Can anyone tell me the difference between PalmReader and Palmreader Pro?

[yorrick]

I have looked on the website and can't see much of a difference between PalmReader and PalmReader Pro apart from the following...

1) A dictionary sold with it (and it's the small one at 12,500 entries/460kb!). You have to pay $$ for the larger dictionaries of 2.5M and 12M

2) Adaptable fonts - plus three extra fonts.

3) Colour selection.

If these are the advantages over the free reader, is it worth the effort on buying it?
If you have bought it, do you feel it was worth it?

[rldunn]

You basically hit the big differences, though there's more to (1) than you indicated. If you have a dictionary loaded (I bought the College Dictionary), then if you tap on a word, it brings up it's definition. I think that is really handy.

I don't use (2) at all since I prefer Lubak's fonts instead, but I do use different color selections.

I personally think it's worth maybe $5, so whether it's worth $10 to you depends on how much you use the reader and whether you would use the extra features.

[yorrick]

Thanks rldunn - I was wondering if there was more to this.
As for the dictionary, I can do without - I already have MSDict and BDicty! :)
As for fonts, I am quite happy with the basic fonts.

At least I don't spend money this time! :)

[Moparmike]

Sounds like you've got your decision made, but I had this post all typed up and my ISP puked before I could hit the post button so here it is anyway. :)


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Well, I'm not sorry that I upgraded. Everyone has their own taste too.

I haven't used the dictionary at all yet. But the ability to change screen color and font was important enough for me to fork out the coins.

I have the colors setup for black font on a pale-yellow bg for daytime reading (it kinda looks like a real paperback page). And for nighttime reading with the backlight, I use a pink or light-green font on a black bg. Much easier on my eyes than the monochrome.

When I bought it, I got a deal on the AGFA font pack which I have actually got some use out of, both in PalmReader and in a couple other apps.
When I'm reading, it's BellMT for me but occasionally I like to switch to a different font (mostly a freeware Times New Roman I scrounged up on the web).
I'm still searching for a good Palm font similar to Windows' Bookman Antiqua or Bookman Old Style as they're my favorite fonts on the PC for reading large amounts of text.

Yes, I know you can change fonts with 123FontHack (OS4), but to eliminate some funky missing/doubled lines you need to reload the book after changing font. With Pro you can switch fonts on the fly and not mess up the page/line spacing which also seems to affect your bookmarks.

I don't remember if the freeware version has a font-smoothing (anti-aliasing) option. If not, that's another plus for the payware version.

[yorrick]

Moparmike - thanks for your feedback. I agree that it boils down to preferences and what one finds useful, another would see it un-necessary.

Reading the PDA at night, I was thinking of using a colour mapper like Khroma or Butterfly etc.