Fictionwise and downloaded in .pdb
format. When you first launch Reader, you will notice a small wallpaper image on the left hand
side that can be changed with their pre-made images or you can make your own. On the right side
of the wallpaper you will see a library of documents that are in the Bookshelf folder(s). You
can change the view of these books, sort the titles, or filter by type using the left hand menus.
By default the name of the folder where books are stored is Bookshelf, but you can change it to
whatever folder you like. You can also create a Bookshelf folder in RAM and/or on your storage
cards and the program will show them all in the library list. There is quite an amazing set of
options for this program that are accessed by tapping Tools>Options. As you can see in the
screenshots below, you can customize the background, lettering, font size, border size, use
ClearType, choose any font loaded on your device, setup your toolbars, assign hardware buttons,
install or delete modules, select a dictionary, and many other options.
Main library start screen
Font options
View options
Assign hardware buttons
Installing or changing modules
I like the fact that I can now read my Fictionwise books as well as the thousands of texts
available from places like Memoware without having to have
4 or 5 readers installed on my device. I like light letters on a dark background and as you can
see I don't really use ClearType much. After opening a text to read, you can tap the Tools menu
and set up different profiles. They have a couple already created such as night and sun. This
is great if you want to set up different colors for different types of information you read.
Reading a Fictionwise book
Night time mode
There are a few toolbars along the bottom and you can customize what you want to show up by
using the Tools>Options menu in the library screen. You can set up bookmarks, annotations, find
words in the text, copy text to the clipboard, and show the right side scroll bar. To set
bookmarks, annotations, or copy text you first tap the Select icon (lower case cursive a) and
then highlight text with your stylus. You can also jump to any page in the document using page
numbers or percentage. You will also need the Select function active to tap through hyperlinks
in your document. As they recommend in their manual, I assigned a hardware key to Full Screen
Toggle and I can now read a document using the entire screen of my device with no toolbars or
Start bar. The hardware button functionality is invaluable when reading and navigating books and
documents.
Manual with embedded images
Besides standard texts, Reader supports viewing of a large number of formats as listed above.
There is also a free image module that will allow you to view 6 formats; GIF, BMP, JPEG, JPG,
PNG, and 2BP. After opening an image, you can zoom in and out up to 100%. You can also scroll
through just the image files by tapping the directional keys. If you have documents in a .zip
file then you can load them in your Bookshelf and Reader will open up the zip file and show you
the contents that can be read by the program on a second screen after the main screen. The icons
on the main screen tell you if there are multiple files associated with the document. As you can
see below, I saved the Pocket PC Life site as a .mht file and was able to open it up in Reader
with the images intact.
Our site saved as a .mht file in Internet Explorer
There is a $10 difference in cost between the Standard and Professional versions the
differences are that the standard version limits you to odd chapters in PDF and limits you to the
first 15 files in CHM documents. The Adobe PDF reader is free, but it is a very large program.
While all the formatting is not maintained, Team One's Reader will allow you to read all the
content. They also have an autoscroll feature where you can set any timing you desire. You can
only get this in the Palm Reader program if you buy the $10 version.
I was very impressed with Team One's Reader and have to say I have removed Palm Reader from my
device a couple days ago. I only had two of their propietary books, yet I had quite a few
Fictionwise and .doc books that I can now read with Reader. I can also read many other books and
documents with a ton of customization options to make my reading experience that much better. I
highly recommend this program and if you read ebooks on your device, then Team One's Reader is a
"must have" application.
You can purchase Team One's Reader directly from the Team One site. Team One's Reader Standard
version is available for $15 from Pocket Gear and
the Professional version is available for $25 from Pocket Gear. I
recommend that you download the free 30-day trial version and try out the program. |
