confessions of a southside catatonic chataholic

Title of a murder mystery? Not hardly! Have recently kissed the pc goodbye (it sits, sad and forlorn on the desk) and have gotten myself a Mac powerbook. Wanted to transfer all of my e-books across to the powerbook and update my online accounts to recognise the new laptop . . . only to find out that Mobipocket's reader is NOT compatible. In fact, not is it just not compatible, there's nothing else out there LIKE it. Ack. It would appear that there are more file formats compatible with pc than with mac. Check out the screenshot to the left and you'll see what I mean - I had a nosey through eBookMall's site and their Advanced Search screen displays some 10 possible file formats, with maybe one or two that'll work for me.

Hunted around a bit to find something that wasn't in beta, and didn't involve a file format that would limit my variety of choice. What I liked best about my Mobipocket reader was that every paid ebook site I went to would offer .prc files. Yes, there's Adobe, and a few others, but sites like BooksOnBoard, Mobipocket and FictionWise don't always have every book in that format. And I have never been partial to reading Adobe anything. I also liked that I was able to bookmark pages, highlight certain passages, create my own custom Newspaper, sync eNews automatically to my Blackberry/pc and have access to over 300,000 possible eNews feeds. All of my online reading in one handy dandy place. Enough of the pity party! I need to stop crying and just find an acceptable alternative ;-)

So what IS out there for Mac ebook readers like myself?? Headed on over to Apple's downloads site and did a quick 'ebook reader' search. There is:

GrassGame eBook Reader 1.5 - free ebook/pdf reader. Only problem is, I couldn't figure out how to work it. And it wouldn't recognise any of my ebook files. Hmm, gotta be something I'm doing wrong, 'cause it's not doing it for me.

There are a couple of web apps (if you don't know what those are check here) that're great if you have an iPhone. Can I comment on that? Learning that the iPhone makes a fantastic eReader is NOT helpful to me. I don't WANT an iPhone. I just want an ereader that'll work on my Mac AND open my .prc files. Please :-)

Performed a general Google search and found that there is:

eReader Pro 2.7 - eReader Pro for Macintosh is used to read eReader.com eBooks on your Macintosh computer and/or laptop. You can read ebooks, add bookmarks, navigate your ebooks with ease.


Well crap, that's all I've been able to find so far that works with a mac. ARGH! If anyone knows of an alternative that is as good as, or better than, Mobipocket please let me know. I WANT ONE. Like, yesterday ;-)

Conversion - I did briefly look into the option of converting my Mobi files into eReader compatible files but the conversion issue *throws hands in air* way beyond my comprehension. And considering I spent money on the damn things I'm not about to muck around with them and possibly lose text or something in the doing. Bah humbug!

Am dabbling in listening to audiobooks at the moment, just as a filler. Went to Project Gutenberg (remember them from a much earlier post?) and found Anne of Green Gables in their Audiobook section. Gosh, I love that story! Have used chapter 1 as the audio clip in my blogger profile. Tried to get the 4 yr old nephew to sit still long enough to listen to Oscar Wilde's 'The Happy Prince and other tales' - my mother used to read his works to us when we were young - but he just wasn't having it. Two minutes sitting still and gone, headphones dangling over the back of his now-empty chair. So much for that!

Note: the 11 year old nephew has taught me a new shortcut (and yes, it'll probably cost me another icecream in payment). Shift+Apple+4 allows me to choose what part of a screenshot I want to capture, and it will then take a snapshot and automatically save it to my desktop. From there it's a matter of seconds to insert the picture into my post. Churr, churr!

It seems the pc is not so lonely. The nephews are Guitar Hero fanatics and play it online. Much to my surprise, the nephews (11, 9 and 4 yr old) are familiar with artists like Heart, Pearl Jam, Living Colour, Aerosmith, Santana and Rage Against The Machine. I was playing 'Carry on wayward son' by Kansas the other week and realised that the 4 yr old niece was singing it word for word. She and her father play it on Guitar Hero. If you don't have the game yet, or want to see what the fuss is about, you can play it here. Umm the site is in Portugeuse, and no the boys don't speak/read it either BUT when it comes to games some things are universal!

Technorati Tags: Mobipocket, eReader, ebooks, audiobooks, ProjectGutenberg, GuitarHero